The effects of a specific speech and language training program on students of a radio announcing course

The purpose of this study was to determine whether individuals show differences in speech and voice during reading of the same news before and after attending a radio announcing course. Twenty-five students of a Radio Announcing Course in Sao Paulo city, 17 men and 8 women, aged 19 to 55 years, participated in this study. The readings were recorded in a professional audio studio, and the speech samples were submitted to perceptual and acoustic analysis. For the perceptual analysis, the samples were randomly presented in pairs and five trained speech pathologists identified each recording as pre- and posttraining, and also justified their choices by indicating what parameters better based their judgment: type of voice, articulation and pronunciation, loudness, pitch, resonance, speech rate, respiratory coordination, and use of emphasis. The acoustic parameters analyzed were mean, minimum, and maximum fundamental frequency, frequency range, text duration, and pause duration. The perceptual analysis showed that the posttraining speech samples were considered the best productions in 80% of the evaluations. Emphasis characterized the readings (70.4%), followed by type of voice (44.8%) and pitch (40.8%). Acoustic analysis showed higher mean fundamental frequency and increase of frequency range posttraining. These results indicated richer modulation in the posttraining readings. There are differences in the readings of the same news pre- and posttraining in a radio announcing course, and the posttraining reading was considered the best production, indicating the positive effect of the training.