Helen Keller Learn English through story level 3
[Music]
helen
keller the deaf and blind woman
who became a famous teacher
i became blind and deaf before i learned
to speak
with the help of several special people
i learned to communicate
i used my communication skills to teach
people about blindness
i also fought for the rights of women
and workers
[Music]
i was born in 1880 in alabama
in the usa when i was 19 months old
i became very sick with meningitis
a disease of the brain i got better
after the illness
but unfortunately i couldn’t see or
hear anymore i found it
very difficult to learn and i became
very angry
i was able to think but i could not
communicate my thoughts
it was a very difficult time for me and
for my parents
my mother and father wanted to help me
but they didn’t know what to do
fortunately i began to communicate
with martha washington who was six years
old
and the daughter of our cook
we created our own sign language when we
played together
i enjoyed learning from martha but my
mother realized
that i needed professional help
in 1886 my mother learned
about the work of alexander graham bell
the inventor of the telephone
he was working on the problems of the
deaf
maybe he could help
bell told my mother about perkins school
for blind people and the school sent a
special teacher to our home her name
was ann sullivan
at first i was a very difficult student
but ann sullivan was very kind to me
one day we were getting water from the
well
when anne drew some signs on my hand
i realized that she was writing the word
water i was so excited
within a few hours i could read
more than 30 different words
at last i could communicate with other
people
and they could communicate with me
and helped me to escape from my lonely
world
when i was eight years old i went with
anne to the perkins school for blind
people
at the school i was excited to discover
that there were other children like me
we all learned from our teachers and
from each other
i learned to read braille in english
and later in several other languages
in 1894 anne took me to new york
and i studied at several different
schools for the blind and deaf
i tried to learn to speak but it was
difficult
my voice worked but i didn’t know how to
use it properly
only ann and a few other people could
understand me when i spoke
i studied hard and in 1900
i started at university
and went with me to every class
she wrote the teacher’s words on my hand
in 1904 i became the first
deaf and blind person to get a degree
i was so happy and proud and i knew
that i wanted to use my communication
skills
to help other people
at first i worked with organizations
that fought for women’s rights
then in 1912 i started to work with
workers
organizations
i discovered that some types of work
made people blind i wanted people to
know about this problem
so i wrote a book in braille about it
in 1915 i started my
own organization helen keller
international
which still teaches people about
blindness
i wanted everyone to know that in many
cases
blindness can be prevented
[Music]
for many years i traveled around the
world
and talked to groups of people about
blindness
i communicated with anne she then spoke
my words for me
our talks became very popular and
sometimes
we earned up to two thousand dollars a
week
we gave the money to organizations that
helped blind people
when anne became ill paulie thompson
became my guide unfortunately in 1936
anne died
she did so much for me and i never
forgot her
with the help of several special people
i wrote 12 books about my beliefs
i became famous because of the talks and
the books
important people wanted to meet me
i even met the king of england and the
president of the usa
polly thompson helped me with my work
until she became very ill
in 1957 after that
winnie corbali became my guide and
traveled with me to teach
people about blindness
our work was helped by a theater play
the miracle worker
about the life of anne sullivan
in 1962 it became a popular film in 1964
i won an important award from the
president
of the usa for my work
[Applause]
the year after that my name was added to
the list of the most
successful women in the usa
the women’s hall of fame
the names of my guides ann
paulie and winnie should be in that list
too in 1968
at the end of my life i remembered ann
paulie and winnie i felt proud of our
work
which helped blind people around the
world