A HEARING-IMPAIRED child need not be cocooned in his world of silence.

With the right therapy, such children can be fitted with cochlear implants or hearing aids and grow up hearing practically everything a normal child can.

Although not new, the therapy, called audio verbal training, concentrates on teaching deaf children to listen by "hearing" rather than by lip-reading -- the normal way a deaf person clues in to conversations.

It helps him to make sense of sounds he already detects through devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants.

This therapy will be made more widely available to parents and people who work with deaf children through the first seminar of its kind here next year. (See other story.)

It is being organized by Cochlear Implants International, a non-profit Australian company which offers the surgery. This involves implanting an electrode into the cochlea, a part of the inner ear. This electrode transforms sound signals into nerve impulses that are relayed to the brain.

Cochlear Implants' Ms Cheryl Dickson says studies have shown that devices such as hearing aids or implants alone are not enough to steer a deaf child through the world of the hearing.

The auditory verbal therapist has worked with hearing-impaired children and their families for 15 years.

She explains: "Only 23 per cent of all sounds are available on the lips.

"For example, the sounds of 'b', 'p', 'm' look the same when you move your lips to sound out their phonetics, and for 'c' and 'g', you can't even 'see' the lips being formed to make the sounds."

With the technique, a child with a hearing aid can make out most of the sounds he hears. With an implant he will be able to pick out all the sounds a normal child can hear, she adds.

Ms Anne Quek, executive director of the Singapore Association For The Deaf, cautions that the sounds a hearing-impaired person hears will still be different from those heard by a normal person.

But Ms Dickson believes that marrying technology and therapy will be less costly than allowing a person to remain hearing-impaired for his entire life.

As its name suggests, the audio verbal technique combines both listening and speaking skills.

A child would first be introduced to sounds, then simple words and a string of words as he progresses.

The technique teaches parents to help their children with sound associations by linking them with objects and through play.

Ms Dickson cites an example: "When the doorbell rings, a parent can say to the child first: 'I can hear something, can you?' "

And then the parent would show the child the source of that sound.

Similarly, he can sit his child with some toys and make different sounds associated with those objects. For instance, he makes the sound of an aeroplane, asks if the child hears it, and then shows the aeroplane while making its sound again.

Verbalizing the sound first will ensure the child listens to it without being distracted by the toys or objects. A one-year-old with a hearing aid may imitate the sounds after three or four months of this training.

Once a child has learnt a repertoire of sounds, parents can introduce simple words and later groups of words.

The method has been used in the United States and Canada for the past 40 years. But it took off only in the last 10 years with greater use of hearing aids.

Mrs. Julie Kosaner of the Canossian School For The Hearing Impaired says it has been using a similar, though less structured, method. The school, which has 157 pupils, has had an auditory aural programme since 1989.

Mrs. Kosaner, an educational audiologist, says the school's method is less structured than Cochlear's in that it is not a language-based programme.

Instead, they learn through "normal conversations and shared activities" with parents and other family members, at home and at play, rather than just in school.

But she stresses: "What is important is that both versions emphasize parent involvement and teach the child to listen by hearing rather than lip-reading.”