The most significant impact of hearing loss is access to language. Children spend much of their day actively or passively listening, thus obtaining information by means of information ‘overhearing’ – in fact ‘overhearing’ is how the bulk of information is obtained
Students with hearing loss do not have the same access to information as their hearing who are able to overhear speech and language. Even with the use of hearing technologies, access to information is impacted. As a result, background knowledge is weaker, which impacts on knowledge of receptive and expressive vocabulary
If a child/student does not have access to all of the speech sounds they will mishear sounds and words. For example, the words walk, walked, walks, talk, talked, talks, top, topped, tops may all sound the same. As a result the student with a hearing must make a considerable listening effort when trying to hear the sounds of each word.as a result the student with a hearing loss has to make considerable listening-effort when simply trying to hear the sounds of each word.