Speechreading Level 1 (DHHE 0618)

This course promotes skill development and attitudinal change towards communicating with a hearing loss. Participants, including individuals who have hearing loss and their partners, reflect on how hearing loss affects communication. The course allows the students the opportunity to create more effective personal communication, to identify and select communication strategies and tools, to increase self-confidence levels, and to become more effective at self-advocacy. The students practice speechreading: they detect differences in mouth movements, discriminate and identify visual aspects of speech, and incorporate visual information with what they hear with the goal of improving personal communication. Lectures, group and class discussions, communication exercises, and multimedia presentations are utilized to create an awareness of effective communication skills and provide opportunities to practice, give and receive feedback, and discuss the merits of the various strategies and tools. This course meets once per week for twelve weeks.