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VOICE TWO:
Deaf culture in the United States has its own language: American Sign Language. A.S.L. is believed to have developed from French Sign Language starting in the early eighteen hundreds.
People communicate, or sign, through movements of the hands, face and body. For example, they show they are asking a question by raising their eyebrows and opening their eyes wide.
A.S.L. has its own rules of grammar, usage and sentence order. There are no signs to put words in the past or future tense. To show that something happened in the past, for example, signers place their hand behind their head. To indicate the future, the hand is placed in front of the body.
In general, the body represents the present. Movement forward represents the future. Movement backward represents the past.
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VOICE ONE:
Deafness has often been misunderstood, and deaf people discriminated against -- denied jobs or put in schools for children with brain damage. Today, deaf people in the United States are protected by laws that bar discrimination against people with disabilities. But employers can try to persuade courts that some jobs require hearing.
VOICE TWO:
Schoolchildren with hearing impairments usually attend the same classes as other students. They may have sign language assistants. Or the teacher might use a sound-field system. This is a speaker system designed for classrooms. It makes the teacher easier to hear. And in a big classroom, that might help everyone.
VOICE ONE:
New technology and more sign language interpreters mean that deaf students have more educational choices than ever. But there are still schools for the deaf that students can attend if they wish.
Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., prides itself on being the world's only liberal arts university for the deaf. It was established in eighteen fifty-seven. Today, Gallaudet also has schools for children and teenagers.
VOICE TWO:
The National Technical Institute for the Deaf in New York State is part of the Rochester Institute of Technology. It has one thousand five hundred deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Anne Shigley is one of them. She began studying at R.I.T. last fall. She says she has improved her signing as well as her lip-reading and listening with her auditory brainstem implant. She tells us that she has made a lot of friends at school. She loves distance running, and wishes there was time to do it even more.
Anne is in the College of Imaging and Art Sciences and wants to study interior design.
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