Spanish for the Hearing Impaired

Why learn Spanish online?

• Native-speaking teachers
• Specialist Spanish courses
• Competitive prices
• Learn Spanish according to your needs
• Learn Spanish for business or pleasure
• Disciplined yet enjoyable
• Affordable private classes

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Deaf person starts a language school

This must sound rather strange, but it’s the way it is. I was born with a hearing impairment of some 30-40%. This has gradually increased to a hearing loss of about 90%. I use hearing aids on both ears and can get by, but much of what people say I need to have repeated.
From a very young age, I dreamed of doing development work. For that reason, I went to Nepal after high school/´A´-levels. There, I taught English in a village school for six months, to see whether living in a less-developed country would suit me. Nepali is a very different language, and I had to learn it quickly. The school where I studied it used the “Natural Approach”, a method where pictures and gestures are accompanied only by spoken language. Words are never written down, and in the case of Nepali, the Sanskrit-based alphabet was not taught. To be very honest, I never learned to speak any Nepali, and I decided that the Natural Approach was not good for a deaf person. People who have hearing loss compensate by remembering and focusing more on written language. My memory in Nepal proved to be fully visual, and for me the Natural Approach felt like being treated like a baby.
After studying Development Economics, I got a job in Bangladesh, where Bengali is spoken. Bengali is related to Nepali, but this time, I learned this new language by writing the words, learning the alphabet, and reading books while speaking as much as possible. After two years I was quite fluent and did my MPhil research in Bengali without a translator. After a job in Zambia, nice and easy in English, I took a job in Vietnam with an incredibly difficult tonal language. My hearing handicap was an issue during the application process and the organisation almost rejected me on that basis. So when I arrived in Vietnam, I had real motivation to prove that deaf people can learn tonal languages. Well, I never achieved fluency, but at least I managed to communicate a little better in this very language than most of my colleagues who could hear perfectly.
After many years roaming around the world learning a total of seven foreign languages, my husband and I decided to settle in Bolivia to tackle yet another one. Here in La Paz we did not find a decent language school, and decided to start one. Bolivians are very intelligent, friendly and patient people – the right characteristics for teaching.
As someone who is hard of hearing, I have had to struggle through inappropriate teaching methods before realizing how I can learn a language.  As such, I have good experience that other deaf language learners can benefit from.
I believe that many deaf people do not even try to learn a foreign language, due to the perceived need to take in all information aurally. Now there is an option for learning Spanish with full written support of the spoken parts, Our patient teachers have experience with hard of hearing students, and our online methodology means we can teach all around the world.