The Challenges In Teaching English For Deaf Students At Smalb-B Yayasan Putra Tunas Bangsa (Yptb) Kota Malang

English as a global language for communication is already established as a subject in special school. One of the category of students with special needs based on Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is deaf students. Dealing with this, this research was conducted to find out challenges faced by the teacher in teaching English for deaf students, the teacher’s effort to face those challenges, and the teacher’s reason for choosing the solution. This study used a descriptive qualitative method to answer the research’s problems. The instruments were interview guide that included seven questions for the teacher, and observations sheet to observe the process of teaching and learning in the class which used observation sheet. Based on the result of the instruments, there are six challenges faced by the teacher. First, the teacher needs to get the students’ attention without calling their names. The second is the teacher finds the students making mistakes in understanding a word because of similar lips movement with other words. The third is the teacher needs to give definition and example of the word before going to the next material, considering the students limited vocabularies. The fourth is the teacher finds the students have difficulties in differentiating similar words in different contexts. The fifth is the teacher finds some difficulties in delivering the material related to the little background knowledge of the students. The last is the teacher needs to repeat some materials before going to the next material. The teacher faced those challenges with several ways, in example, the teacher asked the students to always bring dictionary and look up to it, and gave them lots of example. He also used alphabetic sign language for several time. The teacher also waves either pats on the students’ shoulder to get their attention. The teacher’s solutions is based on the teacher’s experiences for years. The teacher understands that deaf students have limited access on audio materials. This leads to deaf students who have less background knowledge compared to the hearing students, considering this conditions, the teacher stay patient with the students. Through the years of teaching deaf students, the teacher is still looking for better way to teach deaf students