Teaching Vietnamese to Deaf Children Using Sign Languages: Situations and Solutions

Human civilization has made tremendous progress, to improve its quality of life. However, there are still a number of people in society who suffer from grave disadvantages due to their disabilities. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, and even though science is rapidly developing, it is impossible to completely erase those causes. Ameliorating education and offering vocational training for the disabled are considered as effective solutions to provide these people with a satisfying life, especially children. For deaf children, the dream of normal schooling becomes great. Limited language proficiency leads to limited communication skills and reduces confidence when entering the first grade, adversely affecting their academic performance and later development. Therefore, in this article, we focus on first grade deaf children. Like the impact of normal language on normal children, sign language plays an important role in language development of deaf children. They use sign language to think and communicate. However, to study in textbook programs as does a normal child, in the classroom of deaf children, both the teachers and students must use finger alphabets to teach and learn Vietnamese. We thus study teaching Vietnamese to deaf children and suggest games to draw their attention to the lessons.