When looking at Chang Wei-chung (
The two boys are severely hearing-impaired -- but to hear their happy chatter, one wouldn't be able to guess they are disabled. Thanks to auditory-verbal (AV) therapy that the children received from the Children's Hearing Foundation (雅文兒童聽語文教基金會), the twins are able to go to regular schools and participate fully in mainstream society.
"We are very grateful to the foundation for its help with the boys," said Chang Hsien-liang (
Chang and his wife found out that their children were severely hearing-impaired when the boys were three years old.
"We were a small family, and no one had ever seen anything like this before," he said, explaining why the children's disability was not recognized earlier.
panic-stricken
"Most children begin to speak at around age one, but we realized that the twins weren't responding when we tried to get them to repeat `dad' or `mom,'" he said.
After being referred to the foundation by a hospital, the Changs found themselves feeling alternately hopeful and panic-stricken.
They learned that with AV therapy, children between three and six years old -- a crucial period for language acquisition -- have a good chance to learn to speak normally.
According the foundation, which is the first organization in Taiwan to offer the training, 500 to 600 Taiwanese children a year are born with hearing problems.
"Often, though, if the child has only slight problems, parents think that the child just isn't paying attention," said Grace Lin, an audiologist and the foundation's director of auditory management.
She explained that over 90 percent of hearing-impaired children have residual hearing that, along with training and hearing-aids, can help them learn to talk.
Even children without residual hearing have the potential to hear with the aid of electronic devices called cochlear implants.
top of their class
AV therapy combines modern teaching methods with hearing aids to help children make sense of input that they receive from their hearing aids -- and to help them form words.
"In comparison to lip-reading or sign language, AV therapy is the most popular form of communication being taught to hearing-impaired children nowadays because it encourages children to become part of the mainstream," Lin said.
The foundation doesn't encourage hearing-impaired children to enter regular schools before completing AV training, Lin said, because disabled children can easily become isolated from their teachers and peers. Once training has been completed, however, she said, the foundation finds that students do just as well in regular schools as other students.
The twins are a case in point. After completing AV training classes at the foundation, the twins became first-graders at Taipei's Tienmu Elementary School. Their grades are near the top of their class, their father said, and they have no problems interacting with other students.
microphone
Chang Hsien-liang has a habit of cupping his right hand over his mouth as he speaks, with his chin pointed slightly downward in the direction of an oblong FM unit hanging around his neck. The unit, he explains, allows Wei-chung and Wei-hua to pick up the sound of his voice through a microphone. The listening system transmits a signal directly to the person wearing the hearing aid and is helpful when there is a lot of background noise or a significant distance between the speaker and the listener -- situations in which understanding is typically difficult for hearing-impaired people.
The foundation tries to encourage teachers to use the FM listening systems if they have deaf students in their classes.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS