Purpose: Good verbal signals and low background noise are key factors for all children to maximize understanding of what is being taught. Classroom shape, surroundings, and even furnishings change how the environment "sounds" and how speech is "heard" in the classroom. Classroom acoustics is perhaps one of the most important,…

Reading skills are usually assessed in silent conditions, but children often experience noisy educational settings. Effects of auditory distraction on children's reading skills remain relatively unexplored. The present study investigates the influence of two features of background speech--intelligibility and loudness--on children's reading speed…

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to assess the acoustical conditions in which optimal intelligibility and low listening difficulty can be achieved in real classrooms for elementary students, taking into consideration the effects of dysphonic voice and typical classroom noise. Method: Speech intelligibility tests were performed in six…

Recent studies suggest that benefiting early from both a cochlear implant (CI) and exposure to cued speech (CS, support system for the perception of oral language) positively impacts deaf children's speech perception, speech intelligibility, and reading. This study aims to show how: 1/CS-based speech perception ("cue reading"), and…

This mixed methods retrospective analysis analyzed change using a linguistic-based approach during speech therapy among first or second-grade students with a speech sound disorder. Measures analyzed change within intelligibility, phonemic awareness, decoding, ability to apply skills, and response to IEP goals related to speech. Five schools…

Within educational research, there has been an increased interest in recent years to develop learners' language awareness (LA) in the context of plurilingual education. Recommendations and intentions are given pointing to the benefits, but there are few concrete tools for how it can be carried out in practice. The article seeks to contribute to…

Purpose: It is generally accepted that adults use visual cues to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments, but findings regarding visual speech benefit in children are mixed. We explored factors that contribute to audiovisual (AV) gain in young children's speech understanding. We examined whether there is an AV benefit to…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate deficits in vocabulary development and novel word learning processes, which have been proposed to stem from their speech perception deficits. Aims: This study had two aims. The first was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention incorporating a computer-based phonetic…

A realistic goal of pronunciation teaching in the second language context is to acquire comfortably intelligible rather than native-like pronunciation. To establish a set of teaching and learning priorities necessary for English teachers and students whose first language is Chinese, the purposes of this study are three fold: (1) Identify the…

The Vanuatu government has recently implemented a policy of vernacular literacy. Children are now to receive the first three years of schooling in a vernacular language. Needless to say, in a country with less than 300,000 people [Vanuatu National Statistics Office 2016 Accessed January 4, 2016. http://vnso.gov.vu/] and more than 100 indigenous…