Gift of speech

Parents are encouraged to be more involved in the training class for auditory-verbal therapy. [Photo by Wang Jing / China Daily]

Chen became one of the first auditory-verbal therapists on the Chinese mainland, when the research center introduced the therapy for the first time in 2008, with the help of Children's Hearing Foundation, a Taiwan organization aimed at promoting AVT to Mandarin-speaking regions.

Since then, the center has been training special education teachers from across the mainland.

To date, 140 teachers from provincial rehabilitation centers for children with hearing loss have been certified as therapists, and nearly all provinces have therapists to provide AVT sessions to those in need.

Zhou Lin, mother to a 3-year-old girl in Changchun, Jilin province, speaks highly of AVT.

Her child recently passed tests in a local kindergarten, and teachers admit that they cannot tell the difference between the child and her peers, except that the little girl wears an artificial cochlea.

"I felt as if my world collapsed when doctors told me she had severe hearing loss. The family had no history of such a condition, and we were completely clueless about what to do," Zhou recalls.

"She was 10 months old, and I was extremely worried that her life would be ruined."

In late 2012, the family enrolled the girl for an AVT class in a provincial rehabilitation center.

The weekly class has only three people: a teacher, Zhou and her daughter.

Traditional rehabilitation training emphasizes children's recitation of what they are taught to speak.

In AVT, the teacher teaches Zhou first, and then the girl. The teacher also guides Zhou to make use of things and events in daily life to teach the girl to listen and speak. For example, the teacher resorts to "schemes" to heighten the girl's sensitivity to sounds, such as by dropping a pencil when the girl doesn't notice.

"The class is well planned, and is very instructive," Zhou says.

Related: Newly available therapy gains popularity on Chinese mainland