During your rehabilitation sessions your clinician will work with you to identify your listening goals and develop an auditory training programme to help you reach them.
The programme may include listening practice (language and word discrimination training), communication strategies, learning how to modify your listening environment for better hearing access, and strategies to more effectively communicate with friends, family and in the community.
Your rehabilitationist can also give you tools to advocate for your hearing and communication needs, and let you know what assistive technology is available to support your listening in challenging environments.
You will also receive a tailored programme of listening exercises (auditory training) for you to complete at home to develop your listening skills.
Here are some exercises to support your listening goals:
Do 30 minutes of ACTIVE listening practice every day
This means really listening to speech (without lipreading but add it if you need a clue) or music and working out what has been said.
The key here is active listening, where you are paying attention to the words or music. Ideally you are also getting feedback about how much you understood, and listening again to confirm what you heard.
Don't expect to get 100% correct
You want to challenge yourself so if you are getting it all right it is too easy. Try and work at a level where 70-80% of it is easy and you get it right the first time. The other 20-30% you will need to have repeated or lip read to get it right.
Find listening training that works for you
We use a range of partner supported rehabilitation techniques and online resources and apps.
Traditional listening involves listening to a helper read out sentences or words and receiving feedback.
Listening to music is preferred by many adults by using YouTube, iTunes or Spotify applications (apps) on their mobile phones.
The internet also provides opportunities for self-listening. One tried and tested website we recommend is ESL News.
Mobile phone applications (apps) provide the additional benefit of helping adults return to phone use as well as supporting specific word listening exercises. Some apps our clients enjoy using are Hearing Success, Word Success, HEAROES, Hearing Training and Bring Back The Beat.
Word listening tasks will develop your ability to discriminate between small difference in speech sounds so you don't fall into the habit of filling the gaps in sentences, which many adults quickly develop.
Books such as Wired for Sound by Beverley Biderman (1998) might also help you understand how much you can achieve.
As one client says, it "made me feel very good... and reminded me repeatedly and irrefutably of my successes, large and small.”
We have a few copies of the book for loan. If you would like to borrow a copy please let us know.
