Speech Perception in Noise by Children for Whom English Is a Second Language

¹ University of Florida, Gainesville
² University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls

Appropriate classroom acoustics and academic achievement of children is known to be correlated. To date, however, there remains a lack of research concerning the importance of classroom acoustics for children for whom English is a second language (ESL). This investigation examined the speech perception of 20 children whose native language is English and 20 ESL children under commonly reported classroom signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Sentence perception was assessed by the Bamford-Koval-Bench Standard Sentence Test. Multibabble was used as the noise competition. Results indicated that the ESL children's performance was significantly poorer across most listening conditions. In addition, perceptual differences between the two groups increased as the SNR became less favorable. These data will be discussed with respect to the educational management of ESL children.

Key Words: speech perception, English as a second language (ESL), noise, sound-field amplification

Submitted on June 19, 1995
Accepted on January 22, 1996

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