The effects of classroom reverberation time and traffic noise on English listening comprehension of Chinese university students

The importance of classroom acoustic environment to students’ listening and learning has been widely realized, especially for second-language learning classrooms. An experiment has been carried out in this paper to study the effects of classroom reverberation time (RT) and traffic noise level (TNL) on English listening comprehension (ELC) for Chinese university students. A total of 12 combination conditions of RT and TNL (3 RTs × 4 TNLs) were designed in the experiment, and their effects on both students’ objective ELC accuracy rates and subjective perception were tested. The results show TNL has significant negative impacts on students’ ELC performance (including ELC accuracy rate and subjective perception), while RT has less effect on students’ ELC performance (which has significant effects only at some particular TNL (TNL = 50 dB(A)). Based on the experimental results, an indoor TNL limitation of not >40 dB(A) is recommended for English immersion classrooms in China. In addition, students’ subjective perceptions are found to be more sensitive to the change of acoustic condition than objective performance, and subjective assessment can be considered as a more appropriate measure in classroom acoustic environment evaluation. According to the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to study the effects of classroom RT and TNL on ELC for Chinese university students. The findings can be used as a reference for the acoustic research and design of Chinese university classrooms, especially for English-teaching classrooms in China.