The fact is that three things affect speechintelligibility in the classroom: reverberation, noise and distance. In a well-designed classroom reverberation and external noise can be managed. But no amount of design can eliminate the internal noise generated by moving children, clothing, furniture, computers, etc. And no design can eliminate distance between teacher and pupils - in big rooms the kids at the back won't get the same amount of information as the ones at the front.
Another factor affecting the achievement of good classroom speech intelligibility is the imperfection of the occupants themselves.
Teachers' voices can vary enormously. More crucially, children have undeveloped hearing and listening abilities. They don't develop an adult's listening abilities until at least 14-15 years of age. What's more they are likely to suffer from temporary, but educationally-significant, hearing loss several times during their school careers due to colds, glue-ear and other ENT infections.
So what is needed is for the teacher's voice to be close to every child's ear - overcoming distance, noise and hearing loss. Achieve this and pupils will hear speech clearly, without the stress of the teacher shouting to be heard and without constant repetition.
This is what a soundfield system does, by equipping the teacher with a wireless microphone, linked to a base-station that sends their voice to speakers around the classroom. It's a concept so powerful and so simple to implement that it's surprising soundfield isn't installed in every classroom.
Soundfield is a proven concept in UK schools with over 15,000 systems in daily use. Pupils get better academic results, teachers get less voicestrain and schools get better league-table positions.
Steve Mitchell, Product Manager for PC Werth, specialists in improving the acoustics of schools classrooms, says that the cost per system is modest (about the same as two PCs) and the financial returns for schools are quick to realise.
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