This document discusses using text-to-speech applications to promote speaking skills for English language learners. It notes several difficulties English learners face with speaking, including pronunciation, stress/rhythm, vocabulary, and appropriate register. The document proposes having students record paragraphs and send them to teachers, then comparing the recordings to text-to-speech versions to help students identify mistakes. It lists several free text-to-speech websites and tools teachers can use, and provides example lesson plans and references.

1. TESOL 2011 EV FairsText-to-voice Applications to promote Speaking Skill Amany HarounAlKhayat CALL-IS EV Fairs 2011

2. "When it comes to technology in education, you can create it, you can design it, you can produce it, you can legislate it, you can order it,restructure it, give it standards, and write outcomes for it. But the bottom line is that if it is going to happen, teachers have to make ithappen."Jacqueline Goodloe, Washington, D.C., Teacher Web 2.0 tools

3. pronounce the distinctive sounds of a language clearly enough so that people can distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions. use stress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough so that people can understand what is said. EFL learners’ Speaking Difficulties

4. use the correct forms of words. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, or gender. put words together in correct word order. EFL learners’ Speaking Difficulties

5. use vocabulary appropriately. use the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship to the conversation partner. EFL learners’ Speaking Difficulties

6. what evidence is there that using ICT would be a more effective way to achieve my aims and objectives than standard teaching practice? EFL learners’ Speaking Difficulties

7. Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices Any Ideas: 1- Ask your students to record a small paragraph from any particular website and then send them to you as an mp3. Put the same paragraph on any of the TTS websites and make the avatar speak. Text-to-voice

8. - Now, the students will listen to their audio files and will comment on each other’s mistakes. You can do this before or after they listen to the application. They will learn, unlearn and relearn. This can be also an integration of the 4 skills in terms of speaking and listening (through discussion) and Reading (the paragraph) and writing (comments). Any Ideas 

9. Voki.com

10. Vozme.com

11. IVONA.com

12. http://www.sitepal.com/ttswidgetdemo/ Sitepal

13. http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php Oddcast

14. http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=104 sample lesson plans using Voki http://getthemtalking.wikispaces.com/Voki References

15. Amany HarounAlKhayat Email: anaucian@hotmail.com FB: Amany HarounAlKhayat Thank you