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He can hear mum roar, all
Edmund (left) was born deaf,
but the hearing disability did not stop him from scoring 3
As in his PSLE
By ROSALYN LIM
IT was just two years
ago when Edmund Liu Yu Wei, 12, heard his mother speak for
the first time.
And it sounded to him like a roar. Edmund was born deaf. And
he heard his first sounds only after an operation that implanted
a device in his ear.
Then a decade later than his peers, he began learning to speak.
Now, the tall, tanned and healthy-looking
boy has passed his PSLE from the Canossian School for the
Hearing Impaired.
He managed to score two A stars
for Mathematics and Science and an A for English.
He was exempted from taking a
second language because of his disability. But his academic
achievements did not come easy.
He had first tried a hearing aid,
and that did not help much.
He then got a Cochlear Implant
at Singapore General Hospital.
This is a device implanted in
the inner ear. It allows deaf people to hear by bypassing
damaged cells in the ear and directly stimulating the auditory
nerve
Said Edmund, who can now carry
on a simple conversation with other people: “When I
first heard Mama’s voice (after the operation), it was
like a lion’s roar.”
He was like a baby learning to
speak for the first time. He had to get used to sounds and
found everyday noises like the flushing of the toilet very
loud and frightening.
Said his mother, Mrs. Joanna Liu,
42: “Edmund’s academic excellence should be credited
solely to his school.”
The Canossian School teaches students
to tap on what little hearing they have to learn to talk,
Mrs. Lu said. Sign Language is not emphasized, and more time
is spent on teaching speech sounds.
From a very young age Edmund was
also coached to lip-read.
His mother got him interested
in reading. An avid reader, he spends hours with fantasy books
like the Harry Potter series and even “adult reads”
like Chicken Soup for the Soul, Newsweek magazine and Reader’s
Digest.
He also enjoys swimming, badminton
and soccer, and likes playing computer games with his younger
brother, Shaun, 11, a primary five student in the gifted programme
at Nanyang Primary School.
When asked what he felt about
his life, Edmund said:” I still lead a normal life.
I ‘m no in any worse state than another handicapped
person. I don’t have any lost limbs and I treasure my
life.”
However, he feels uneasy when
people stare at the device attached to the back of his head
and asks questions (see other report.)
His father is his inspiration
and source of motivation. Although often away on business
trips, he stays in touch through e-mail.
Edmund said his father taught
him to play basketball, and through the game the importance
of concentration.
“Just concentrate on shooting,
it doesn’t matter whether you missed, “ Edmund
said.
Edmund applies this mantra of
concentration to his studies. He took only two months to prepare
for his PSLE, doing exercises, practicing what he had learnt
in school, and reading widely.
He expects to start secondary
school at St Joseph’s Institution next year.
Asked whether he was ready
to join a school that did not cater to the hearing impaired,
he responded with determination: “I want to cope with
problems.”
The PSLE posting will be out on Dec 21.
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