21: Auditory Comprehension Strategies
Let’s talk about STRATEGIES we can use to strengthen auditory memory and auditory comprehension.
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transcript episode 21: Audiotory comprehension strategies
Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking about auditory memory and auditory comprehension strategies.
One of the ways I teach listening skills instead of just testing listening skills is through the use of strategies. The first thing I usually do is teach my students the word "strategy." The strategy is just a plan of action. It's a plan to help us do something. It's a tool. I find that when we give students something specific to focus on and explicitly practice, it gives them something to work on in a more tangible way. This is the difference between asking a student to repeat a sentence back to you and having a student repeat the sentence back to you using a specific strategy that you have discussed and practiced. I can't necessarily like force myself to have a better memory but I could put effort into applying a strategy.
The strategies we're going to talk about today are self-rehearsal, visualization, chunking, paraphrasing, and asking for repetition. We're going to talk a little about each one, how I explain it, and how we practice it together. There's a resource in my store called Auditory Comprehension Strategies and Passages that teaches most of these and has passages that go with them.
Alright, let's start off with self rehearsal. Self rehearsal involves repeating words, it can be silent in your head, or it can be whispered, or you could just say it. People naturally do this all the time, like if I have to remember a short list of items at the store I might repeat them to myself over and over like: bananas, bread, eggs, milk, bananas, bread, eggs, milk... like that. And self rehearsal can be used along with some of the other strategies as well. So if I'm working on recalling a list of words, I may model for them like tapping on each of my fingers and saying the words to myself while I'm waiting to say the answer. At first I want them to actually whisper it to themselves then once they get the hang of it, they can do it in their head.
Another way I practice this with my students is with following multistep directions. They self rehearse the directions before completing the task. So having them repeat the direction back to me before completing the task is a good way to see if they heard everything you said and it helps them remember it while they complete the task. One way to make auditory directions more challenging is to increase the wait time where they have to hold the direction in their head and this is actually a really good strategy to use when working on that. Some activities this works well for if you have puzzle pieces you turn them over so they have to search for the correct ones while keeping the direction in their head. It literally just takes longer and they can self rehearse while they're doing it. Or if you have a student who needs to go across the room to complete a direction like maybe purposely separate the items from yourself so they have to walk across the room rehearsing the direction as they get get over there.
These are all good ways of making the directions more challenging and explicitly practicing self-rehearsal. At the end of the day I don't really care if they can follow arbitrary directions with 5 critical elements, I want them to be able to listen to complex directions from their teacher and apply them 2 minutes later when they start the activity. So practicing the strategy is the helpful part.
Next up is visualization. I teach students to picture what they hear in their head. I like to practice this with like barrier games and other drawing activities. So I'll create a scene and then I describe it to them, asking them to hold the image in their head and then they draw it with as many details as they can remember. Then I asked them various wh- questions that can be answered using their drawing. If I'm using actual paper I like to fold the paper up, like once hot dog and once hamburger so that way I have like 4 squares like 4 quadrants and then we can do it 4 times on that one piece of paper. I also like it if I have like 2 whiteboards this works really well or if you have like actual barrier games where you're making a scene. These all work really well where you can describe the whole scene, they can picture it in their head, you wait and then they put it together. And then you ask them wh- questions that can be answered based on their drawing or they're putting together of the picture. Once they understand and have practiced this visualization strategy I remove the drawing part and I have them answer questions based on the picture in their head. So it's like a very similar activity but without the drawing. While the strategy is helpful for a lot of people, some people are just not visual thinkers. And it might be less helpful to them so like for me personally like I never visualize anything like I know some people think that's weird, but my brain is like entirely verbal. So I can force myself to visualize a picture if I really have to but it's not going to be my personal go to comprehension strategy by any means. So I think it's helpful to keep in mind that like some of these strategies work well for some students and not others, you know at different times with different information. That being said, this is probably the most fun one to work on because most kids like drawing and for that reason I usually teach it first. And I make sure they know that the strategy is called a visualization or visualizing so that later in the classroom if they're working on something I can remind them that they can visualize to help them understand. I think the part of this that is the most helpful is that it forces a student to slow down and process the language that you're saying. It slows them down just enough and engages their brain in a way that they can practice thinking about what they're hearing. And when it comes to auditory memory and auditory comprehension, that's really what you're going for.
All right moving on to chunking. This is when they break up what they're hearing into smaller parts. The best example of this from real life is phone numbers. Phone numbers are automatically chunked into 3 or 4 numbers to make them easier to remember. And chunking works best for lists, numbers... There's a fun auditory memory game called I'm Going On A Picnic and then each person takes turns adding one thing that they're bringing onto the picnic. And then as the list gets longer I show my students how I'm able to remember so many items by chunking them into smaller groups. So one thing you can do to support auditory memory especially when you're doing chunking is to provide a visual marker, I mean like something that visually shows how many things you're trying to remember. So like on a whiteboard maybe I'll draw four dots and then that way they can like see there's four things to remember or if I have like pictures of the things we're remembering I'll turn the pictures upside down. So that way they see there's four things and we can turn them over as we go. But having that visual marker is really helpful. Eventually the goal is to fade the visual marker and not need it anymore. But let's say I'm playing this I'm Going On A Picnic game. I might every time we add an item, like we get apples I put a dot on the whiteboard. We get apples and bananas - two dots on the whiteboard. Apples, bananas, strawberries - 3 dots on the whiteboard. And then when it gets kind of long I can show them how we can chunk them. So maybe I'll chunk the first 2 apples and bananas. And then I'll chunk the next 2 strawberries and bread, whatever. So it's apples, bananas, strawberries and bread, whatever whatever, and like I'm not like writing the words on the whiteboard I don't even need pictures of these items because I am just using a visual marker of the dot on the whiteboard to show that that is a word that we're remembering and then I can visually show the chunk of the 2 items together. So doing it this way you could remember like a really long list of items because every chunk is like an item even if there's multiple items in that chunk. So I find this is the easiest way to teach the strategy of chunking. It might not be the most like helpful thing for generalizing it. But I really think it's important to teach the strategy first. I need them when I say chunking to know what I'm talking about. The best way to generalize it is with multi-step directions. So imagine a teacher says to the students like, "get your science notebook, your textbook, your chromebook, and meet me at the back table." Which is like not a crazy direction. That's definitely something I've heard teachers say. I can teach my students hey that can be chunked, you can do "notebook, textbook, chromebook, backtable" and that's a lot of those are long words but you you see the idea of if there's a multistep direction with several things that need to be brought somewhere, which is probably the type of multistep direction that is the most common in the classroom, at least in the elementary classroom, they can chunk that information. But they need to have lots of practice chunking it in that first format where it's just straight practice before I try to add in more language and more fluff and more information. So I like to teach it with the game with the practice and then I try applying it into directions that are relevant to the student.
That kind of leads into the next one which is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing it's like rather than trying to remember everything someone is saying, we focus on the important information that you hear. So being able to identify the important information from the fluff is helpful in understanding the message as a whole. I like to give some like silly examples where I tell them like in detail about something, like in so much detail. So maybe it's like I'm going to tell you about my morning and then I tell them like in so much detail how I brush my teeth. Like I open the cabinet, I got out the toothpaste, it was on the middle shelf in the medicine cabinet, I squeezed a little bit but then I needed a little bit more so I squeeze a little bit more, and then I started brushing my teeth and I brush the top tooth and then I brush the side and then I brush the bottom and I go on and on and on. And then I said okay, can you paraphrase this story to me? Like long story short, what did I do? I brush my teeth right. Like I didn't need all that detail to let you know that I brush my teeth. So if you were going to paraphrase what I said it would be that I brushed my teeth. And obviously not every example is that dramatic but I do think it's helpful to like demonstrate the point of there's helpful information and there's fluff and sometimes that we can just listen for the helpful information to know what someone's talking about. It's clarifying and taking out some unnecessary information. I like to practice this with passages that can contain a lot of detail and then we can paraphrase the main points. And the reason this is a helpful auditory comprehension strategy is that if they get lost in the weeds it's really hard to understand the message as a whole. Being able to identify the important information as helpful when someone is talking a lot or very quickly.
And lastly, asking for repetition or clarification. Repetition is a helpful auditory memory strategy because everyone misses information sometimes and students need to know the best ways to ask for repetition. Students can ask this teacher to repeat. But even better I teach them to repeat the part they did hear and ask for clarification. So for example, if the teacher was giving directions about an art project and the student didn't hear everything it would be better for them to ask like, “What did you say about the art project?” compared to just like what? This shows the other person that they were listening and allows them to properly fill in the information that the student missed. In addition to repetition students can ask the speaker to say it louder, slower, give more details if they know why they didn't hear it the first time.
I always include it in auditory comprehension strategies because getting clarification is a big part of understanding the message overall. Once I've taught these strategies to the students and I've practiced them I use them as a resource when I'm working on different auditory tasks. So if I notice they struggle or they get something wrong I can offer the strategy as a way to improve. So if I gave them a complex direction and they only did part of it I may say like I'm going to say it again, try chunking it to see if you can remember all the steps. And then they can use the strategy when they try again. I already modeled it for them, I already practiced it with them, so now I can just name the strategy as a tool when we're practicing different listening skills.
Now I thought it would be helpful to talk through how this might look with a student. So I have in front of me my Auditory Memory for Short Stories Fun Deck from Super Duper and what I'm not going to do is just read the story, ask the questions, and write down if they got them right. Because that's just testing and I'm more focusing on teaching and practicing the strategies right now. So I'm picking a card from the deck and I say to them, "Okay, the title of the story is Later Gator. Do you have any ideas what the story could be about?" This activates their prior knowledge, gets some thinking, I can fill in any missing background knowledge if they don't pick up that that's about an alligator that might be something I want to fill in ahead of time, where do alligators live, where might you see an alligator. Just kind of get them thinking about what the story could be about so their brain is primed to process the information I'm about to tell them. Then I say, "ok I'm going to read the story and I'm going to ask you some questions about who it's about and what they saw. So try to picture the story in your head as I'm reading." The reason I tell them the questions that are coming is because it's hard at first for them to recall all of the details. So I'm going to scaffold that skill a little bit by giving them a heads up of what to listen for and the strategy I'd like them to try while they're doing that.
Then I read the story in its entirety without repeating myself. I very rarely repeat myself because I want my students to learn to listen the first time. I don't want them to rely on me always repeating myself or me repeating myself without them even asking to I want them to listen the first time so I don't repeat it. I'm going to read it to you right now.
Miss Brown took her class to the zoo. They saw a monkey, a lion, and alligator. When they left, they said see ya later alligator!
Then I pause for about 5 seconds and I ask who went to the zoo? Now they might say the class but I also want the teachers name. Listening for names and unfamiliar vocabulary, things like that out of context is a really strong skill to develop with our students and since I primed them that I was going to ask a who question a lot of kids that's enough for them to remember the teacher's name. If not I say ok hold on to that we're going to come back to it. And I move on to the next question. What did they see? And they can refer back to their mental image that they visualized while I was reading to answer: a monkey, a lion, and an alligator. And then I'm going to say okay I'm going to read it again. What? What are you going to listen for? And they to tell me I'm going to listen for the teacher's name. And I say ok, but let me read the whole thing. Hold it in your mind. Okay, then I reread the entire paragraph again and they have to hold that detail in their brain until I finish reading. And they can self rehearse that answer while they're waiting and then tell me the teacher's name at the end. All of that for one card [laughs]. So the more we practice these the less supports I can offer. So maybe I don't have to prime them with the questions or I don't have to tell them what strategy to use and maybe I don't have to read it for the second time. I just can you know, read it once.
The way to actually improve their skills is to provide these scaffolds and then solely fade them over time. My goal eventually is for them to be able to just listen and answer the questions using the appropriate strategies without me having to remind them.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I have a resource in my store that practices each of these strategies and has passages to work on generalizing this skill. It's called Auditory Comprehension Strategies and Passages and there's a bundle of them with different high interest topics like sports and animals and that kind of stuff. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode a full transcript, links, and all that will be below and at listentotodpod.com If you have any questions, comments, or you'd like to be a guest on the show you can reach me @ListeningFun on Instagram or in our teacher of the deaf community Facebook group. Have a fantastic day! Bye!
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