My first language is English - which I have a great grasp of. When I was 7, my reading age was 21. My grammar is pretty much awesome, to be honest, and my spelling is near perfect. However, I have lots of problems with language. One of the most irritating is understanding speech. A lot of the time, I'll be listening to someone talk, and I hear them speaking but it's sort of like noise, and it takes me a while to understand what they are saying. A lot of the time, I just won't understand, and will ask them to repeat it. If i do it more than 2 times, I tend to just smile and nod. When someone is speaking to me, if there is the slightest bit of background noise, the background noise seems just as important to my brain as what I'm actually trying to listen to, so I have a lot of difficulty understanding. However, I'm a musician, and I'm fine in ensembles. The only problem I have with that is playing oboe in concert band - and that is only when it is very loud, and that is a matter of me just not playing loudly enough and the trumpets playing extremely loudly, rather than me having problems hearing. I have other problems with language too, but those are the main two. But here are the others: I trip up on my speaking a lot. I don't really know why. I just find myself having to say words again extremely often, and it's very annoying, for myself, and I'm sure for others, too. It's even worse when I'm reading aloud, for example, from a textbook. I can read books quite quickly, but when I have to read them aloud, it's really slow. Also, my handwriting is a complete disaster. I can't read it myself half the time. If I write really slowly, taking extra care to be neat, I can always read it, but that simply takes too long. My writing was fine up until I was about 12 years old. I don't really know what happened to it, but it just sort of degenerated into something worse than chicken scratch. Anyone have any advice? And if you've got this far, congratulations, that's a bloody long post.
I have pretty much the exact same problems you do, almost down to the same descriptions on some of them. I always find myself needing people to repeat what they say, so I would maybe suggest making sure that they have your complete attention before they talk, which might help you keep your mind off background noise. I don't know exactly what it's like for you, but with me alot of the time, if I'm just thinking about stuff, then somebody just randomly starts babbling about something, I don't get any of it, but if your attention is already on them, it might be easier. The other two things are both problems for me as well, so I would say just practice. There really isn't much else you can do about those.
I have the same problems as you do. Only mine are not only speech comprehension but explaining as well. I do it fine while typing and writing because I have more time to think about it while putting it down than I do when speaking. I really have no solutions..but..it'd be nice if someone else could help me in the process of helping you.
The first question is "When did you last have a hearing test?". The first thing that is always ruled out is hearing loss which can cause words to see muffled or can cause difficulty understanding speech when there's background noise. Start with an Ear-Nose-Throat doctor who will refer you to an audiologist for testing.
The thing is, I have problems 'hearing' them even when they do have my complete attention. I'll be having a conversation with them and with everything they say I'm really trying to hear them but I have to keep asking again and again :/ I'm OK with explaining; when I speak normally, my sentences are littered with the word 'like', normally between 2 and 6 per sentence; and when I explain things, it tends to be a bit more, but if you're adjusted to the excessive 'like' in the sentence then it still makes sense. I haven't had a hearing test since I was 7, lol. I plan on getting one some time soon. My hearing is a bit crap sometimes, but a lot of the time it is OKish, so if I do have a hearing problem, I reckon it may well be one of those things that's enough to be annoying but not enough for treatment :/
There are different causes of hearing loss. One of the most common is infection- either a primary ear infection or as a secondary side effect of fevers or certain viruses. If you have an ear infection, it should be treated before it progresses. Some hearing loss with age is normal. Children and teenagers can hear pitches in the high range that adults cannot hear. But when the hearing loss is in the middle ranges, it becomes a problem. This is often the case when people say that they have trouble hearing voices over background noise- it can be caused by partial hearing loss in the range of the voice which causes the background noise (which is not in the loss range) to drown out the voice. Don't wait too long. Physical cause would be something that I would recommend ruling out and since it has been so long since you had a hearing test, it's overdue. It's painless and it take about an hour.
In addition to the possibility of amplitude being an issue, it is also quite possible that comprehension is an issue. I deal with this a lot in young musicians and ear training exercises. Not to mention because of your awareness to this, there may also be a minor psychological factor. I've found that when listening to interviews and writing out the dialogue, sometimes I'll hear the person's voice as it is of sufficient volume, but I will not always comprehend what he is saying. If I continue to listen to the same thing over and over, it seems to get even harder to understand. However, if I just skip it and come back to it later, I'm usually able to understand it. Unfortunately, you can't do this when talking to a person in real life, but the issue may be a similar concept.
Yeah, I think a significant part of it is comprehension, but some of it may be hearing loss. I can still hear really high notes, despite having an instrument which goes up to a frequency of 4435. And playing it regularly. I have had ear infections in the past, but quite a long time ago, and I don't think it would be the cause of any current hearing loss. My senses are a bit crap though I'm quite short sighted, my ears are crap and I've lost a lot of my sense of smell after having colds for about 5 months non-stop, save for less than a week between them. Epic fail, lol.
