Communication Tips

Client Profile: A school aged child with a hearing impairment that that can range from mild to profound that utilizes an amplification device (i.e., hearing aids, cochlear implant).

Goal: Student will inform communication partners (i.e., teachers, peers, familiar and unfamiliar listeners) of his/her hearing loss and resulting needs to improve communication and listening in 4/5 conversation opportunities, as measured by SLP observation and student report.

Implementation:  

1. Start by selecting one of the resources included below to teach your student skills that will improve listening and communication specific to his/her needs.  

2. Initial focus will be on introducing communication strategies and their benefits for improving conversation. Teach the importance of strategies so the student may identify which will work best for them and understand why.  

3. After the student understands and identifies effective strategies to utilize in conversation opportunities, the clinican will teach the student to confidently express the use of them with communication partners.  

4. The student will increase confidence in sharing this information with others through conversation role play and clinician modeling when guided through a communication scenario. 

Materials: 

• TPT resources: 5L's for listening, Listening tips, Boss of your hearing loss 

• Communication scenarios on flash cards

• Student and clinician

• Writing utensil and paper for data collection

Cueing: Verbal and visual cueing will be provided as needed to refer to the list of strategies the child will use in conversation opportunities.  

Data Tracking: A tally system will be used to track the student's ability to indpendently inform others of his/her hearing impairment and need for specific strategies to enhance communication.  The tally system can be reviewed weekly during therapy sessions to allow the student to report to the clinician how many times he implemented the use of learned strategies in conversational opportunities. 

EBP: Assertiveness training is an area of counseling provided for individuals with hearing loss to improve communication opportunities with conversation partners (Hull, 2005).  The goal of this type of counseling is to empower the individual with hearing loss to confidently express what they need from others to improve their ability to express and understand verbally presented information.

Role-play is a teaching strategy that can be implemented to practice using listening and communication strategies that the student learns through assertiveness training.  The clinician provides feedback to the student during this process to enhance skills for effective use with a conversation partner (Tye-Murray, 2020). 

References

Hull, R. H. (2005). Fourteen principles for providing effective aural rehabilitation. The Hearing Journal, 58(2), 28–30. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.hj.0000286115.54593.1f 

Tye-Murray, N. (2020). Communication Strategies Training. In Foundations of Aural Rehabilitation: Children, adults, and their family members (pp. 203–225). essay, Plural Publishing, Inc. 

Tye-Murray, N. (2020). Counseling, Psychosocial Support, and Assertiveness Training. In Foundations of Aural Rehabilitation: Children, adults, and their family members (pp. 253–256). essay, Plural Publishing, Inc.