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Listening Skills Instruction

By: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com
Updated June 9, 2019

Since listening skills will be a major source of information for a student who is blind or visually impaired, it is important to develop good listening skills when the child is young. It is also important to continue to build on those skills as the student progresses through grades. Listening skills will help a child gain information for general learning and understanding of their environment as well as critical safety information needed for safe travel. Listening skills provide information about the immediate and extended environment which can be particularly helpful in developing orientation and mobility skills.

Students may need to be taught the importance of listening. They should be encouraged to not only identify sounds but derive meaning from the sounds they hear and make connections between things they hear including similarities and differences. These skills are important for language development as well as social skill development and good orientation and mobility. Encourage the student to respond to oral instruction in a variety of settings (home environments, classroom, P.E. (e.g., gym, playing fields), outdoors (e.g. playground, yard, concourse), stores (e.g., grocery, mall, department). In the classroom, encourage the student to follow along during oral reading activities.

Present the student with a variety of familiar materials or materials introduced in a lesson. Encourage the student to demonstrate an understanding of words by selecting or touching the item upon request.

Practice repeating back a series of words just heard by playing games where each student adds on a new word and the next person has to repeat the previous words and then add another word. For example, "I went on a trip to the grocery store and bought an apple, a banana, a carrot....." Students can add an item using the alphabet or alternatively, simply add on a theme related item.

Encourage the student to identify a word that is missing. The teacher can orally present a sentence, omitting a keyword, and depending on the student's ability, the student selects an appropriate word (from a word bank or group of objects from a topic) to complete the sentence.

Encourage the student to follow directions. There are much fun follow direction games that can be played with students of all ages.

Isolate Sounds/Words/Phrases

Encourage the student to begin isolating sounds, words, and phrases by helping them:

identify dominant sound amongst foreground/background noises.
follow directions amongst foreground/background noises. This can be challenging for many people, but it is an important skill for students who are blind or visually impaired to learn as they must learn to "weed out" the unimportant sounds and focus on what is important at the moment.

Remember Sounds/Words/Stories

Encourage the student to begin remembering sounds, words, and stories by helping them:

Encourage the student to remember and repeat sound pattern (2 syllables, 3 syllables, rhythmic pattern) within short intervals and in sequential order. There are commercially available games like Simon or Bop It, but those can be challenging as they are timed and the student must respond quickly. Another way to practice this skill is by repeating sounds creating by clapping hands, snapping, stomping feet, or playing instruments or creating noise with different sounding objects. The possibilities are endless!
Encourage the student to remember and recall facts from the information presented during the discussion of a topic. Make the activity more challenging by waiting moderate or long time intervals before asking the student if they can recall facts. For instance, a topic could be introduced on Monday. The students are immediately questioned about the facts presented. On Tuesday, the students are asked to recall some of the facts they learned on Monday, and so on.
Similarly, the student can be encouraged to remember and recall details from a story heard immediately, after a couple of hours or after a day or two.

Compare and Relate Words/Sounds

Encourage the student to begin comparing and relating words and sounds by helping them:

identify similarities/differences between words/sentences/paragraphs/poems
isolate an idea from what is heard, summarize it and then compare to another cluster of information.

Expose students early and often to synthesized speech. As students have more opportunities to listen to synthesized speech, they will become more comfortable with this format.

Resources

Learning to Listen/Listening to Learn by Lizbeth A Barclay is published by the American Foundation for the Blind. This text provides a systematic development of skills in listening for and interpreting auditory information. Barclay discusses instruction in listening skills at different ages and it includes a continuum chart and a checklist to use in assessment.

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