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Recognition of indigenous and foreign speech in a noisy classroom: A case of primary school pupils

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.