Functional Listening
Virtual Speech Center Inc.
Listening-comprehension exercises built around everyday spoken messages.
What Functional Listening does
Functional Listening uses everyday spoken messages, such as news, phone messages and instructions, followed by comprehension questions. You can add background noise, adjust the exercise settings and track correct and incorrect answers. The app is sold as a one-time iPhone and iPad purchase.
How it compares
Everyday messages rather than WordSuccess’s word pairs
Functional Listening uses everyday messages, such as news and instructions, followed by comprehension questions. WordSuccess concentrates on telling similar words apart.
Background-noise practice, like WordSuccess and Lace Pro
Functional Listening lets you choose background-noise types for practice. WordSuccess also offers practice in quiet or with added noise, while Lace Pro includes speech-in-noise exercises.
Emailed results rather than Lace Pro’s connected care
Functional Listening tracks answers and lets you email session results. Lace Pro shares progress with the hearing-care professional who sets up your access, which is a different route to professional follow-up.
Features
Hearing training
- Supported: Speech-in-noise practice
- Supported: Listening comprehension
- Supported: Training progress tracking
- Supported: Training tasksComprehension
Privacy & data
- Supported: Data storage1DeviceiPad only
- Publisher policy explicitly names Functional Listening among its iPad apps; concerns app user information, not Apple purchases or support emails.
App Store ratings & reviews
Praise
- A January 2022 clinician review valued realistic adult scenarios, repetition and response tracking in a neurological rehabilitation setting; that context does not establish hearing-loss efficacy.
Complaints
- A June 2019 clinician review found the narratives too long and spoken too quickly for their clients and wanted finer difficulty controls. The sample contains only two written reviews and no captured versions.