Learning to Speechread

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

I would like to know what you have to say about how to learn speechreading. Is there a particular technique? Is there a book?

Speechreading is an excellent coping strategy, however, you can’t really learn to speechread from a book. You need to see people’s lips in action. Of course, you can learn a number of good things about speechreading from books—but that is not learning to speechread.

What you need is either live classes (if you can find them—they are not always easy to find in any given location) or do the next best thing and learn via CDs or video tapes.

One big advantage of CDs over video tapes is that the programs on the CDs can be interactive, whereas the video tapes do not provide any feedback. Furthermore CDs make it very easy to repeat a segment/question to increase learning.

One CD program that I find particularly good is the excellent “Seeing and Hearing Speech” program.