Auditory cortical-evoked potentials reflect neural activity related to the detection, perception, discrimination, and cognition of incoming sounds from their timing (latency) and magnitude (amplitude) at the levels of primary auditory cortex and associated areas of the temporal lobe. Researchers have become interested in cortical-evoked potentials elicited by speech stimuli, referred to as speech- evoked potentials (SEPs). SEPs can provide information about a listener’s speech perception abilities at the auditory cortical level, primarily regarding features within speech signals that yield a greater chance of extracting essential cues for human auditory/oral communication. However, to date, relatively little data exist based on naturally produced speech stimuli, which include the listener’s perceptual information, such as specific acoustic/phonetic features, and unmodified spectral/temporal cues produced in natural speech. This tutorial paper reviews current SEP studies and provides feasible applications, focusing on two components of auditory potentials: P1-N1-P2 complex and acoustic change complex (ACC). SEPs offer a powerful objective technique for understanding speech perception of both normal and hearing-impaired listeners, particularly infants and elderly patients who cannot be assessed reliably using typical behavioral speech perception measures; SEPs also provide a means to investigate how acoustical characteristics of various naturally spoken speech stimuli are reflected in the evoked responses for both populations. KEY WORDS：Acoustic change complex·Natural speech stimulus·P1-N1-P2 complex·Speech-evoked potentials· Voice onset time