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Rapidly advancing technologies provide varied ways for teachers to provide course content and for students to consume them. Among them, audio is a powerful medium of content provision and consumption that has become an integral part of modern education technology.
Done right, it can be immensely beneficial for educational institutions, course designers, educators, and learners worldwide. Here is everything you need to know about implementing audio in education and leveraging TTS technology to achieve it.
The Role of TTS in Education
TTS or text-to-speech technology converts custom text input into spoken voice output. Its popularity in education is on an upward trajectory, as it redefines the conventional learning process for students. Feature-rich TTS platforms like Listnr enable the users to choose from over 75+ different languages and 570+ unique voice styles to generate their custom text.
This allows educators and organizations to:
- Cater to a wider and more diverse population of learners,
- Present the course content to them in their preferred language and style, and
- Provide equal learning opportunities
Listnr uses AI to generate high-quality realistic voices and facilitates easy customization of the audio’s speed, style, pronunciations, pause durations, etc. It leads to a more human-sounding voice that appeals to the learners rather than a methodical one.
TTS technology aids bimodal presentation, allowing the students to read along with the highlighted text while listening to it in the background. With this, the students can listen to the text they are typing and better recognize and rectify the errors. They can thus focus on better understanding the material instead of merely reading the words and decoding them.
That results in:
- Better content comprehension
- Enhanced reading skills, word recognition, and pronunciation
- Increased attention
- Increased information retention
- Improved morale, confidence, and motivation among students
Besides this, TTS can prove immensely beneficial for students with disabilities in learning and give them a better learning experience.
Enhancing Learning in Students with Disabilities
TTS is an incredible assistive technology for students diagnosed with learning disabilities like ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and autism spectrum disorder (characterized by challenges with speech, nonverbal communication, and social skills).
It can even benefit students with dyslexia, reading difficulties, or visual impairments and younger learners struggling with reading and pronouncing new words.
Through bimodal content provision, TTS platforms not only show the students how the words are spelled but also read them out loud. Thus it becomes an effective medium for disabled learners to consume course content, and reading does not hinder their learning.
Using robust platforms makes the learning material easily accessible for the students. Listnr provides an embeddable audio-player widget that allows the users to embed their audio anywhere, from text files to website pages.
Students can hence easily consume the material on any device, which is especially beneficial for those who have to commute and cannot dedicate time to read the assigned content.
What Does The Research Say?
Studies have found that many students diagnosed with dyslexia benefitted from TTS. The research team provided small groups with training in TTS software for six weeks and saw significant improvements in comprehension of audio and textual content, fluency, and motivation to read.
A group of Taiwanese students memorized over twelve more words for a spelling bee than usual, using TTS. It implies that TTS improves English vocabulary in international students and helps them grasp the language better.
In another study, over 164 ninth-grade students with reading disabilities used TTS software for ten weeks. They reported significant improvements in vocabulary in reading comprehension, not only during TTS use but also when reading content from the paper.
Similarly, a different study found that TTS allowed students to access the reading materials effectively. The students found the technology favorable, especially the ones in grades six-eight.
How to Leverage It the Right Way?
To ensure that your students get the most out of TTS, here are some things to consider:
- Have a high-quality, realistic, AI-powered, and human-sounding TTS voice from platforms like Listnr. The right human voice improves reading comprehension and is better for the learning experience as compared to methodical and robotic voices.
- Leverage bimodal learning to focus on reading and a deeper understanding of the material.
- Present the content at optimal audio speed (approx. 140-180 words/minute). Some students might want to excessively speed up the voice to finish reading quickly. It hampers their understanding of the material.
As mentioned above, leveraging Listnr allows for optimal customization of the audio speed, pauses, and style. That helps the students better grasp the learning.
- Only select a small portion of the text at a time for the TTS input. If you or your students select a large chunk of text at once, they might lose focus in the middle of listening to the lengthy audio. That negatively affects their learning.
To know more about leveraging AI-powered TTS platforms for effective education and improved learning experience, start with Listnr for free!
FAQ:
Does iPhone have speech-to-text?
An iPhone facilitates easy speech-to-text conversation through keyboard dictation. Be it messages, chats, or notes, you can dictate text wherever typing is required. The text can be processed in multiple required languages. On the other hand, you can even convert written text to speech through robust AI-powered platforms like Listnr on Mac OS.
What TTS do YouTubers use?
Experts generally recommend AI-powered TTS platforms like Listnr to help YouTubers generate high-quality, realistic, and human-sounding voices from their desired script. The platform offers a vast library of over 570+ different voice styles and 75+ different languages to choose from. It further allows easy audio distribution on social platforms and websites through embeddable audio-player widgets.
How do I add voices to Microsoft text-to-speech?
To add voices to Microsoft’s text-to-speech platform Azure, you need to enter the desired text into the text-box, wait for it to be synthesized, and then play or download the audio.
How do you implement text-to-speech?
To implement text-to-speech, all you need to do is enter the script in the Listnr platform’s text box, wait for the synthesizer to convert it into audio, and download it in MP3 or WAV formats. The platform allows you to choose from over 75+ languages and 570+ voice styles and customize the audio’s speed, pause duration, pronunciation, etc.