A Survey Of Educational And Counselling Needs Of Deaf Students
[A CASE STUDY OF KWARA STATE SCHOOL FOR THE HANDICAPPED, ILORIN]

   Management of deaf person or deafness is given them the opportunity to adjust and cope with the aim of meeting their potentials. The methods as explained by Onaolapo, (2003, 2005) are as follows: -
(a)    Oral aural method: - This method is made effective through the use of amplified sound, speech reading and language development skills. One of the important skills here is reading. That is the visual interpretation of spoken words. In this case, the deaf person receivers communication through an interpreter. This is most applicable to the hard of hearing.
(b)    Gestures: - This is another method. For gestures to be effective in creating meaning, non verbal cues should correspond with vernal.
    Gesture interms of facial expression, body movement, and mouth position should convey meaning of information trying to pass to the deaf impaired.
(c)    Auditory method: - This method is the used of extensive sound application to develop listening and skill in speech. It involves auditory training that is teaching the child to listen to sounds and discriminating among different sounds. Parents play important part in the early training process.
(d)    Hearing aids: - These are aids designed mechanically to make education, conversation, communication and understanding easier for the hearing impaired. They are good for hard of hearing impaired.
(e)    Total communication method: - Is the teaching of the dead children on how to communicate wholly orally. This involves combine finger spellings, signs which implies different meanings. Others are speech reading, speech and auditory application.
(f)    Manual Method: It involves the use of hearing aids by therapist. There are several sign language (ASL) Pidgin Sing English (PSE) etc. other indigenous manual methods has also developed.
(g)    Referal: This method is important and can help the hearing impaired child and adult to gain and adjust adequately. The hearing impaired person could be referred, a more professional expert like audiologist, counsellor psychologist, speech and language therapist, where the level of hearing loss could be detected earlier, where necessary precaution could be prescribed and where necessary coping strategies could be taught.
Auditory skills that could be taught by therapist: -
    The following outline is presented to give the reader idea of the kinds of auditory skills that could be taught to the hearing impaired.
1.    Auditory discrimination of environment sounds: -
l.    Discrimination of among environment sound.
m.    Recognition of environmental noises
n.    Labelling of environmental sounds
2.    Auditory discrimination of speech sounds
a.    Discrimination of speech (i.e. phonemic) sound
b.    Discrimination of beginning sounds
c.    Discrimination of rhymes
3.    Understanding emotional content of spoken materials: -
a.    Understanding single words.
b.    Understanding nouns
c.    Understanding verbs
d.    Understanding descriptive words
e.    Understanding prepositions.
4.    Understanding sentences: -
a.    Understanding definitions of words
b.    Following directions
c.    Understanding stories
    The hearing impaired child could be taught how to discriminate among environmental noises as follows: -
    The use of tape recording of the actual noises in the classroom be made and use in teaching, noise from a child shouting, noise from a boy crying etc.
Appraisal of the Literature reviewed
    The review discussed the related literature on the various meaning of deaf as found in some literature, particularly they are found in Onaolapo, (2003, 2005) and Bukoye, (2005). It also tried to distinguish terms such as deaf, hard-of-hearing or hearing impairment. Furthermore, the types found in the study such as conductive hearing impairment, sensori-neutral mix hearing impairment etc were analysed.
    The review included causes through obstruction to ear drum, accident, infections and heredity among others. The effect such as parents attitudes, self concept, and social interactions are discussed. Finally management to assist the deaf to adjust or cope, were analysed.