Scrapbook Page 3188

              A Little Listening Each Day Improves Speech Right Away BfIfIHMHHHHHB-:: "' ??? . That is the occupation of these three co-eds at the Bloomsburg State Teachers College speech clinic, working with Miss Alice Johnson (back of audiometer), clinic supervisor. Left to right the women are: Ruth Zimmerman, Sunbury; Rosemary Hausknecht, Bloomsburg, and Florabelle Schreckengost, Dubois. Audiometer Aids Teachers, Pupils To Teach, Learn ??? ????????? IT ?? i *V Reveals Poor Hearing, Allowing for Placement, and Improves Speech Everything up at (the teachers college these days isn't designed to pour more and better knowledge into prospective pupils' heads after the teachers-to-be are graduated from Bloomsburg.Not by far. Take the audiometer, for instance. That doesn't have the slightest thing to do with teaching principles, except, perhaps, remotely. The audiometer, used on occasion in various schools of Columbia and Montour counties, is a device which assists teachers in determining if defective hearing is the reason some pupils may not get along normally in schoolwork. Does Lots of Things But the audiometer, a combination of phonograph, ear phones, competent, trained operator and a soundproof room, does more than just determine how good???or bad, as the case may beyour hearing is. The device, small enough to be packed up in a suitcase, is an elemental adjunct to teaching public speaking and its allied courses. At the teachers??? college the curriculum is called speech and Miss Alice j. Johnston, of the faculty, is the supervisor as well as speech clinic director. Through the audiometer the students I at the college who will some day be I teaching your children and mine learn | of speech defects of phonetic manner- . isms, of brogues, slang, slurs, and a f half dozen other things that can creep into speech and mark the person speaking as from a definite section of the country. Through the audiometer students I who have never really heard the correct pronunciation of a word???and therefore can???t properly imitate it in their own speech???have that chance. ! Improvement in "cleaning up??? speech almost without exception is noted after a person has thus been "tipped off??? that his pronounciation, as they say, is atrocious. Make Voice Recordings All this is helping the teacher of the future and the pupil of the future, for the pupil seldom is much better than i the teacher. And this is where every college student???s friend???Arthur the Rat???comes ??  m. I/. Arty is a 200-word short story which the students read when they are taking recordings of their own voices, so they will have an accurate method of checking on their defects and eradication of those defects. Arthur the Rat is a short story in which every shirker gets his due. It :is a story that uses every oral combination possible. Students, at the direction of Miss Johnston, read Arty, into a microphone which records on a record. This is then studied by playing it over and watching for defects, as pointed out by the instructress. Speech courses and speech clinics both use the recordings, which may be played about 1,000 times on any phonograph.This is not the only purpose for this machine either. A teacher who is in constant demand as a public speaker at Parent-Teacher meetings and education conferences illustrates her point with a children's rhythm band. She finds it occasionally impractical to demonstrate with the rhyme band in person, as it entails the transportation of the children and tires them out beyond necessity. So she brought them up to Miss Johnston and had a recording made. This she takes with her when she is scheduled to speak and is able to repeat certain portions of the band's music when she seeks to clarify a point.