Abstract:

This multi-media presentation proposes a week long, student-centered lesson plan for a classroom presentation using freeware or inexpensive text-to-speech software to assist in listening, speaking and writing error correction.

Rather than have students correct marked errors, text-to-speech programs allow the student to see their errors as well as hear them and learn new vocabulary. A bonus is additional I.T. experience.

Summary:

In a typical classroom there are numerous students with a wide range of second language abilities, distinctive learning styles, social and linguistic challenges, and barriers which stand between the students and fluency; these barriers may include fossilization in areas such as pronunciation and writing.

Language teachers now have access to various computer-assisted learning mechanisms for their students. New and often standard operating system technologies such as text reading devices, which have made quantum strides towards enhancing natural sounding speech, are user friendly and under utilized as a language acquisition devices.

An essay written by a student can be pasted into a text reader and be read back to the student in a variety of English accents (British, American). The teacher corrected version can then be added to the text reader.

Standard, colloquial, collocated phrases can also be substituted by the teacher, replacing the students' attempts to use their limited lexis to express themselves.

The student can repeatedly compare his/her version to the teacher's version.

This C.A.L.L. lesson plan incorporates these text-to-speech capabilities into a standard writing assignment prompted by a content-based reading. Along with a teacher centered writing model and student writing assignments, this week-long lesson plan requires a student presentation.

A teacher can just as quickly correct the errors then reproduce the corrected version in a digital format, perhaps even quicker than hand correcting one draft after another then re-reading and marking the students-corrected second draft