WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
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A Guide For Teachers Margit Gade
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEXT-TO-SPEECH A Guide for Teachers
Preface The Basic Knowledge What is a ‘Text-to-Speech’ program When Should TTS Be Used Modes of Reading The Goals of Reading More on Reading-by-listening-and-looking Vocabulary and Knowledge about Language Use RwR – A Reading Technique Choosing a Good Text What is OCR? Choosing a TTS program Getting Started The Student’s Encounter with TTS Learn to Read the First Day at School Older students Problem-Solver Concluding Remarks
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PREFACE Dear Reader: It is natural for the brain to control our breathing. It is natural for the brain to register pain. It is natural for the brain to learn speech – but it is not natural for the brain to learn to read. When we learn to read, our brains must create new pathways, crisscrossing those naturally created. Moreover, these new ”reading paths” must be created before we are 10 years old, or there is a high probability that we will never be able to read well enough to complete an education. For some brains, it is easy to create these special pathways. For others, it is difficult. But whatever sort of brain you may have – the knowledge, the experience, and the opportunities that are stored in written language must be accessible to all. In 1998, I was employed by a Danish school for young people (14-17 years old) with reading and writing difficulties. From day one, I was eager to employ all the tools of the trade to educate my students: to teach them phonemes, morphemes, reading training, motivation, and reading training again. My expectation was that students would get better, develop, and become capable of completing an education. But I grew wiser. After a while, it dawned on me that students were not getting much out of my well-planned lessons, and it soon became clear to me that working with phonemes and decoding had very little effect. It was as if most students forgot what they had learned by the following day. The students desperately wanted to learn to read, but they quickly lost interest in my teaching. They discovered that time after time I subjected them to the same lesson they had already had. The same boring, easy texts and the same weird sound rules that were impossible to distinguish or remember. www.texttospeech.dk
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Gradually, as I grew to know the students, they opened up and told me about their lives and their different ways of coping. I learned that a great many of them lived in a parallel society in the sense that they could not participate in much of our communication. Therefore, they missed opportunities and a lot of information with the result that they often did not know or understand what was going on around them. I decided to find another route to knowledge and communication and delved seriously into the use of computers and “text-to-speech” (TTS) programs. At that point, many people were worried about the advent of computers and digital learning tools. They feared that the students would never learn to read if they ’cheated their way to reading’ first – and I harbored this doubt as well for the first few years. Fundamentally, reading has to do with getting information and understanding from a written text. So, if you want to read something you can’t decode, of course, you should use TTS – it’s just another way of reading. I view the ability to read as a ’tool’. This means that it is less important how you read as long as it is effective and you get the knowledge that is in the text. With that said, I have to point out that I think that everyone who can learn to read relatively painlessly must learn to read. If you can read a text, a road sign, or a menu without the use of technology, everything is much easier. It is practical, and the information comes more quickly. Think of text-to-speech as a supplement to teaching, and let students use it to a greater or lesser degree as they need it. I hope that I can communicate in this little book my knowledge and experience of the use of TTS in the classroom and inspire you to incorporate it into your teaching in a conscious and expedient way. Everyone should have the opportunity to share in the knowledge and understanding locked in written language.
Margit Gade Skive, Denmark, 2013
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MODES OF READING
In this chapter, 3 different modes of reading are presented: ing� d a e R f des o o Reading-by-listening M “ r hapte c e Reading-by-listening-and-looking h t from t p r e c Reading-by-looking Ex
When you are counseling students on the best ways to work, you will need to be able to distinguish between different modes of reading. That is why it is important for us to use the same words and concepts about these ways of reading, so we have a precise form of communication that cannot be misunderstood. Many different designations are used in TTS programs with synthetic voices. I have decided to use my own concepts, based on the senses the particular mode of reading makes use of. READING-BY-LISTENING Students listen exclusively (and do not look at the text). When parents read aloud to their children or teachers read aloud to their students, they are engaged in reading-by-listening. We also use this mode when we listen to audiobooks. Once, it was common to find audiobooks on CDs, but most are now found on the Internet, and we listen to them on an MP3 player or a telephone. But you can also read-by-listening from your screen. That is, you have a text on your screen and let the TTS program read it aloud.
Reading-by-listening is appropriate when you want to have a good reading experience or to review a text you read earlier.
www.texttospeech.dk For many who engage in reading-by-listening (and especially beginning readers), it is a great help if the reading-by-listening process is supported by photos or drawings, since illustrations are grasped immediately and help establish the content while you are listening. 5
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When slow readers read texts during class, they often find that they cannot finish reading it before the work moves on to the next level. These students would benefit greatly from TTS, so they would be able to keep up with the pace of the class, which is crucial to a student’s continued motivation and learning.
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEXT-TO SPEECH is easy and quick to read (40 pages) and provides a basic knowledge of how to include Text-to-Speech in the classroom. For more information check out www.texttospeech.dk
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RwR – A READING TECHNIQUE
ue” q i n h c ng Te i d a e R This section may be the most important one. R - AIt demonstrates a technique w R “ r e hear a text but also understand the conto ensure that students do not ptonly ha c e h t tents.erpt from Exc RWR stands for Reflection While Reading
When we read, a whole series of thoughts lurks just below the surface. If you are a practiced reading-by-looking reader, you hardly notice that you are thinking as you read. But if you find that it is difficult to read a text or understand it, the process becomes fatiguing. Without methods to combat this, you can quickly reach a level of frustration. Think about brushing your teeth. When we were little, it was hard even to reach the toothbrush or to get the toothpaste onto the brush, and it took a terribly long time. Now, we know exactly what to do. It has become rote. We do it again and again. It is no longer fatiguing – in fact, we almost don’t think about it. In other words, we have gradually developed an internal strategy for ‘this is how I brush my teeth.’ www.texttospeech.dk
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When it comes to reading, our working method or pattern of thoughts is often hidden – as an underlying strategy. But it is important for us to show students how they can tackle the work of reading so it does not become a technique they more or less randomly grasp along the way. I have developed a model that visualizes the metacognitive processes that take place while reading. That is, the thoughts that monitor your reading. The model consists of 5 steps, and each step will be shown with an illustration. Together, they constitute a reading strategy that can help students to a better comprehension of what they read. First of all, students are encouraged to take short, thoughtful breaks after reading only a little bit of the text at a time. Then, they are guided through thoughts such as: What did I learn? Do I understand the meaning of the words? Does the new material fit with what I already know? And, as the final component of the model, the student is to evaluate whether the little bit of text is understood well enough or whether, for example, it is necessary to re-read it.
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READ A BIT OF TEXT.
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WHAT DID I LEARN?
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ARE THERE NEW WORDS THAT NEED EXPLAINING?
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DOES IT FIT WITH WHAT I READ BEFORE? DOES IT FIT WITH WHAT I KNOW? 9
DOES ANYTHING NEED EXPLAINING? CAN I MOVE ON?
THE STUDENTS’ INTRODUCTION TO TTS When students are to be introduced to TTS, you should think hard about when and how it will take place. I find that things work best when the whole class learns at the same time and, preferably, as early as the first grade. As a rule, very young students think it is exciting, fun, and cool. And since they are not readers yet, it is also very usable and necessary for them. Older students who are introduced to TTS because they are having difficulty keeping up with the pace of the class associate it with a defeat, and it is much more difficult to turn it into a good experience.
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In the beginning, a lot of small mistakes may appear, and sometimes you only need a single word to be able to correct the mistake. Here, I go through the problems that come up most often, and which you can undoubtedly solve yourself.
www.texttospeech.dk I CAN’T HEAR THE TTS I CAN’T HIGHLIGHT THE TEXT I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE VOICE IS SAYING IF THE USE OF TTS IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR THE STUDENT -
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Free version of the book: What You Need to Know about Text-to-Speech A Guide for Teachers You are welcome to share it with your freinds and colleagues. Margit Gade Skive, Denmark 2013
Learn more at: www.texttospeech.dk
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Margit Gade Margit Gade (b. 1966, Denmark) is a certified teacher with a Diploma of Education and a bachelor degree in Special Education. She has several years’ teaching experience from the Danish primary and lower secondary school and a private school for dyslexic students. Over the years she has also conducted courses for teachers concerning the use of IT in teaching as an including and differentiating tool. Books by Margit Gade
Kompensatorisk it, it-hjælpemidler i undervisningen, Forlaget Malling Beck 2006 (Compensatory it, - it tools in teaching, Publishers: Malling Beck 2006)
Dansk med it - Vis mig hvordan! Akademisk Forlag 2012. (Danish with it – Show me how!, Publishers: Akademisk Forlag 2012)
The illustrator of this book is Bjarne Svoldgaard Nielsen, affectionately known as TegneBjarne. Educated as a character animator, he makes his living from illustrating books, drawing comic strips and animation. His interests span all things creative and he also practises street magic. He likes to refer to his crafts as “working with everything magical”. You can see further art works of his by following him on Facebook at TegneBjarne or by clicking the big pencil above.
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