Language Learning For Hearing Impaired

S2025

United States

Language Learning for Hearing Impaired

August 05 at 04:22

Are there any other hearing impaired users out there? If so I'm curious about your experience with listening practice. Even with hearing aids I only get about 50-70% of spoken English (my native language), so I rely heavily on lip reading and context. I tried speaking some very basic Spanish with a native speaker recently and I realized that I can't read lips in Spanish!

Just listening to the lessons doesn't work very well for me, so I listen and read along, but I'd like to get better at learning to actually make sense of the spoken language by itself. YouTube videos in Spanish where the speaker is looking directly at the camera at all times works, but even then I feel like I'm "cheating" if I have subtitles on - it makes it too easy to really improve my listening comprehension. But I always have subtitles on in my native language too!

Just wondering if anyone else has any experience with this. Thanks.

ericb100

United States

August 06 at 16:42

Are you using LIngQ? If the video has subtitles, import into LingQ and work through the transcript. Then go back and watch the video, try to listening and watch the speakers.

Not sure if you are familiar with the Easy Spanish youtube channel, but it would have some good content and facing speakers for sure.

S2025

United States

August 07 at 03:01

Thanks for the tips! I'm not familiar with Easy Spanish, I will definitely check it out. It sounds like a great place to start. Watching camera-facing speakers is my best bet. Once I'm more comfortable with Spanish the lip reading with happen naturally over time, I just need listening practice that is audio and visual.

bbbblinq

United Kingdom

August 06 at 13:51

I cheat and repeat lessons a lot. I read, listen and see the translation. After a lot of repetition, I'm trying each part separately (read, then see translation, then hear). I'm tending towards hgetting help to understand the language and then reading and hearing for practice. Your notion of cheating might not be helpful.

S2025

United States

August 07 at 03:33

"Cheating" was just a joke. :) If it helps me learn, there is no cheating!

I'm just struggling with listening comprehension. I listen as much with my eyes as I do my ears. Listening to audio only with the translation in front of me isn't helping me learn to lip read these new sounds and words. I need to get to a point where I can have a conversation with an actual person, and that means lip reading.

With YouTube videos I'm not familiar with the content as I am with the LingQ lessons, so I keep subtitles on. Keeping subtitles on means I'm looking at the subtitles, not the speaker, so it is not improving my lip reading skills.

I'm sure I'll find a method that works, I'm just struggling with it right now and thought I might find some help here.

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