Many factors contribute to how speech is understood in a conversation, including degree of hearing loss, environmental factors, conversational styles, and background noise.

To improve environmental factors, try having important conversations in a quiet room by reducing background noise (i.e TV). Make sure the room is well lit, and you a sitting a reasonable distance (3-6 ft) from your communication partner. Trying to have a conversation from different rooms will always be difficult, especially for someone with hearing loss.

If you are having trouble understanding a specific communication partner, there may be strategies your communication partner can try to improve conversation. Ask the talker to slow down their rate of speech and enunciate their words. Make sure the talker is not covering his/her face and that you have adequate lighting to read visual cues.

If you are having trouble hearing in restaurants, you may want to arrive early to the restaurant to get a favorable seat away from noise coming from the kitchen. Try sitting in a booth with high backs that can block some of the background noise. Always position yourself so the background noise is behind you, and your communication partner is directly in front of you. Ask your audiologist about updated hearing aids and improvements in how hearing aids handle background noise. The more advanced level of technology, the better the hearing aids will adapt in background noise.

Gymnasiums, churches, and large spaces that produce a lot of reverberation are poor listening environments and can make communicating almost impossible for someone with hearing loss. Luckily, there are many hearing aids and assistive listening devices that can improve conversations in these listening environments. Let us know all of your communication needs and we will choose the devices that are right for you!