Speak Out! By Sam Trychin, Ph.D. Another Book in the Living With Hearing Loss series Copyright 1990, Revised Edition, 2004
Table of Contents Introduction...1 Target audience for this book... 2 Background information... 3 General Issues...4 Specific things to do... 6 At the beginning of the meeting... 10 Handling questions and comments...11 Ensuring that the audience understands... 13 Some further hints... 14 Summary...16
Introduction The contents of this book were produced by participants in two advanced Living With Hearing Loss courses taught by the author in Fairfax, Va. and Baltimore, Md. The participants were members of Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, Inc. (SHHH) who had previously participated in several Living With Hearing Loss courses and had become interested in making public presentations on topics related to hearing loss. Our goal for this project was to develop a course to teach people how to successfully present information to audiences in which some members are hard of hearing. We were particularly interested in determining how to best set up the situation when presenters were hard of hearing themselves. As the reader will learn, there are special challenges and obstacles to overcome when people who are hard of hearing publicly exchange information with other people who are hard of hearing or even with people who have normal hearing. However, the reader will also learn that these obstacles and challenges can, with forethought, be overcome. The Living With Hearing Loss class project proceeded in several steps: 1. For several sessions, the participants brainstormed ideas about the elements that they deemed necessary for successful presentations. There was also discussion about the kinds of things that, in the past, various presenters had done or failed to do that had made it difficult or, even impossible, for the audience to understand what was being presented. 2. Each participant then prepared and gave a ten-minute presentation. During each presentation, class members took notes on what the presenter did that facilitated understanding by the audience of what was being said and what he or she did that inhibited or prevented understanding. 3. Following the presentation, group members critiqued the performance and offered suggestions for improvement (good humor and a light atmosphere are necessary here, and we did not always succeed in achieving this).
4. Over several sessions participants revised their original topics and presented them again. Following that, each person gave additional presentations on new topics. Each time, the other group members provided feedback on the presentation. 5. Based on these experiences, we developed a set of guidelines and suggestions that are the substance of this book. Most of our group members were hard of hearing; several had profound hearing losses and had difficulty understanding even with two hearing aids. Two people were hearing family members, and one was a professional with normal hearing who worked with people who were hard of hearing. Because we had a variety of people representing various levels of hearing ability, we believe that the material presented in this book adequately reflects the communication needs of the larger population of people who are hard of hearing.
Target audience for this book This book contains guidelines and suggestions intended to enable people who are hard of hearing to present information to audiences of other people who are hard of hearing and/or to people who have normal hearing. Those who are hard of hearing, even people with a profound hearing loss, can be successful at public speaking provided certain conditions are met. This book outlines in detail what those conditions are. After 22 years of working with people who are hard of hearing, their normally hearing family members, and professionals who provide services to them, we have found that there is a general lack of correct information regarding hearing loss, a situation which cannot be remedied by a small number of people. What is needed is a large number of individuals who are hard of hearing going out and addressing local community groups. Each member of SHHH, for example, has a wealth of personal experience and knowledge about hearing loss. That information would be very useful to other people who are hard of hearing, their hearing family members, and professionals who provide services to them. The vast majority of people who are hard of hearing, however, do not share their experiences and information publicly. There are several possible reasons for this: 1. They do not realize the value of their personal experiences to others. 2. They do not know how to organize their experiences into a presentation or talk. 3. They do not know how to overcome the communication problems inherent in a dialogue between a speaker who is hard of hearing and an audience consisting of people who are hard of hearing as well as people who are normally hearing. 4. They are fearful or reluctant to stand in front of a group and make a presentation. (The most common phobia in the United States is fear of talking before a group of people.) This book focuses directly on points two and three above and indirectly on points one and four. It is our hope that by reading through this book, the reader will begin to realize the value to others of his or her experience.
Public speaking usually requires little more than practice to overcome fears about being in front of an audience. The contents of this book may also be useful for: 1. Speakers, professional or otherwise, who will need to learn a set of practices or conventions to be followed in order to be understood by people in their audiences who are hard of hearing; and 2. Conference personnel and administrative staff who arrange meetings in their facilities or in other locations in which people who are hard of hearing are part of the audience.
Background information When people who are hard of hearing are in an audience of any kind, e.g., a theater, church, classroom, lecture hall, or conference room', certain arrangements must be made in order for them to understand what is being said. Some of these arrangements involve environmental modification, and other arrangements involve aspects of the speaker's behavior. In most instances it is the sum of a number of small modifications that enables people who are hard of hearing to understand what is being said. The major goal we have set for ourselves in this book is that everyone will understand everything that is said the first time it is said. This means that: 1. The people who are hard of hearing in the audience will understand the speaker. 2. The speaker who is hard of hearing understands questions and comments from the audience. 3. The people who are hard of hearing in the audience will understand the questions and comments from other members of the audience. As is the case with most of the goals we set for ourselves we do not expect to be always 100 percent successful. However, by doing everything that we can to achieve this goal, we expect to greatly reduce the number of misunderstandings in the three circumstances listed above. One by-product of following the guidelines suggested in this book is that all people in the audience, people who hear normally as well as those who don t, will benefit by understanding more of what is being presented. Sometimes, people who are hard of hearing have the mistaken assumption that people who have normal hearing always understand everything that is being said. This is often not the case, particularly when comments and questions come from other members of the audience. Unless otherwise indicated, this book assumes that the speaker or presenter is hard of hearing and is speaking to an audience consisting of at least some people who are hard of hearing. If the speaker or the audience has normal
hearing, some of the guidelines suggested can be safely eliminated depending on the specific situation. One final comment: this book is written for people who are hard of hearing who do not know sign language and, therefore, do not benefit from sign language interpreters. In some situations involving both people who are deaf and who rely on sign language and people who are hard of hearing, sign language interpreters will need to be provided along with the suggestions provided in this book. If there are many people in the audience who rely on speech reading, an oral interpreter may also be helpful. Keep in mind the fact that sign language interpreters and oral interpreters are not the same.
General Issues There are some general issues that need to be considered when planning any kind of presentation. These issues include, but may not be limited to, the following: Determining your target audience. (To whom will you be presenting?) In all probability the content of your presentation will be somewhat different for different audiences, e.g., people who are hard of hearing, their family members, senior citizens, parents of hard of hearing children, or professionals. How will you locate them? Once you decide to whom you wish to speak, then it becomes a matter of using ingenuity and the telephone (or car) to locate places where those groups gather, e.g., senior centers, PTA meetings, or local and state professional and non-professional meetings. Your local SHHH chapter will have ideas about places that would be interested in having you make a presentation. Newspapers often list local meetings of non-profit and service organizations. If another person asks you to make a presentation, it is important that you determine, as precisely as you can, the major characteristics of the audience, e.g., their age range, their probable knowledge of hearing loss issues, number of people expected, what they might want you to discuss, etc. What information do you want to present? The answer to this question can be determined in at least three ways: 1. By the person who requests the presentation, e.g., someone asks you to speak about assistive listening devices. In this case you will need to determine if you have enough knowledge and experience with the topic to make an instructive presentation. If not, do you
have the time and energy necessary to do the required research? And, an important consideration is whether you want to make a presentation on this topic? If the answer to any of these questions is no, don't do the presentation. Help find someone else who would like to and is able to do the presentation. 2. By your belief that there is a need for people who are hard of hearing, their family members, and/or professionals to have information about a particular topic, e.g., How to Get the Most Out of a Hearing Aid. In the best-case scenario, you are excited about the topic and knowledgeable enough to make the presentation. Again, if one or both of these is not the case, maybe your best contribution would be to locate someone who is excited and has sufficient knowledge of the topic to be able to make the presentation. 3. By your desire to share some of your own experiences or some special knowledge you have related to hearing loss. If you believe that other people can profit from this information and that you can identify the main points you want to make and how the information might be helpful to others, then go ahead and do it, and have fun. Where and under what conditions will you make the presentation? You will need to know something about the room, e.g., its size, shape, seating arrangements, lighting, and background noise. Can the seating arrangement be modified? What time of day will you be presenting? How much time will you have for the presentation? What assistive listening and visual projection equipment will be available? How are the acoustics? These are questions that can be answered quickly through a phone call or by a brief visit to the site of your presentation. How will you present the information? Knowing something about the audience, the facilities, and the topic, you will need to decide how to convey the information to the audience. Some options are:
Straight lecture Lecture/discussion Question-answer format Panel (several people discussing a topic) Role-play (putting on skits illustrating certain points) Videotapes or movies Whatever method(s) of presentation you choose, the suggestions offered in this book apply. What will you do to achieve the goal of everyone understanding what has been said the first time it is said? Remember that everyone means you and all those people who are hard of hearing in the audience. We strongly believe that how you make the presentation is as important as, or even more important than what you say. The specific procedures you use to be sure that you, the presenter, and the members of the audience understand each other provide an object lesson for the people who are hard of hearing in the audience. They learn about, and hopefully will imitate, ways to arrange the environment and alter communication behavior that result in increased understanding of what has been said. Conversely, no matter how poignant or witty the presentation, it is worse then useless if people are unable to understand what is being said. Worse because another failure to understand what is being said, especially at a meeting for people who are hard of hearing, may be the last straw for some people. They may think, "If I can't understand here, I must really be hopeless; I'll never understand anywhere." You serve as a role model for the people who are hard of hearing in the audience. When you arrange the situation so that you can understand the majority of things said the first time they're spoken, you are teaching people effective ways to compensate for hearing loss. That is why it is so important to plan ahead and anticipate communication problems and devise ways to avoid them or have solutions for them if they occur.
The following section lists specific things to do to increase the probability of a successful presentation. At the very least, you will increase the likelihood that most of what is said will be understood the first time.