method

Professor Tomatis has conducted research on the human ear since 1947. He was the son of a singer as well as an ear, nose and throat specialist. He quickly became interested in the psychological troubles of great singers. After he had had them go through audiograms, he noticed that his patients sang certain registers poorly because they could not hear them. Thus, Professor Tomatis stated a fundamental law:

He developed the electronic ear, because he was not satisfied with this fundamental law. The electronic ear is a device that allows patients to hear sounds that they would not normally hear. It stimulates listening for a certain length of time and therefore transforms sound production.

The discovery of the connection between listening and speaking has led Professor Tomatis to get interested not only in the treatment of great singers, but also in various other aspects, such as learning difficulties and communication pathologies.

Professor Tomatis could establish a link between listening and the psyche of an individual thanks to his 40-year research and practice. A child should come across a certain number of favourable circumstances in his childhood to develop effectively, or s/he will start using defence mechanisms that will turn into a loss of the desire to communicate or a fear to create contacts with his/her family or school environment. His/her listening will be affected by such a psychological phenomenon: the individual refuses to listen to certain frequencies and he listens to him/herself more than to the others…

To hear is a passive process. It is simply about detecting the sounds which are around us.
To listen is an active process. Consciousness is needed to understand the meaning of what is being heard.

Everyone can get rid of his/her psychological defence mechanisms with the electronic ear of the Tomatis Method. All the stages of development are experienced again through sounds. (the life in the womb, birth, first sounds, language)

In the case of children with learning difficulties, the listening tests very often show the same listening defects and imbalance. The potential of the ear has become difficult to exploit, because the child has developed a way of filtering information.
Many children with learning difficulties or a short attention span hear very well, but they cannot read or concentrate effectively.

It has been frequently noticed that children are partly or totally selective about what they hear. This prevents them from perceiving the differences between some low and high-pitched sounds. Moreover, the listening tests of such children show that they also have difficulties in situating themselves in space.

One often prefers to use the left ear to hear a sound. Yet, it is known that the connection between the right ear and the left part of the brain decodes a message more effectively, more quickly and more accurately than the left ear – right part of the brain connection. The right part of the brain is not specialised in the decoding of language.

Moreover, some students with learning difficulties show irregularities in the listening of some frequencies (in the range of 1000 to 2000 Hertz for the French language). Children with no difficulties have a regular dome-shaped curve, whereas the opposite generally occurs with so-called less gifted students: their ears do not listen, they shut and the dome-shaped curve becomes hollow.

All these disruptions show that the child cannot listen effectively, even if s/he would like to. S/he becomes somewhat foreign to his/her own mother tongue. The child suffers from a mental block at school when having to read or write a letter, then it develops into the inability to understand grammar rules, a lack of concentration, a poor memory, behavioural difficulties, and then a loss of interest.

For another category of students in our schools, immigrants’ children, integration can be difficult because their ears do not open to the frequencies of the French language. The research conducted in various countries has shown that each language has its own ‘surrounding envelope’. This means that certain frequencies or frequency zones are used more often in some languages than others. For example, an Italian child, whose mother tongue uses frequencies located mainly between 2000 and 4000 Hertz, may find it difficult to perceive the frequencies of the French language (1000 to 2000 Hertz).

Some languages have a quicker pace than others do. Each language has a different self-control time (the necessary time for the ear to control a vocal emission). Consequently, a child whose mother tongue is not French may find it difficult to learn the language, because s/he does not hear it correctly. By providing him/her a long lasting listening stimulus in the proper frequencies, the electronic ear enables the child to perceive the foreign language better and to integrate it as well. S/he will hear French better and consequently speak it better. French speakers who have difficulties in learning a foreign language can also use the electronic ear.

The Tomatis method starts with a listening test, which determines the listening thresholds for each frequency, the ability to identify the origin of sounds, the quality of the listening. The contents of the sounds to be heard with the electronic ear are determined by the data collected from the listening test. The electronic ear is able to break down the frequencies and to analyse them. Thanks to a bascule system in the electronic ear, it sends filtered sounds to the listeners shifting between normal listening (faulty) and corrected listening. It’s about learning how to listen again. It will enable the child to listen, to speak, to sing and even to move in a different way.

Such a method does not rehabilitate by focusing on the child’s difficulties. This would lead to low self-esteem and a loss of motivation. It acts unconsciously on the individual by allowing him/her to live again in a positive way his/her listening and emotional experience. From then on, the child will be able to use to his/her advantage the various teaching methods because he will have found a better listening, therefore a more effective memory, a better concentration span and the ability to understand others.

The Tomatis method is about learning how to listen effectively, to provide the ear with all the potential it had at birth and therefore to lead to a better communication and a better exploitation of everybody’s talents.

As a conclusion, do not forget that to know how to listen makes learning easier.