Communication patterns of adult deaf

Interviewed 162 former students of 2 Ontario residential and 1 urban day school for the deaf who were living in Toronto about their communication habits. In communicating to and from hearing people, most use speech, but they feel that, on average, only about half of what they say can be understood by a hearing person. Writing and even some manual communication is also used. Most communicate with other deaf manually. Day school students use speech more than residential school students, although there is no evidence of greater oral skills. A comparison with other studies indicates that schools differ more in their ability to motivate deaf students to use speech than they do in their ability to provide students with speech and speech-reading skills. (French summary)