Today I shifted gears with my listening practice. I decided that I am wasting my time listening to the ESL stories because I can understand more than 98% of what they say. So I brought back my Kindle with The Help as an audio book and started listening--without any words in front of me. The narrator speaks with a Southern Black dialect and I cannot understand every word but I am able to follow much of what she says. (I did read the book about nine months ago so I know the basic story.) I believe that if I continue to listen to this story without reading any of it I will improve my comprehension. So that's my plan.
Last night I attended a board meeting for an organization I am active in. There are usually between 10 and 15 people at these meetings. For the last year or so I have spent much of my time at these meetings frantically looking around the table to see who is speaking. I have had no chance at understanding much of what was being said and so I have volunteered little on my own. Well, last night I understood almost everything that was said, even from a man whose face was full of beard. That was a major improvement.
I'm working on using my land line with my CI. I find I can hear some of what's said when I hold the receiver slightly above my CI. Doing that and looking at my captions means that I can just carry on a conversation, not very smoothly, but I can just about do it--with a few requests for repeats. I do find that the quality of my conversations on my cell phone vary, too. Sometimes I just need to turn around a bit to make the contact better but sometimes it is just not as easy as at other times and I don't know why. Perhaps I'll figure it out over time. Meanwhile I am practicing using the phone a lot.
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