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Identification
Older pupils with any degree of
hearing loss should have been identified at an earlier stage, but it is easy for younger
children to escape detection and to be labelled as slow, lazy or inattentive. This
is particularly true of pupils with conductive hearing loss, which may fluctuate from day
to day and cause adults to remark that "s/he can hear when s/he wants to".
Pupils with a significant loss will have impaired speech; this will be
apparent in the flatness of their intonation, the absence of certain sounds, or the
omission of the words that are less important for conveying meaning. However,
pupils with a less significant impairment, but one that may nonetheless affect their
progress, can all too easily slip through the net. Watch out, then, for the pupil
who:
- is slow to react
- is the last to follow instructions
- watches others' reactions and then copies
- is always coming to check what s/he should be doing
- has a friend who helps them and lets them copy work
- seems to be day-dreaming
- is tense and over-anxious
- watches faces intently
- turns her/his head to one side when listening
- cant's locate the source of a sound
- keeps saying "what" or "pardon"
- tires easily when working
- finds it hard to hear when there is a great deal of background noise, e.g. in the dining
room
- finds it hard to follow discussions
- has poor language development
- can't regulate her/'his voice - either shouts or whispers
- finds some sounds difficult to pronounce, particularly "s", "sh" and
"t"
- changes topic abruptly when conversing
- finds oral work harder than written
- takes expressions such as "I'm pulling your leg" literally
- has tantrums due to frustration
- has aggressive outbursts
- has problems socially
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