Although determining whether a student has a hearing loss may seem straightforward ("Just give a hearing test!”), the assessment is often not clear cut if it takes the student's daily experiences into account. A serious or profound hearing loss tends to be noticed relatively quickly and therefore often receive special help (or at least receives additional diagnosis) sooner. Mild or moderate hearing loss is much more common, however, and is more likely to be overlooked or mistaken for some other sort of learning problem (Sherer, 2004). Students with a mild hearing loss sometimes have somewhat depressed (or lowered) language and literacy skills th ough not always, and in any case so do some students without any loss. They may also seem not to listen or attend to a speaker because of trouble in locating the source of sounds”but then again, sometimes students without loss also fail to listen, though for entirely different reasons. Students with hearing loss may frequently give incorrect answers to questions”but so do certain other students with normal hearing. In addition, partial hearing loss can be hidden if the student teaches himself or herself to lip read, for example, or is careful in choosing which questions to answer in a class discussion. And so on. Systematic hearing tests given by medical or hearing specialists can resolve some of these ambiguities. But even they can give a misleading impression, since students' true ability to manage in class depends on how well they combine cues and information from the entire context of classroom life.
In identifying a student who may have a hearing loss, therefore, teachers need to observe the student over an extended period of time and in as many situations as possible. In particular, look for a persistent combination of some of the following, but look for them over repeated or numerous occasions (Luckner & Carter, 2001):
- delayed language or literacy skills, both written and oral
- some ability (usually partial) to read lips
- less worldly knowledge than usual because of lack of involvement with oral dialogue and/or delayed literacy
- occasionally, tendency to social isolation because of awkwardness in communication
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