Text to Speech

As a Language Arts teacher, I am always looking for ways to help my students proofread and revise their writing. One of the most simple ways to do this is to have a student read their paper aloud to themselves and listen to what doesn't sound "right". This simple activity can help show inconsistencies in the flow of the writing and trouble areas in the grammar. A lot of students don't like to read their writing because it is tough for them to hear the problems when they read it themselves. If you partner kids up you can have them read out loud to each other which will help. Another option is if you have your kids go to http://www.vozme.com/. When you go to this site you can have your students copy and paste their writing into the text field. The site will then create a audio file of that text that your students can listen to. It also gives you an option to download an MP3 file if needed. This is great because it is a digital voice reading with no emotion or attachment to the text. This will allow students to simply listen to the text and identify trouble spots in the writing.