SpeakIt! is a useful tool for learning languages

SpeakIt! Chrome extension is a text to speech tool that basically can read out texts from web pages. It is easy to use and the great thing for language teachers and students is that it can convert text to speech in a variety of languages. So far you can set it to read English - male or female voice, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, these languages have a female speakers voice. 

You can also set the speed and pitch of the voice, it takes a bit of adjustment to get it right, but once set, the text is read out in an audible but robotic tone, but it's easily understandable and is as good Siri and most computer or web generated speech that I have come across. This is a handy supplementary tool for teachers and students and comes at the right price. 

I could not get SpeakIt! to work with web based PDF documents, but it reads web pages without much fuss.  So if you have a text you have saved on your blog or website it works fine, but is not so happy with Google Doc. 

Some ideas for teaching activities are;

1. Reading Set the students a reading text and have them repeat after each sentence or short section.  But you'll need to monitor they do not start talking like a robot!
2. Listening (combined with Reading) activity  For example, students could work in small groups or on their own to complete a listening-reading activity.  This could be an unseen text of one of your Google Doc or blog posts in [language].  This could be turned into a listening-reading activity by having the questions placed below the text. The student could highlight as much as they think they can listen to in one playing, and repeat the process to gain full comprehension and answer the question.                                                                                                                                                     The advantage of having a combined listening-reading text is that students can sound out the new vocabulary, and find it in the dictionary if needed, especially useful in character based languages such as Chinese.                                                                                                                                                                                                     This method also allows students to work at their own pace through the text at the speed they are comfortable with.  As most students have varying listening skills, this is another way of differentiating the task.  

This type of listening activity may be best used to supplement the listening resources you already use.   SpeakIt!, Siri and other digital reading apps are still someway off from sounding like native speakers.  

To activate SpeakIt!, first click on the SpeakIt! icon, highlight the text you would like read out then click the icon.   Right click to set your options, high light the text you want read out then click the SpeakIt! extension.  Watch the video below for an demonstration. 

                                  

Test SpeakIt! out on the Chinese and French texts below.

Chinese sample text

小明你好！

  我已经在中国两个星期了，这里人很多，但是中国人都很热情我喜欢中国人，他们帮助我学汉语。我觉得说汉语难，但是听汉语不难。我的汉语老师是王老师。他去年去了澳大利亚，今年五月再去了。

French sample text

Il était une fois une maman cochon qui avait trois petits cochons. Elle les aimait beaucoup, mais comme il n'y avait pas assez de nourriture pour qu'ils puissent tous manger à leur faim, elle les a envoyé tenter leur chance dans le vaste monde.

Find iSpeak in the Chrome store.