True listening involves more than just repeating words. Might there be useful ways to think about quantifying listening effort by taking advantage of a considerable body of research on the auditory event-related potential (AERP)? In this article, Dr James Jerger explores two different ways to think about clinical speech audiometry relative to assessing total listening effort: 1) Altering the task from repetition to decision, and 2) Evaluating the response evoked by the decision via an AERP paradigm.