I created this animation for my Level 5 Listening/Speaking class. We will begin a unit on intelligent machines in two weeks, and our textbook reading is about artificial voices. Because one of our course objectives is to raise awareness and correct use of suprasegmental features of English, the opportunity to compare and contrast NS and artificial voices was too great to pass up. I simply typed the text from the book into the text-to-speech boxes on xtranormal and this is the animation I plan to share with my students. Students will follow along in their books as the artificial voice reads the text. Then, we will have a discussion about the features of the artificial voice that do not match those of native speakers. Because students will also be getting content information from the reading, we will continue to discussing content questions. Wish me luck!
Just to follow up:
ReplyDeleteI tried this out with my class last week. It went over really well. We tried to imitate the robot voice--very funny, and I think a useful exercise to increase awareness of suprasegmental features.