Title
Recognition of indigenous and foreign speech in a noisy classroom: A case of primary school pupils
Author
Uguru, J.O.
Beerends, J.G.
Ebem, D.
Publication year
2017
Abstract
This study examines the level of speech recognition of English and Igbo utterances by 70 grade four children. The children, whose mother tongue is Igbo and aged between 8 and 10 years, had English monosyllabic words as well as Igbo monosyllabic and disyllabic words dictated to them in noisy and quiet classrooms. The results show that in noise, their level of recognition was significantly higher for English utterances (p < 0.05) while in quiet, it was significantly higher for Igbo (p < 0.05). Thus, the findings confirm those of previous studies that the recognition of Igbo is more affected by noise. In terms of the recognition of phonemes in quiet and noise, for both languages, the ‘t’ test analyses showed significant difference (p < 0.05) in the pupils’ recognition of vowels and consonants in both languages, with vowels being more identified than consonants in both noise and quiet. Hence, though the recognition of both languages is hindered in noise, the study of Igbo requires an acoustically serene environment for maximum results. © The Author(s) 2017.
Subject
2016 ICT
CSR - Cyber Security & Robustness
TS - Technical Sciences
Classroom
Foreign language
Indigenous language
Noise
Speech recognition
Word dictation
Linguistics
Classroom
Foreign language
Indigenous language
Noise
Word dictation
Speech recognition
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http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5994c59d-ae8d-4771-8bd4-c5c55f3c220b
TNO identifier
788275
ISSN
1351-010X
Source
Building Acoustics, 24 (4), 255-279
Document type
article