Panasonic WX-LA20 User manual

Hearing and Listening in a Typical

Classroom (Summary)

Catherine V. Palmer

Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools July, 1997

Vol. 28, pp. 213-217

Children spend 45% of the school day engaged in listening activities such as

talking, asking questions, and multimedia presentations. The failure we make is

assuming that all normal hearing students can hear what is spoken in typical

classrooms. There are six issues that arise when considering if the students can

hear the necessary information in the classroom.

1. Teacher’s Delivery: Teachers must speak 15 dB louder than background

noise; however, this is rarely achieved. Many teachers are not able to produce a

signal that can be heard over background noise and attempting to do so may

result in vocal fatigue. This causes teachers to miss multiple days per year.

2. Noise in the Classroom: Classroom noise levels should not exceed 35 dBA;

however, typical classroom noise levels range from 41 to 51 dBA. In the past few

decades research has shown little to no improvement in classroom noise levels.

The most important characteristic of relevant to effective communication is signal

to noise ratio (SNR). Because young listeners (with normal hearing) require

higher SNRs, it is recommended that classrooms have an SNR of +15 dBA

.

3. Reverberation: Classroom reverberation times should not exceed 0.4

seconds; however, the majority of classrooms have reverberation times between

0.4 and 1.25 seconds. Reverberation masks (blurs) direct sound energy. Higher

reverberation times cause poorer understanding.

4. Distance: Children should be within approximately 6 feet of the teacher in

order to receive maximum intelligibility; however, achieving this distance for all

children is impossible due to typical class sizes. Speaker to listener distance

(SLD) greatly impacts the direct sound field. Children with normal hearing who sit

in the middle or back of the classroom have difficulty receiving the speech

signal compared to students in the front row.

Continued…

… cont’d

5. The Student’s Hearing: Ideally, students would experience consistently

normal hearing; however, on any given day about 43% of primary level children

fail a pure-tone screening at 15 dB and/or immittance screening. It is incredibly

costly and impractical to monitor every child’s hearing due to students who may

experience episodes of middle ear infections.

6. The Student’s Experience: Adults can miss parts of a message and fill them

in using their life and language experience; however, the young student is

learning from the messages spoken in the classroom and has limited life

experience to use to fill in the blanks. An unnecessary amount of

energy is expended to just hear the signal. This energy could be better spent

thinking about what is taught, integrating the information and applying the

information into their lives.

Sound field equalization provides a solution to the listening issues by amplifying

the teacher’s voice through speakers strategically placed in the classroom.

Sound field equalization systems are the most cost-effective and acceptable

technology for facilitating classroom listening. Benefits of using sound field

equalization include:

• Reduced student fatigue

• Improved academic achievement

• Increased positive behavior

• Reduced teacher fatigue

• More positive, energetic teaching

Classroomaud[email protected]asonic.com

877.268.7215

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