Skip over main navigation
  • Log in
  • Basket: (0 items)
  • Professionals' Portal
  • Staff Wellbeing Portal
  • Contact us
Auditory Verbal
SUPPORT FOR YOUR CHILD
We are here to help
DONATE
Need to talk?
01869 325 000
  • Twitter
Menu
  • Home
  • About us
    • Our mission and values
    • Our strategy
    • Our history
    • People
      • Staff and Volunteers
      • Trustees
      • Voluntary Advisory Board
      • Ambassadors
      • Our founder
      • Our patron
    • Diversity and Inclusion Statement
    • How we're funded
    • Work for us
    • Policies and publications
    • Media centre
    • Events
  • Families
    • Latest information about our services
    • Meet an Auditory Verbal therapist
    • Programme for families
    • Family portal
    • On your doorstep
    • Graduates
    • Book shop
    • Professionals
      • Co-working
      • Referring a family
      • Training
      • Recommended resources
  • Auditory verbal therapy
    • What is Auditory Verbal therapy?
    • Early intervention
    • Evidence base for Auditory Verbal Therapy
    • Telepractice
    • Case studies
    • FAQs
  • Training
    • Auditory Verbal therapy training package
    • Course dates
    • Training stories
    • Recommended resources
  • Our impact
    • News
    • Changing lives
    • Facts and figures
    • Family quotes
    • Our awards
    • Our projects
    • In the media
  • Support us
    • #HearUsNow
    • Write to your MP
    • Fundraise for us
    • Set up a regular donation
    • Leave a gift in your will
    • Supporters
    • Other ways to support
      • Small businesses
      • Family Bursary Fund
      • School fundraising
      • Other ways to give
  • Loud Shirt Day
  • Donate
  • Admin
    • Log in
    • Professionals' Portal
    • Staff Wellbeing Portal
    • Contact us
  • Basket: (0 items)
  • What is Auditory Verbal therapy?
  1. Auditory verbal therapy
  2. What is Auditory Verbal therapy?

What is Auditory Verbal therapy?

Auditory Verbal therapy is a highly specialist early intervention family centred coaching programme which equips parents and care-givers with the tools to support the development of their deaf child’s speech and language development.

In order for deaf children to listen, they require optimum technology such as hearing aids or cochlear implants. They also need the technology to stimulate the listening part of the brain, the auditory cortex. Owing to neuroplasticity, the auditory cortex requires stimulation early in a child’s life, ideally before three and a half. Auditory Verbal programmes work to ensure optimum technology is provided and that parents are given strategies to stimulate listening and therefore the listening brain. As a result, children with hearing loss are better able to develop listening and spoken language skills, with the aim of giving them the same opportunities and an equal start in life as hearing children.

Through play-based therapy sessions, parents are given the tools – Auditory Verbal techniques and strategies – to develop their child’s listening and spoken language. Auditory Verbal therapy enables parents to help their child to make the best possible use of his or her hearing technology and equips parents to check and troubleshoot it in collaboration with their audiology team. This will maximise a child’s access to sound so that listening and spoken language skills can be developed to the fullest extent possible.

Through play-based sessions using the Auditory Verbal approach, the child develops a listening attitude so that paying attention to the sound around them becomes automatic. Hearing and listening become an integral part of communication, play, education and eventually work. All learning from the sessions carries over into daily life. This means that at home, parents can make everyday activities such as setting the table or reading a story into a fun listening and learning opportunity.

What are the communication options for deaf children?

There are a number of different options for the parents of a deaf child or baby, including sign language, bilingualism, Cued Speech, Total Communication, oral speech & language therapy and Auditory Verbal therapy. Auditory Verbal therapy (AVT) is just one of these, and the approach that is most focused on the child working through audition.

AVT differs from other speech and language therapy approaches in a number of ways:

  • AVT concentrates on developing the listening part of the brain (the auditory cortex) rather than relying solely or partly on visual cues. There is a narrow window within which to develop the brain as a listening brain (rather than predominantly a visual brain, for example), and AVT seeks to make the most of this window of neural plasticity in the first three and a half years of life.
  • AVT focuses on coaching the parents or carers of the child in the use of Auditory Verbal strategies and techniques in everyday activities and play so that every opportunity is used to develop their child’s listening brain and spoken language skills.  
  • AVT is an early intervention programme. By working intensively with the child in their first few years they should require much less additional support for the rest of their life. 
  • AVT aims to develop the child’s social skills and theory of mind; the ability to understand that their mind differs from another’s.  This prepares them to make and keep friends at school.
  • AVT is delivered by an Auditory Verbal therapist who is a qualified Teacher of the Deaf, Speech and Language Therapist or Audiologist who has undergone three years of post-graduate training to become a listening and spoken language specialist (LSLS Cert AVT), accredited through the AG Bell Academy, the certifying body based in the USA.

In the UK, we lag behind other countries in providing access to Auditory Verbal programmes. We believe that Auditory Verbal practice, delivered by trained practitioners working in local authority sensory services and cochlear implant centres, should be one of the options routinely available to families who wish to optimise listening and spoken language for their deaf children.

Click here for the evidence base for AVT. 

Published: 28th April, 2022

Updated: 17th January, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Latest

  • Auditory Verbal UK launch BBC Radio 4 appeal to transform the lives of deaf children

    Auditory Verbal UK launch BBC Radio 4 appeal to transform the lives of deaf children

  • Rebecca de Vyea's journey to become an Auditory Verbal Therapist

    Rebecca de Vyea's journey to become an Auditory Verbal Therapist

  • AVUK's charity appeal on BBC Radio 4

    AVUK's charity appeal on BBC Radio 4

  • Our latest Position Paper:  Raising expectations for deaf children

    Our latest Position Paper: Raising expectations for deaf children

Related

  • Evidence base for Auditory Verbal therapy

    Evidence base for Auditory Verbal therapy

    Deaf children can learn to listen and speak – like their hearing peers. What's the evidence?

  • Early intervention

    Early intervention

    What are the benefits of an early intervention programme?

Most read

  • What is Auditory Verbal therapy?

    What is Auditory Verbal therapy?

    Auditory verbal therapy is a highly specialist early intervention programme which equips parents with the skills to maximise their deaf child’s speech and language development.

  • Training to be an Auditory Verbal Therapist

    Training to be an Auditory Verbal Therapist

    Find out how you can train to become an Auditory Verbal Therapist in the UK.

  • Evidence base for Auditory Verbal therapy

    Evidence base for Auditory Verbal therapy

    Deaf children can learn to listen and speak – like their hearing peers. What's the evidence?

  • Our mission and values

    Our mission and values

    At Auditory Verbal UK, we want all deaf babies and children to have the same opportunities in life as their hearing peers.

  • Work for us

    Work for us

    Do you have an interest in transforming children’s lives? See our vacancies.

  • Foundation level

    Foundation level

    This 6-month course is available in an online learning format. Designed to equip professionals with the core skills needed to develop auditory practice when working with children with hearing loss and their families, we are also able to deliver this course in-service to employers wishing to train groups of staff.

  • The Education, Heath and Care Plan process

    The Education, Heath and Care Plan process

    Families have shared that the Education, Health and Care Plan process can sometimes feel daunting or confusing so we have collated the most frequently asked questions to try and help clarify the process.

  • Early intervention

    Early intervention

    What are the benefits of an early intervention programme?

  • Therapy sessions

    Therapy sessions

    Auditory Verbal therapy (AVT) is about enabling your child to learn to talk through listening. Read more about the therapy we provide.

  • Session activity ideas

    Session activity ideas

Tag cloud

AVUK news case studies Changing lives family news MP3 our stories youtube

Latest tweet

Sign up for our newsletter

      • Twitter
      • Facebook
      • YouTube
      • Instagram
      • LinkedIn
  • Contact
  • Sitemap
  • Accessibility
  • Diversity & Inclusion statement
  • Terms & conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Media Centre
  • 01869 325 000

Auditory Verbal UK is a registered charity (charity no:1095133). Registered company number: 4569764. Registered in England & Wales. Auditory Verbal UK is the operating name of the Auditory Verbal Centre.

GSK 2020 IMPACT Award Winner 
Manage Cookie Preferences