TADOMA

Tommy can talk with his deafblind friend because Gianluca is in front of him, he has placed his thumb on his lips and the rest of his hand on his cheek.

The method used by Tommy and Gianluca is called Tadoma and was invented by an American teacher, Sophie Alcorn. The first two people who were taught to understand the verbal language with the help of the touch were Tad Chapman and Oma Simpson. By combing the names of these two deafblind people the term used for this method came out: Tadoma.

Since Miss Alcorn’s first attempts a lot of progress has been made. In particular, the research carried out by experts in psycholinguistics has shown that a deafblind child, as long as he isn’t suffering from very serious intellectual damage, if he is accustomed to communicating in this way from childhood, has good chances of developing a normal or almost normal linguistic comprehension. Moreover, even the acquisition of expressive verbal language, therefore of the ability to speak actively, and even the acquisition of reading skills are improved if the child is used to "listening" in Tadoma from very early childhood.

In the first stages of learning Tadoma, the child places both hands on the speaker’s face. After some practice, it is usually sufficient to use only one hand to "listen" to what the speaker is saying. The thumb is placed gently on the speaker’s lips or, at most, it stays few millimetres away.

In this way, it is in an ideal place to detect the position of the lips, a fundamental aspect particularly (but not only) for recognising the vowel sounds. The little finger is placed on the jaw, to feel the vibrations transmitted through the bone; the other fingers, finally, are placed on the cheeks, noting various tactile sensations.

If you try to place your hands on yourself in this way ( to do so you need to cross your arms, taking your right hand to the left half of your face, and the other way around), you’ll notice that the palm of your hand is just in front of the mouth, and therefore it is able, with some training, to feel how much air is let out , for how long (just compare as an example the prolonged emission of S with the short and "explosive" one of P), the air temperature (which is usually slightly warmer when nasal noises such as M or N are emitted), and so on.

All the gathered information allows us to recognise all the main sounds and to feel confident about not making mistakes.

Some basic knowledge of Italian phonetics can facilitate the task of a teacher who wants to use this method. Without going into details, it is sufficient to remember that one of the most classical distinctions among the various kinds of sounds divides the vowel sounds from the consonant ones. With vowel sounds the air is emitted from the lungs, goes through the vocal cords and goes out, without being obstructed by the mouth.

It is mainly the position of the mouth and of the lips in particular which distinguishes between the various vowel sounds. A simple practical trial can clarify this point. Pronouncing aloud a word rich in vowels such as "AERIAL", or "EUROPEAN " and prolonging the sound of the vowels, we see that the position of the mouth, and of the lips in particular, changes and that it’s characteristic for each sound. It is these precise positions which the child learns to distinguish by touch.

As for the teaching of consonant sounds, the considerations are parallel, though the problem is more complex. In this case we need to consider that the air emission is interrupted or modulated through the various organs involved in making the sounds, especially the tongue, the teeth and the lips. In the so-called "nasal" sounds, as suggested by the term itself, the air is emitted through the nose. Even in this case we can carry out a simple trial: just pronouncing MAN or NO and keeping our nose closed with two fingers, thus not allowing the air to go out normally. You will notice, in such conditions, these sounds change completely. A sufficiently long and careful training will allow the child to recognise also the distinctive tactile characteristics of consonant sounds.

The recognising of individual sounds, however, is only one of the elements which helps us understand the meaning of the Tadoma method. For those who can hear, the element which has the most important meaning is, usually, the word. Single sounds such as P, T or U don’t mean practically anything: they are only isolated phonetic elements.

On the contrary, words like MUMMY, DADDY or WALK refer to situations or events known to the child and they also have a recognisable emotional value. This aspect of the learning is known to most of teachers; in fact, in teaching how to read, which basically is very similar to teaching Tadoma, we almost always go as soon as possible to the reading of meaningful words. In many methods of "global" inspiration we even start from the recognition of the whole word, or better of its full form.

Among the elements which facilitate the overall identification of a word there is the number and the type of syllables which make it. Just think of words like YOU, BISCUIT, BICYCLE, HELICOPTER, COMMUNICATION.

The recognition of each term can be made easy by the length of the word (in this case respectively one, two, three, four and five syllables), as well as by the specific characteristics of the sounds which make it. Among the other elements which can make the meaning of a word clearer, and, therefore, more easily recognisable is the context.

An isolated word is often more difficult to understand (especially in limited-conditions such as the ones called for by Tadoma) if compared to the same word put in a sentence. The other verbal and non verbal elements in the message can often "fill in" the hole made by the failed comprehension of a term.

Many of us have experienced something similar: when someone speaks a foreign language which the listener scarcely knows, a word met by itself can mean nothing to us. But if the same word is placed in a sentence, or it’s repeated more than one example, it becomes relatively easier to understand its meaning.