When looking at Chang Wei-chung (
The two boys are severely hearing-impaired -- but to hear their happy chatter, one wouldn't be able to guess they are disabled. Thanks to auditory-verbal (AV) therapy that the children received from the Children's Hearing Foundation (雅文兒童聽語文教基金會), the twins are able to go to regular schools and participate fully in mainstream society.
"We are very grateful to the foundation for its help with the boys," said Chang Hsien-liang (
Chang and his wife found out that their children were severely hearing-impaired when the boys were three years old.
"We were a small family, and no one had ever seen anything like this before," he said, explaining why the children's disability was not recognized earlier.
panic-stricken
"Most children begin to speak at around age one, but we realized that the twins weren't responding when we tried to get them to repeat `dad' or `mom,'" he said.
After being referred to the foundation by a hospital, the Changs found themselves feeling alternately hopeful and panic-stricken.
They learned that with AV therapy, children between three and six years old -- a crucial period for language acquisition -- have a good chance to learn to speak normally.
According the foundation, which is the first organization in Taiwan to offer the training, 500 to 600 Taiwanese children a year are born with hearing problems.
"Often, though, if the child has only slight problems, parents think that the child just isn't paying attention," said Grace Lin, an audiologist and the foundation's director of auditory management.
She explained that over 90 percent of hearing-impaired children have residual hearing that, along with training and hearing-aids, can help them learn to talk.
Even children without residual hearing have the potential to hear with the aid of electronic devices called cochlear implants.
top of their class
AV therapy combines modern teaching methods with hearing aids to help children make sense of input that they receive from their hearing aids -- and to help them form words.
"In comparison to lip-reading or sign language, AV therapy is the most popular form of communication being taught to hearing-impaired children nowadays because it encourages children to become part of the mainstream," Lin said.
The foundation doesn't encourage hearing-impaired children to enter regular schools before completing AV training, Lin said, because disabled children can easily become isolated from their teachers and peers. Once training has been completed, however, she said, the foundation finds that students do just as well in regular schools as other students.
The twins are a case in point. After completing AV training classes at the foundation, the twins became first-graders at Taipei's Tienmu Elementary School. Their grades are near the top of their class, their father said, and they have no problems interacting with other students.
microphone
Chang Hsien-liang has a habit of cupping his right hand over his mouth as he speaks, with his chin pointed slightly downward in the direction of an oblong FM unit hanging around his neck. The unit, he explains, allows Wei-chung and Wei-hua to pick up the sound of his voice through a microphone. The listening system transmits a signal directly to the person wearing the hearing aid and is helpful when there is a lot of background noise or a significant distance between the speaker and the listener -- situations in which understanding is typically difficult for hearing-impaired people.
The foundation tries to encourage teachers to use the FM listening systems if they have deaf students in their classes.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Republic of China Army Command yesterday relieved Kinmen Defense Battalion commander after authorities indicted the officer on charges connected to using methamphetamine. The Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday detained Colonel He (何) after the Coast Guard linked him to drug shipments and proceeded to charge him yesterday for using and possessing crystal meth. The man was released on a NT$50,000 bail and banned from leaving Kinmen, the office said. Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Chen Chien-yi (陳建義) told a news conference yesterday that He has been removed and another officer is taking over the unit as the acting commander. The military
RSS