Bangkok Post March 15, 2005

How advances in education and training are providing deaf students with a brighter future
Story and pictures by ORATIP NIMKANNON

Next time you bemoan basic education standards as a street vendor mutely punches numbers into a calculator, stop and think. That person may be deaf and using their only means of communicating with you.

Many deaf people in Thailand end up working as stall-holders simply because they have no other choice, especially in a society that arguably marginalises disabled people. However, there's a quiet revolution underway - one led by advances in our understanding of how deaf people learn and apply language skills - that may, one day, see people like Adisak Jermsiriwattana integrated into mainstream Thai society.

Adisak is a deaf graduate from Ratchasuda College in Nakhon Pathom. Having obtained his degree in applied pottery in 2004, he now faces the ongoing challenge of having to work and live in a world dominated by non-deaf people. However, Ratchasuda is leading the charge in developing educational programmes and technologies for its students - as well as the wider deaf community - so that future generations of deaf people face fewer hardships.

NATURE AND NURTURE
To understand the root causes of many of the problems affecting language learning in deaf students, we have to understand the environment deaf people grow up in as well as sign language itself. So says Poungkeo Kichtham, general manager of Thai Disabled Development Foundation, a non-government organisation dedicated to advancing the prospects of the disabled.

According to Poungkeo, unlike non-deaf people, who first learn how to speak and then how to read and write, people who are born deaf will, in general, never be able to speak. Spoken communication is generally developed through imitation - and deprived of aural input, deaf people naturally communicate through body language.

"Deaf people first learn to communicate by seeing and then imitating hand movements," Poungkeo told learning post. "As a result, unstructured or instinctive sign language naturally comes to children who are born deaf."

Such "gesturing" does, of course, have its limitations - it cannot be used at anything other than a rudimentary level, and so the need for learning structured sign language soon manifests itself. However, it is a common misconception that sign language is a universal language. In fact, each country has its own language because, like written and spoken languages, sign language has evolved based on each country's culture.

Ratchasuda's deputy director, Supin Nayong, explained that the "founding mother" of Thai sign language, Khunying Kamala Krairiksh first addressed this problem in the 1950s. Kamala received a scholarship to study in the US and devised the Thai sign alphabet by comparing American English phonetics with those of the Thai language.

This was not an easy task, as Supin explained. "The 'k' sound in English could translate into gor gai, kor kai and kor kwai in Thai, for example," she said. So, to get around this, Khunying Kamala added numerals to the 'k' sign, which became gor gai, so that kor kai is 'k' plus the numeral '1' and kor kwai is 'k' plus '2'.

Then there's the issue of the regional dialects that exist in Thailand. This was first investigated in the 1990s at Ratchasuda, where the American researcher Professor James Woodward studied regional Thai sign language and discovered an 83 percent similarity between different dialects. The remaining 17 percent is local sign language that varies according to each region.

Because of this difference, there may be some words that a deaf person from the North will not understand when signing with a deaf person from the South - just as in most spoken languages. And, as in spoken language, meanings are understood through the context of the conversation.

Of course, while sign language allows deaf people to communicate with each other, it does have its limitations, and these are, unfortunately, often in the areas where they are needed most - education, training and work.

To this end, when new words are needed to cover advances in, for example, science and technology, representatives from deaf communities in various regions of Thailand meet with academics and industry experts. Each word's meaning is discussed in detail and the representatives suggest a sign that will best describe the new word.

"The person who can come up with a sign will present it to the group," said Supin. "If the group members do not understand the sign, the next person will take turns with a new suggestion. It goes on and on like this until everyone says, 'Yes, that's it!'. Then this person will have to explain in sign language what the new word means. If the meaning is accurate, then it's adopted for usage in schools and industry."

Often, as in spoken Thai, English words are used "as is", without a Thai translation. Such words are "fingerspelt" using American sign language as a standard as Thai academics are generally more familiar with the US system rather than the British. But whether a new word is in English or Thai, the main principles for translating it into sign language are that it has to be easy, quick, not hard to sign and allows clear communication.

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
The biggest problem with sign language is that the vast majority of non-deaf people do not understand it. So, in order to communicate, deaf people are encouraged to study the written language along with sign language, plus, for the hearing-impaired, oral communication. This method is called "bilingualism".

Students who study both forms of language perform significantly better than those who just rely on signing - by up to six grade levels. However, while students who learn using this "total communication method" outperform those who learn only sign language, a subgroup of these students generally stands out from the rest.

These are students who come from families with generations of deaf people. In such environments, young learners are immersed in signing and so language abilities are more easily picked up.

With this in mind, Ratchasuda College is currently conducting a pilot project in which it uses immersive bilingual teaching methods with students. "In Australia, where bilingual teaching is used, deaf students' academic performance reaches almost the same level as that of non-deaf students," Supin said.

Higher academic performance is also gradually leading to greater employment opportunities for deaf people. "Those who graduated in our [2004] programmes on the history and culture of the deaf, sign language translation and teaching sign language have a 100 percent employment rate," Supin said.

Meanwhile, Adisak Jermsiriwattanak is still looking for a full-time job. With Ratchasuda graduates in subjects other than those mentioned above experiencing about 80 percent success at gaining employment, it can only be a matter of time. And having experienced an innovative and inclusive education, it's a pretty safe bet that Adisak won't be confined to a calculator for survival.

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
While communication between deaf people is facilitated by sign language and writing, there exists a clear communication gap between deaf and non-deaf communities. In order to close this gap, Ratchasuda College, in cooperation with the Foundation for the Deaf, is experimenting with a new technology called "Real-time Sign Language Relay Service".

Through this system, a sign language interpreter is not required in person - instead, a deaf person can reach out to a network of interpreters who are standing by to provide their services via the Internet. Thus, people in various sectors such as health care, education, government and the public sector can communicate with people in the deaf community.

Although in its infancy in Thailand, this type of service is widely available in countries like the US and Australia where governments have pushed forward measures to ensure the deaf community's access to information. Besides online interpreting services, deaf people in these countries also have access to video captioning, telephone devices with visual alerts, amplification systems for movies, and strobe-lit fire alarms. All these technologies do far more than simply closing a communication gap - they allow deaf people to live a normal life rather than exist on the margins of society.