Classroom Interpreters - Interpreters and Children - Evaluating an Interpreted Education

An Audiogram Does Not Determine Need for Interpreting

An audiogram is only a rough approximation of what a person can hear in a quiet sound booth in a perfect listening condition. Classrooms are far from ideal listening environments; they are noisy, have multiple speakers from many directions, and there is a lot of reverberation and hard surfaces. For a student listening through a hearing aid, there may be some situations where he can function fine with listening alone. But there may easily be situations where a student with a lot of usable hearing cannot hear well enough to function even adequately. One cannot determine whether a student needs an interpreter by looking at an audiogram alone.

Some of the factors that can affect how well a student with a hearing loss can function are shown below.

Many students who are hard of hearing benefit from an interpreter. The educational team should conduct a functional listening assessment, developed by Johnson and Von Almon, which tries to replicate a variety of listening environments.

This evaluation can help the educational team determine whether the student can access a specific situation through listening alone, which is essential to deciding whether a student needs an interpreter.