Listening Comprehension
What is Auditory Memory?
- Working memory is the “management, manipulation, and transformation of information drawn for short-term memory and long-term memory” (Dehn, 2008).
- Working memory is responsible for processing higher level linguistic information, and if the task is more complex, working memory spends more time processing.
- Working memory capacity has significant relationships with reading decoding, language comprehension, spelling, following directions, vocabulary development, and note taking.
Auditory Memory Deficits
- Multi-step directions.
- Relating new information to prior knowledge.
- Oral language comprehension.
- Taking notes while listening.
- Verbal fluid reasoning.
- Written expression.
- Oral expression.
- Recalling academic (information just read) and social information.
Effective Teaching Techniques
- Teaching one strategy at a time.
- Explaining purpose and rationale.
- Explaining and modeling the steps of the strategy.
- Providing plenty of practice and offering feedback.
- Teaching cues to help remember the strategy.
- Providing positive reinforcement.
- Encouraging children to monitor and evaluate strategy use.
How to Help your Child with Auditory Memory Difficulties
- Directions:
- Break directions down into smaller parts.
- Say your child’s name before starting to give a direction.
- Have your child repeat out loud the directions that you gave.
- Provide Extra Time:
- Give your child enough time to respond or answer your questions-their memory search may be slower.
- Things to be Aware of:
- Speech Rate: Slow your speech down--this greatly affects how quickly then can process and store what you are saying.
- Grammar: Try not to use complex grammar forms or vocabulary when telling your child something that you want them to remember.
- Sentence Length: The longer the sentences, the harder it is to remember what you said.
- Pauses: Using pauses when you are talking will help your child to remember better because it gives them time to repeat the information in their head and properly store the ideas heard.
- Being Face to Face: Face your child when speaking to them and make sure they are looking at you.
- Background Noise: Consider the background noise before talking to your child.
- Use Visual Aids:
- Use visual aids to help your child remember what you are talking about.
- Put key words and/or definitions on the board or on a paper for them to refer to while you are talking.
- Relate Material to Experiences:
- Try to relate new material you are presenting to previous experiences.
Learning to Listen (Younger Children):
Provide activities to improve your child’s ability to listen to the sounds in their environment. This will encourage them to learn to attend to information.
At Home:
Listening Comprehension Passages:
Provide activities to improve your child’s ability to listen to the sounds in their environment. This will encourage them to learn to attend to information.
At Home:
- Play a Listening Game:
- Sit quietly in a room of your house and take turns identifying sounds you can hear. For example, water dripping, creaking doors or ticking clocks.
- Play with toys: Play with toys and make their noises as you play with them. Encourage your child to listen and imitate the noises. As your child improves at this, hide a toy behind your back and make its noise, see if your child can identify what toy you are hiding and have them imitate the sound.
- Animal and Environmental Sounds:Take your child to the zoo, and talk about the animal noises as you wander around. Talk about all the different noises and what animals make that noise.
- Listen for unusual sounds in the environment and encourage your child to point the sounds out to you. For example: how a coffee machine sounds, or a squeaky wheel on a bike.
- Go for a walk through a park or reserve, talk about all the things you can hear. For example: birds, wind in the trees, planes or cars.
- Create a game and count how many different sounds you can hear.
- Music: Use musical instruments to follow along to songs on the radio, or play a song from a CD. Ask your child to follow the sounds that they hear. For very young children, have toys that play music or songs to encourage listening.
- Try karaoke, sing along to tapes, and watch television programs that play children’s songs.
- Make your own musical instruments and play them. For example, fill glasses with different amounts of water and make up your own tunes.
Listening Comprehension Passages:
- To support reading comprehension, have your child listen to a story out loud and answer comprehension questions.
- Use visual supports for "who, what, where, when, why" question words to help your child comprehend what the question word means (i.e. Who=answer with a person; where=answer with a place).
- Have your child retell the story to ensure they recall important events from the story.
- If your child is listening to a longer passage, break it down into smaller parts and check for comprehension throughout (i.e. What do you think will happen next? What was the main idea of this part of the story?).
- Have your child go back to the text and highlight evidence to support their answers.
Below are some websites to help your child work on auditory memory!