The teaching of tones to children with profoud hearing impairment *

Experiments on the perception of tones in Cantonese have shown that almost all the distinctive features of tones reside in glottal vibration; and examination of the residual hearing ability of the profoundly deaf revealed that very few do not retain low frequency responses if provided with appropriate amplification. Putting the two together, it seems that tones are well within the residual hearing domain where the deaf can operate. The problem seems to lie mainly in overlooking the importance of tones in speech training; this results in the absence of a referential linguistic framework for the reception and production of tones. The present project explores the ability of deaf children to identify tones, through isolating and amplifying the larynx signal. Stress was given to building up the linguistic pattern of tonal relationship prior to the teaching of tones. A programme was produced, specifying the methodology and teaching materials. Several children with profound hearing loss were taught according to the devised plan and every child who went through the programme was able to produce tonal contrasts.