Acoustic demonstrations for education in speech science
Takayuki Arai · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
Acoustic demonstrations are highly effective for education in speech science. We recently developed two educational tools for acoustics. The first educational tool is a set of physical models of the human vocal tract and related models. It contains cylinder and plate-type models [T. Arai, J. Phonetic Soc. Jpn., 5(2), 31–38 (2001)], a sliding three-tube model [T. Arai, Acoust. Sci. Technol., to be published], lung models, an artificial larynx, and head-shaped models [T. Arai, Acoust. Sci. Technol., 27(2), 111–113 (2006)]. Each model has its own advantages and, if combined effectively, can produce a systematic and comprehensive education in speech production from the lungs to the head. The second educational tool is ‘‘Digital Pattern Playback (DPP)’’ [T. Arai et al., Acoust. Sci. Tech., to be published], which converts a spectrographic image of a speech signal back to sound by digital signal processing. A printed spectrogram on a sheet of paper can also be converted immediately after capturing the image from a camera, and we confirmed that this is more intuitive for learners than converting from an electronic image. [Work partially supported by JSPS.KAKENHI (17500603).]