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

Abstract

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.

Normal-hearing English-as-a-second-language listeners’ recognition of English words in competing signals

“…Crandell & Smaldino, 1996;Bradlow & Bent, 2002;Cutler et al, 2004;Garcia Lecumberri & Cooke, 2006;Van Engen & Bradlow, 2007). Acoustic and linguistic cues available to native English monolingual (EML) listeners may not be readily accessible to ESL listeners (e.g.…”

Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Physical Education Settings

“…This finding also suggests that SNRs in the settings used in this study were likely detrimental to student learning (Berg, 1993). In addition, the problem was compounded among students with special needs, including learning disabilities, attention and auditory disorders (Crandell, 1996;Crandell & Smaldino, 1996), and listening and learning in a nonnative language (Eriks-Brophy & Ayukawa, 2000).…”

Validating Models of Clinical Word Recognition Tests for Spanish/English Bilinguals

“…We know from some of these studies that S/E bilingual individuals recognize English speech less effectively than English monolinguals, including those who acquire their English in early childhood. When measuring English word recognition in noise, Crandell and Smaldino (1996) found significantly poorer performance in school-age children who had acquired English and Spanish simultaneously by 2 years of age than English monolingual children of the same age at the time of the study. The finding was corroborated by two studies on adult S/E bilinguals (Mayo et al, 1997;Rogers et al, 2006).…”

“…Through a line of investigations over the past decades, we have developed some understanding of S/E bilinguals' performance on English, Spanish, or nonsense speech recognition tests (Crandell & Smaldino, 1996;Flores & Aoyama, 2008;Lew & Jerger, 1991;Lopez, Martin, & Thibodeau, 1997;Mayo, Florentine, & Buus, 1997;Rogers, Lister, Febo, Besing, & Abrams, 2006;Shi & Canizales, 2013;Shi & Sánchez, 2010, 2011von Hapsburg, Champlin, & Shetty, 2004;Weiss & Dempsey, 2008). We know from some of these studies that S/E bilingual individuals recognize English speech less effectively than English monolinguals, including those who acquire their English in early childhood.…”