Natural Aural Approach

There are various online forums for parents of deaf children and Teachers of the Deaf and, in the UK and other parts of the world.

DELTA welcomes families and professionals  

BATOD (British Association of Teachers of the Deaf) manages an email forum. 

Deafness affects babies' and children's access to equal opportunities all over the world.  We welcome literature and case studies that demonstrate what works in early intervention.  Please send these to meshguides@batodfoundation.org.uk.   Please also add areas that you would like researched.

The Auditory Aural Approach, like all areas of paediatric deafness, would benefit from further research into outcomes for deaf children in mainstream schools including those with additional needs, outcomes for deaf children with specific aetiologies such as CMV, ANSD.

The collected information and advice is intended to support and promote effective early intervention for deaf children whose families have chosen a Natural Aural Communication Approach.

We have provided evidence for the information collated above with a full reference list including research published in peer reviewed journals.

The Monitoring Protocol for deaf babies and children details the tiny steps towards developing language and the other skills that develop at the same time.  This resource is invaluable for families as it serves to track development and offers reassurance as well as a framework for development. 

Further information on Children’s development can be found in:

The Natural Aural Approach gives children the opportunity to develop language naturally, in line with their interests and experiences but an essential component of the approach is the systematic tracking and analysis of progress so that any gaps or difficulties can be identified and addressed.  This may be to highlight a problem with 

Some researchers consider that babies are predisposed to acquire language and point to both the skills that babies are born with and the universality of some aspects of language and language development as evidence.  Certainly babies arrive with certain skills and potentials, that means they are very sensitive to features of speech and language from birth and even in the womb.  No one teaches babies their first language in the ways that we teach them other things either a

This section is additional reading on communication, language acquisition and educational development of deaf children.