How to Use Our Adult Rehabilitation Kits at Home

The MED-EL Adult Rehabilitation Kits (ARKs) were first developed to provide rehab professionals tips and materials for their work with cochlear implant recipients so that they could help CI recipients to gain the most benefit from their hearing devices. However, you can use the ARKs for your listening practice with a communication partner at home too!

Download the MED-EL ARKs Here

No matter where you are on your listening journey, you can tailor the activities in the ARKs to meet your individual listening needs. Here are some examples of things you can do to make listening activities easier or more challenging.

When completing listening practice at home, consider

Visual clues: listening only (most difficult), listening + lip-reading, listening + lip-reading + written text (easiest)
Speed: slightly slower and well-articulated speech (easier), fast rate of speech (more difficult)
Distance: Speaker is within arm’s length (easier), Speaker talks from further away (more difficult)
Noise: in a quiet environment (easiest), with background noise where the Speaker’s volume is louder than the noise (more difficult), where the Speaker’s volume is about equal with the noise (most difficult)
Number of choices: Small number of choices to answer from (easier), larger number of choices, no choices provided (more difficult)

Tips for Using the Adult Rehab Kits at Home

Below are three examples from the ARKs and tips for how you can adapt the activities to make them easier or more challenging depending on your skills:

MED-EL Adult Rehabilitation Kit 2, Famous Families: What’s Missing Activity

In this activity, you as the listener follow along with the written text as the passage is read aloud and fill in the missing words.

Speaker says: David Beckham was born in 1975. He was an English professional footballer.

Listener reads: David Beckham was born in _____. He was an English professional ____________.

As the listener, you would listen to and say or write down the missing part: 1975, footballer.

Make this activity easier by asking your communication partner to:

Give choices for each blank by saying or writing down three choices for you to choose from. For example, David Beckham was born in 1979, 1981, 1975. (note 1979 and 1975 have similar sounds so it’s more challenging). He was an English professional golfer, footballer, swimmer. (’footballer’ has a different number of syllables to the other choices, this may make it easier to identify).
Repeat the passage and provide lip-reading clues when the target words are presented.

MED-EL Adult Rehabilitation Kit 3, Your Family: Selective Listening Activity

Write a list of names of family members and friends with their birth dates next to them. The Speaker randomly says a name on the list, you as the listener will need to listen to and identify the name from the list and say the birth date that corresponds to that name.

How to make this activity easier:

Reduce the number of names on the list.
Add nicknames, or surnames to the list if this helps to make the names sound different and easier to identify when listening.

To make this activity more challenging, ask your communication partner to:

Say three names for you to remember and find the dates (e.g., Sally, Jerry, Molly).
Put names on the list that are similar in length and sounds (e.g., Mary, Jerry).
Say the name in a sentence (e.g., “What is Sarah’s birth date?”).

MED-EL Adult Rehabilitation Kit 5, 195 Countries: Bingo Activity

In this activity, the Speaker takes a card from the pile and reads the country name. The listener must listen to and identify the country. If that country appears on their board, they cross it off. The game continues until someone has bingo.

How to make this activity more challenging:

Say the country names in a listening-only condition.
Rather than naming the country, give a description e.g., This country is famous for its kangaroos. (Australia). This country’s name sounds the same as mammals that live in the ocean. (Wales). Sauerkraut is often eaten in this country. (Germany).

For even more advanced listening practice for any of the activities: