Having strong language skills is very important at school. Students who are hearing impaired have weaker language skills compared to others their age and therefore may have serious problems as learners. Although these individuals are intelligent in other important ways, students with language disorders tend to find school especially difficult and, at times, frustrating and embarrassing.
Types of problems students face with auditory processing:
- Vocabulary: Students with auditory processing are sometimes slower to learn, understand, and use new words.
- understand spoken language: Some students with auditory processing feel that the teacher speaks too fast. They start to get mixed up or confused when a teacher gives them complicated instructions or explanations.
- Reading: People with auditory processing disorder may find themselves far behind in their reading skills. In the early grades, these children may have trouble pronouncing or identifying individual words due to poor phonemic awareness and phonological processing skills. Others can understand sounds but have trouble remembering them. As grades rise, these students often have more and more difficulty understanding or remembering what is read, hindering their reading comprehension skills.
- Communicate ideas in words.: Sometimes students with auditory processing skills have a strong vocabulary but struggle to quickly remember, find, and use the right words when they need them. This hampers their ability to participate in classroom discussions or makes them nervous when called out in class. Many times these students have excellent ideas but have difficulty expressing them in language.
- Writing and Spelling: Students who have difficulty expressing their ideas out loud often also have difficulty expressing themselves on paper. Compositions, book reviews, essays, and short stories are a big hurdle for them. Because these children do not have a strong sense of the sounds of the language, they will have difficulty with spelling. They will not apply spelling rules, usually spelling the words exactly as they look.
What can be done about auditory processing disorder?
Get help from teachers:
- A teacher must be informed that the student has an auditory processing disorder and how this might affect the student’s performance in the classroom.
- The teacher dealing with a student with auditory processing needs to be flexible in their approach so that they can find a method that suits the child, rather than expecting all students to learn in the same way.
- The teacher can be careful not to speak too quickly or in sentences that are too long or complicated.
- The teacher can give the student some pictures and illustrations of what is being said.
- Most of the time, the auditory processing student needs to sit at the front of the class in order to better listen and focus on the language.
- The teacher may also give the student more time to respond when asked a question, or focus more on yes and no questions for these students.
Get outside professional help:
Students with auditory processing disorders will need extra help outside of school with reading, writing, and spelling. The tutor who does this should have knowledge and experience working with students with learning disabilities and be trained in a reputable Orton-Gillingham multisensory reading, writing, spelling, and comprehension program.
Many students with auditory processing benefit greatly when working with a speech and language therapist. Speech therapists have been specially trained to work with people who have difficulty understanding or communicating. Both the tutor and the speech therapist can work closely together and also help the classroom teacher to understand the student’s auditory processing and language difficulties.
Do not give up!
Students who have auditory processing deficits should never be discouraged. Most of these students improve as they go through school. However, there may be some students who fall behind in school due to their language problems. It’s easy for these kids to get discouraged and give up. When this happens, their academic skills end up below those of kids who practice a lot through school work. Work hard and stay motivated. Get outside help and stay positive.