Improved language lessons at Bilingual Grammar School in Žilina Slovakia.
Before the acoustic improvements, students had to cope with poor speech intelligibility and excessive reverberation during their language lessons. It was not only the students who complained about the poor acoustics, but also teachers were angry about the environment because they had to strain their vocal cords all the time.
How the improvements all came about…..
Michal Diviš an architect and school parent of one of the students had listened to his daughter´s complaints about the poor sound environment during the lessons. However it was not until he attended his daughters parent / teacher meeting that he experienced first hand and understood what his daughter had described. He could not understand the teacher properly in a one to one conversation and this made him wonder as an architect just this environment could function for effective language lessons.
Soon after he met me and explained the situation. I was then fortunate to have a discussion with the head teacher who was aware of the problem however he was surprised and that there is a solution for the poor interior acoustics.
It was great to support the head teacher (in this project) who had the will and the resolve to change and improve the poor situation to make better studying environment for students and teachers in the school.
Additional info:
The new improved acoustic treatments were done in 5 classrooms. Each classroom is around 63 m2. Acoustic measurements were made in one of them to document the objective improvements with clear data in a report, rather than just have the subjective feedback from the teachers and students alone.
In addition to the classrooms, the head teacher is keen to improve the large atrium in the school where many students congregate and which has some challenging acoustic conditions.
For more information about this school acoustic intervention please contact me Iveta Kralova here
