Education and demonstration – Language – Foreign
Patent
1992-09-30
1994-11-08
Mancene, Gene
Education and demonstration
Language
Foreign
434185, G09B 1906, G09B 1908, G09B 1904
Patent
active
053622405
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for teaching languages, and in particular foreign languages.
It is a well-known fact that the vocal output of a person, that is the sounds that he emits, undergoes a significant transformation in relation to the auditory message fed to him, that is to say the sound information that he receives.
It is easy to understand therefore that progress made in the teaching of a foreign language will be more rapid if the person learning a language, instead of endlessly repeating the same sentence and being corrected either by a teacher or by a machine until the pronunciation of this sentence is correct, at least receives an auditory message which originates from his own vocal output and which has been modified by means of a process to take the characteristics of the language and the harmonic content of his own vocal output into account.
There are already several devices, notably in the specific area of language instruction, in which a person's statements are received, processed and fed back to him in a modified form by a vibratory signal, in general a sound signal.
Accordingly, the applicant has proposed, in patent specification GB-A-2 026 817, that an electric signal originating from the statement of a person be processed simultaneously and in parallel in two different channels, by filtration and amplification. The output signal from one of the two channels is then applied to the person according to the amplitude of the sound level of his statement.
In patent BE-A-782 406 the input signal is processed in a similar manner but, in this instance, the output signal from one of the channels is firstly fed back to the person at the start of the learning process and then the output signal from the other channel after a certain stage of the learning process.
In patent FR-A-2 495 361 a progressive correlation is formed between the sound level and the frequency of the person's statement and the signal thus processed is applied to the person.
The present invention seeks to provide a method and apparatus for the teaching of languages which allow one to effect corrections on a person's actual original vocal output arising from modifications made to the auditory output and from the language studied.
For this purpose, the method according to the invention includes the steps of create a first signal containing this statement; a second signal which contains the first signal modified in a predetermined manner according to an envelope curve derived from preselected pass bands of the language being learnt; signal which contains the first signal modified according to the harmonic content of the statement and according to the characteristics of the language; and on whether the amplitude of the first signal, is above or below a predetermined threshold.
Thus, after each statement uttered, the person will in return receive selectively either a first sound message which corresponds to his own statement modified according to the predetermined parameters of the language being learnt, in particular the frequencies of this language, or a second correctional sound message which corresponds to his own statement but which is modified in this instance according to the harmonic content of the statement itself and of the characteristics of the language being learnt.
Preferably, and in a known manner, these two sound messages are relayed to the person through the medium of his or her bone structure, or by airwaves, the latter route being slightly slower than the former. For this purpose, according to the invention, the second and third signals are each fed to a first and a second switch which respectively control, after amplification and predetermined successive delays for the transition from the second signal to the third signal, and without delay for resumption of the second signal, through at least one vibrator placed on the skin in the vicinity of the person's skull, and at least one earphone placed over one of the person's ears.
To implement this method, an apparatus according to the invention is pr
REFERENCES:
patent: 3043913 (1962-07-01), Tomatis
patent: 4020567 (1977-05-01), Webster
patent: 4615680 (1986-10-01), Tomatis
patent: 4662847 (1987-05-01), Blum
patent: 5065317 (1991-11-01), Hiramatsu et al.
Bongiorno Marc
Cave Dominique
Cherichetti Cindy A.
Mancene Gene
Tomatis International
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