Our Student Programmes for Teenagers and young Adults:

Attention, Concentration and Studying Difficulties

Some school pupils, who are moving into Secondary School, or going into Junior Cert or Leaving Cert years, may be experiencing difficulties in achieving their true academic potential, both in class and individual study. Despite being willing to do the work and put in the time, difficulties with information processing (being able to retain and summarise information), attention or concentration and hence studying difficulties, often leads to under-achievement. This in turn can lead to stress, anxiety and tension – both in school and at home.

Do you need to improve your processing skills in class?

Cluas are providing a course starting in the Winter which aims to enhance students’ Auditory Processing abilities for Secondary School, including students who will be taking their Junior and Leaving Cert. exams in the coming years.

Improving Auditory Processing abilities will help you improve your concentration, your understanding and comprehension, allowing you to achieve better results in your forthcoming state exams. When you listen better in class, the study you have to do at home becomes a lot easier and more rewarding. At Cluas we can significanlly improve auditory processing using the specialised program of sound stimulation.

What have previous attendees have said:

“I now find it much easier to organise my thoughts and find the words to express my ideas fluently… before the course I often wasted a lot of time trying to find the words to express my ideas when studying and doing school exams” LM – age 17

“Before attending Cluas my son struggled with many subjects – however excelling in the subject that he loved. His performance and ability to apply himself was very inconsistent. He was very disorganised and teachers described him as a day dreamer. He found it difficult to express himself and could not have a conversation if the TV or radio was on. He needed silence in order to study and even then he could only do it for very short periods of time. During the course he started doing his school work without needing to be constantly hounded by us. His communication and conversations with us were much better and he seemed much happier in his own skin. His teachers have said that he appears more interested and is more organised and we are very hopeful for his leaving cert.” Parent of EG – age 16

Cluas Student Programmes for Teenagers and young Adults

This Winter Cluas have organized Student Programmes for students moving into Secondary school, or into Junior Cert. or Leaving Cert. years. The next programmes will commence in December in Dublin and January in Cork and continue into the new year, finishing in March and April.

Programme Stucture
The program is made up of 3 stages:

Stage 1: 15 days, Stages 2 and 3: 8 days each – requires 2 hours each weekday (62 hours in total).

* Stage 1:	CORK	Tue 3 to Fri 20 January		DUBLIN	Mon to Fri 23 December
* Stage 2:	CORK	Tue 21 February to Thu 1 March		DUBLIN	Mon 23 January to Wed 1 February
* Stage 3:	CORK	Mon 2 to Fri 13 April		DUBLIN	Mon 5 to Wed 14 March

Stages 1, 2 and 3 run from 4:45-6:45pm each weekday.

Auditory Processing and Listening Difficulties

One possible underlying reason for such difficulties with school, particularly as exam years loom nearer, may be Auditory Processing or Listening Difficulties. Students with Auditory Processing difficulties generally have perfect hearing, thus it is not a hearing impairment rather it is a difficulty in processing what is heard.

The experience

A student with Auditory Processing Difficulties (APD) may not be able to process what is said to them. They will often appear to have heard what has been said as they can sometimes even repeat back exactly what has been said but they have not processed the message, therefore they have not attached any meaning to the sentence, they have not processed it – they know the words, but the words are meaningless.

If a student is not processing the message, repeating the message will be of no use, neither will speaking louder!
Auditory Processing difficulties can fluctuate from day to day. This can be very frustrating for parents, teachers and the person themselves as on one day they appear to be processing well while on other days they may not be able to process anything at all.

Auditory Processing explained…

Auditory processing is what we do with sound information, that is:
“What we do with what we hear”
Sound waves travel through the air and are collected by our outer ear (Pina). The sound then travels down the ear canal, causing the ear drum to vibrate, in turn causing the bones of the middle ear to vibrate. The sound is then picked up by the inner ear (Cochlea). The sound stimulates nerve cells in the cochlear system, which covert the sound information into electro chemical signals.
These signals pass along nerves and travel to the auditory cortex where the sound is consciously heard. This engages the cortex and all functions of the brain which processes the representative sound information – thus listening occurs.
Many brain systems and subsystems are involved in the processing of this information – including those involved in attention, memory, and higher order cognitive functions.
As such auditory processing does not describe hearing. Many students with Auditory Processing Difficulties have perfect hearing (as tested by an audiologist/ hearing test) but there is a deficit in the processing of the message that has been heard.

Symptoms…

Many students with Auditory Processing Difficulties have difficulty following directions (especially multi part directions), difficulty expressing themselves, difficulty with comprehension (including reading comprehension). Difficulty in social situations can also exist, (as it is often very hard for these young people to keep up with a conversation or understand what other children are saying).

Students can experience Auditory Processing Difficulties in a number of ways.

The written word is an extension of language information – it is the visual representation of auditory communication. Thus auditory processing difficulties can extend to reading and writing (as a result Auditory Processing contributes to Dyslexia).

Other students are unable to filter out extraneous, non-important information. When these students are in a classroom situation they are unable to focus on what a teacher is saying as their attention is constantly being dragged away from the teacher’s voice towards other unimportant sounds (chair scraping on the floor, classmate rooting in their bag, coughing etc). Their system is equally aroused by unimportant information as it is by vital information – thus they often lose out on a lot of what teacher is saying and are unable to follow the class as they very quickly lose track of what is going on as the class progresses.

Some students appear to be slow in processing what has been said to them. These students are experiencing a delay in auditory processing. Quite simply the message is taking longer to get to its destination (for processing) than it does for their class mates. Often these teenagers will automatically say “what?” after someone has spoken to them, and just as you are about to repeat what you said to them the student answers the question. This shows that the message just took a little longer than typical to be processed. This difficulty is often due to left or mixed ear dominance. For effective, efficient and speedy auditory processing to take place it is ideal that the majority of people are right ear dominant.
Auditory processing difficulties can affect all areas of a students’s life. Alleviating these difficulties, allows these students to reach their potential, flourish and develop into independent, capable and happy adults.

Cluas Student Programmes for Teenagers and young Adults
This Winter Cluas have organized Student Programmes for students moving into Secondary school, or into Junior Cert. or Leaving Cert. years. The next programmes will commence in December in Dublin and January in Cork and continue into the new year, finishing in March and April.

Programme Stucture
The program is made up of 3 stages

Stage 1: 15 days, Stages 2 and 3: 8 days each – requires 2 hours each weekday (62 hours in total).

* Stage 1:	CORK	Tue 3 to Fri 20 January		DUBLIN	Mon 5  to Fri 23 December
* Stage 2:	CORK	Tue 21 February to Thu 1 March		DUBLIN	Mon 23 January to Wed 1 February
* Stage 3:	CORK	Mon 2 to Fri 13 April		DUBLIN	Mon 5 to Wed 14 March

Stages 1, 2 and 3 run from 4:45-6:45pm each weekday.

Assessment for the Student Programme

To attend this programme, an assessment must first be completed at Cluas. Firstly, a Questionnaire will be sent to you to complete. The assessment will take between 2 and 3 hours some morning or afternoon. The assessment comprises of a consultation with the student and their parents, a Listening Test and Auditory processing tests. These tests allow us to build up a profile of the student’s difficulties and give us information as to where their specific difficulties lie. With this information, an individual programme is devised for each student, for them to gain the most from the programme and address their specific needs.
Essential to the success of the programme for each student is their willingness to attend and fully particulate in the programme.

Student Programme Enquiry

Enquire about or Register your interest in this Students programme:

Following registration of your interest, we will send you further information about the programme and then contact you.

Should you wish to organise an appointment for an assessment or simply wish to discuss the programme further:
Contact us by email at students@cluas.ie or
Phone Dublin 01-4940210 or Cork 021-4347221.