Manual. Combined. Oral. Quite satisfactory result 65% 51% 20% Moderate success 29% 41% 35% Unsatisfactory result 5% 7% 44%
That the combined system should show to slightly less advantage than the exclusively manual method is what we might perhaps expect, for the time given to oral instruction means time taken from teaching language speedily, the manual method being, we believe, the best of all for this. But it may be worth while to lose a little in command of language for the sake of gaining another means of expressing that language. Hence we advocate the combined system, regarding speech as merely a means of expressing English, as writing and finger-spelling are, and a good sentence written or finger-spelled as being preferable to a poorer one which is spoken, no matter how distinct the speech may be. It is no answer to point to a few isolated cases where the oral method is considered to have succeeded, for one success does not counterbalance a failure if by another method you would have had two successes; and, moreover, these oral successes would have been still greater successes--we are taking language in any form as our criterion--had the teacher fully known and judiciously used the manual method as well as the oral.
The _exclusive_ use of the oral method leads, generally speaking, to comparative failure, for the following, among other, reasons:--(1) It is a slow way of teaching English, the learning to speak the elements of sound taking months at least, and seldom being fully mastered for years. The "word method," by the way, starts at once with words without taking their component phonetic elements separately; but it has yet to be proved that any quicker progress is made by this means of teaching speech than by the other. (2) Lip-reading is, to the deaf, sign-reading with the disadvantage of being both microscopic and partially hidden. The deaf hear nothing, they only partly _see_ tiny movements of the vocal organs. Finger-spelling, writing, signing, are incomparably more visible, while 130 words a minute can be attained by finger-spelling, and read at that speed. (3) The signs--as they are to the deaf--made by the vocal organs are entirely arbitrary, and have not even a fraction of the redeeming feature of naturalness which oralists demand in ordinary gestures. (4) Circumstances, such as light, position of the speaker, &c., must be favourable for the lip-reading to approach certainty. (5) Styles of speech vary, and it is a constant experience that even pupils who comparatively easily read their teacher's lips, to whose style of utterance they are accustomed, fail to read other people's lips. (6) There is a great similarity between certain sounds as seen on the lips, e.g. between _t_ and _d_, _f_ and _v_, _p_ and _b_, _s_ and _z_, _k_ and _g_. Which is meant has usually to be guessed from the context, and this requires a certain amount of knowledge of language, which is the very thing that is needed to be imparted. (7) The deliberate avoidance by the teacher of the pupil's own language--signs--as an aid to teaching him English. If a hearing boy does not understand the meaning of a French word he looks it up in the dictionary and finds its English equivalent. If the deaf boy does not understand a word in English, the simplest, quickest, best way to explain it is, in most cases, to sign it. (8) The distaste of the pupil for the method. This is common. (9) The mechanical nature of the method. There is nothing to rouse his interest nor to appeal to his imagination in it. (10) The temptation to the teacher to use very simple phrases, owing to the difficulty the pupil has in reading others from his lips. Consequently the pupil comparatively seldom learns advanced language.