The first step in doing so would be to examine people. Among the best ways to do this would be to visit your local mall and people watch a little. Look at the mannerisms and postures of the people who are in the mall.Didn’t catch that? This explains it. You might be surprised but once you spend a little time looking how people present themselves, you will realize that body language is not all that difficult to figure out. Usually, what you see is exactly what you get when it comes to body language.

Of course, there does need to be some sort of educational material to be reviewed and studied in order to make the practice of learning body language more productive. There are quite a number of excellent books on the subject and they are well worth reading. You might be surprised at some of the interesting insights you come across in the more well written works on the subject. Once you read the insights in these works, you can then put what have learned to the test when out and about people watching.

Mentally, someone who is not able to hear well may need to learn to cope with the situation. They may have been able to hear in the past and they are devastated by the situation. It is also possible that they my become depressed or lonely. Mental health professionals and therapists are able to talk with them and create plans to help them to cope with the situation. The plans will have goals and almost guarantee enough progress to help them to feel happy and normal even though they are not able to hear well.

Many individuals who are not able to hear well are able to find other ways to effectively understand others and communicate. Often, they needed to learn to read the lips of people who are talking. In other cases, they learn to communicate with sign language or their hands. If these methods are used effectively, they will be able to communicate and understand others without relying too much on a hearing aid that may malfunction or not be enough help for them.

Some simple things that can be done to preserve your hearing, are distance yourself within reason to sources of loud noise such as gunfire or loud machinery. Always remember to wear earplugs at loud concerts, and not listen to earphones too loudly as these are some of the major sources of modern day hearing loss. Hearing is a precious thing and with some simple steps to preservation you may be able to keep it with you for longer. One more thing to look for is making sure that any excess earwax is removed, having been reported as a source of tinnitus and temporary hearing loss.

Speech reading (commonly referred to as lip reading) can be an extremely useful tool for a deaf/hard of hearing individual. However, when a person says they are able to “read lips”, there is much to consider. Often, the speaker takes this to mean they can resume speaking as normal and that the deaf/hard of hearing person will pick up close to 100 of what is being said. This is not at all the case. Even the most skilled of speech readers miss a significant portion of spoken language. Usually only around 30 – 40 of spoken langauge can be accurately understood on the lips.

Carefully consider the following common misreadings the next time you communicate with a person who is a speech reader.

The sounds /p/, /b/, and /m/ are commonly confused on the lips. For example, the words “pop”, “bob” and “mom” look nearly identical on the lips.

The sounds /sh/, and /z/ (“shoe” and “zoo”, as in the example above) is another pair that can confuse the speech reader.

Try a few more sound “shapes” in the mirror. Common sound confusions are /f/ and /v/, /d/ and /t/, /j/ and /ch/…it is easy to spot the confusing patterns when focusing on the shape of the sounds on the lips.

Other sounds at the ends of words have really no “shape” at all on the lips. The /t/ sound, for example, does not require much lip movement, if any at all. So for the word “shoot”, a speach reader might read this word as “shoe” or “zoo” from the previous examples.

Context clues are a close friend of the speech reader! Only with context can the words “shoe”, “zoo” and “shoot” be deciphered!Keep looking, there’s more: Study: Babies try lip-reading when learning to talk

An otologist or audiologist can give patients a hearing test to determine if there is a problem with the ears.Is this new to you? Catch up