Title

I HAVE A CUE FOR YOU: CUED SPEECH FLUENCY AND PROSODY

Publication Date

4-5-2019

Document Type

Poster

Degree Type

Undergraduate

Department

Special Education

Mentor

Stephanie Gardiner-Walsh

Mentor Department

Special Education

Abstract

Cued Speech is a modality that can be used to supplement a d/Deaf / hard of hearing child's phonemic awareness and phonics. Cued Speech is a mode of communication used to visually convey the phonological sounds of spoken language. There are 8 hand shapes associated to distinct consonant sounds. There are 8 placements associated to distinct vowel sounds. With a total of 16 cues, acquiring Cued Speech as a communication modality can be achieved through practice moving from isolated phonemes to word level combined phonemes to conversational fluency. Generally, most adults learning Cued Speech attend a one or two day workshop and learn the system over several hours. While this is a great foundational format for instructional delivery, many struggle to find a method for practicing in order to increase fluency in daily conversations. Without this fluency, d/Deaf and hard of hearing children rely on non-fluent adults as language models. Few resources have been found that address this need. Based on these needs, the instructor designed a program that follows a reading fluency pattern. This pattern starts with letter, to word, to phrase, to conversation, much as reading fluency starts with letter fluency and progresses to paragraph format. Pre-test and post-test scores indicated an average increase of syllables from 35 syllables per minute at pre-test to 60 syllables per minute post test. The greatest increase in rate came following the building of fluency at the individual phoneme level. On average, participants increased their average cued phonemes 66.3% or approximately 57 phonemes per minute. These results indicate that using methods for reading fluency is a strategy that can help fluent, adult readers practice their cue fluency after initial Cued Speech instruction. Increased proficiency from short bi-weekly practice sessions, with little follow up, indicates that adult learners can increase their Cued Speech fluency skills without arduous support needs from proficient cuers. Participants may benefit from daily independent practice.

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