Poster presentation Where do I find the voices? Free Text-to-Speech online recording more

Sat, Jun 18, 11:30-12:15 Asia/Tokyo

"Where do I find the voices?" This question often stops teachers from creating their own extensive listening materials for language learning. Even if a teacher is not embarrassed at using their own voice, often it is necessary to have more than one voice for a listening task. Now, we can find those voices online. Recently, the number of free or partially free text to speech (TTS) recording sites has grown dramatically. These sites are getting better, easier to use and are often free or very inexpensive. In particular, the quality and variety of the voices has become much closer to being “authentic.” It is possible to record text from “speakers” with different ages, genders and regional accents. Varieties of English are the most common but many services offer other languages as well. Users can also control pauses, emphasis, speed and pitch. Some sites even allow recording of different voices in one text to speech dialogue. This presentation will evaluate several online TTS and suggest ways to integrate TTS in the foreign language curriculum. The presenter will also profile some of his uses of TTS and share recordings to illustrate TTS voices.