Acapela Group

I LOVE Acapela Group's Text to Speech software! It is absolutely amazing. I am really excited to have found it, and I think that it can indeed help students with their intonation and speaking in the target language.

Acapela Group's Text to Speech is very simple and easy to navigate.  Simply visit the website and then click "select a voice." When you select your voice, you decide if you want it to be male or female, and in which language you want the voice to speak.  After you have done that, type in your text.  When you are done typing in your text, simply click "play." The voice that you have chosen will speak the text that you have entered.  If you notice any pronunciation errors in verbal speech by the software, you can "report a pronunciation bug."

I think this software is great to use if a student has trouble with pronunciation. Google has something similar that I sometimes use. In the Google Translate portion of Google, you can type in a word and hear it's audio and pronunciation.  I think that this is a great way to build confidence in speaking, as students can mimic the intonation of the software (with caution). It is good to be wary of pronunciation errors, because after all, it is all computerized.

Above, we see Google's variation of text to talk.