Experiment with the equipment ahead of time with friends (or TV or radio). Try out different coupling devices and see which ones work best for you. Play with placement around your hearing aid and your physical movement and location to see how the reception changes as you move around the room. Always make sure the volume is down before you put headphones on and then adjust it.
Finally, if you do not have a mic/T/both switch on your hearing aid, you may want to request an environmental mic so that you will be able to easily monitor your own voice. Alternatively, see if having 1 hearing aid on T and the other on Mic works for you.
ALWAYS check out the equipment and batteries ahead of time…and for that matter, check out the instructors ahead of time, too. Moustaches and accents make speech reading difficult if not impossible. Maybe one instructor’s voice is easier for you to hear than another’s, depending on your hearing loss. Some instructors use lecture only, some require group discussion. Some are organized and write outlines on the board. Finding out these kinds of characteristics ahead of time can greatly reduce strain in the classroom.
Eliminate “What?” from your vocabulary. Often you’ll find you understood part of the sentence. Instead try (for example) “ You found what in the drawer?” This is very helpful to the speaker, and may help to reduce frustration on both your parts. Sam Trychin, an educator on the topic who is hard of hearing himself, recommends you say “Because of my hearing loss, I need you to slow down” or “Because of my hearing loss, I need you to look at me when you speak”. He emphases the importance of letting people know, and jokes that it really is better for people to know you can’t hear them than to have them think you are stupid, strange, or stuck up when your response doesn’t match what they said. Practice leaving off the “I’m sorry” that you may be tacking on to your requests without thinking about it!
