Text-to-speech Software
Overview
Providing tools so learners can choose to listen to a text supports individual strengths and needs. Listening activates different parts of the brain to support learning. Text-to-speech software can also support Foundational Writing Skills as learners can benefit from hearing their written texts read aloud.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how text-to-speech software helps students who struggle with reading. By using their Auditory Processing skills, these students are able to show that they comprehend complex reading material.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how developers of Read&Write for Google used text-to-speech software in combination with other features to provide multisensory support for reading and understanding a text. Providing the ability to highlight words for an audio pronunciation with an accompanying visual activates verbal and visual Working Memory. Highlighting the spoken word in a different color from the yellow highlighted sentence strengthens Visual Processing skills through tracking.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Multisensory Supports Strategies
Audiobooks allow students to hear fluent reading and to experience books above their reading skills.
Communication boards are displays of graphics (e.g., pictures, symbols, illustrations) and/or words where learners can gesture or point to the displays to extend their expressive language potential.
Dictation, also referred to as speech-to-text, an assistive communication technology that translates voice dictation to digital text, provides students with transcription difficulties the opportunity to participate in the writing process by allowing them to use their voice to generate and record ideas.
Dictionaries and thesauruses can serve as resources for students to expand their Vocabulary knowledge.
Adding gestures and motions to complement learning activates more cognitive processes for recall and understanding.
Full sentence manipulatives allow students to practice producing more complex Syntax and writing.
Providing physical representations of parts of a sentence activates learners' mental processes.
Short breaks that include mindfulness quiet the brain to allow for improved thinking and emotional regulation.
Brain breaks that include movement allow learners to refresh their thinking and focus on learning new information.
We take in information through all our senses.
Connecting information to music and dance can support Short-term and Long-term Memory by engaging auditory processes, Emotions, and physical activity.
Research shows physical activity improves focus and creativity.
Incorporating multiple senses with strategies like chewing gum, using a vibrating pen, and sitting on a ball chair supports focus and Attention.
Using earplugs or headphones can increase focus and comfort.
Tossing a ball, beanbag, or other small object activates physical focus in support of mental focus.
Visual supports, like text magnification, colored overlays, and guided reading strips, help students focus and properly track as they read.
Web-based dictionaries and thesauruses can serve as visual and audio resources for students to expand their Vocabulary knowledge.
Research has shown that students write longer pieces with stronger quality when they use word processing software.
Word sorts are multisensory activities that help learners identify patterns and group words based on different categories.
