Text-to-speech (TTS) is a newly developed technology that reads written texts aloud. It is now possible to study more accessible and more efficiently with text-to-speech. Since audio is an important and growing segment of this education technology revolution.
What is Text to Speech?
Text-to-speech is a newly improving technology that reads written content aloud to users. The usage areas of text-to-speech software expand, including social media platforms, websites, and even the education field. TTS tools can also be added to web browsers like Chrome. Text-to-speech programs were effective in allowing students to access the reading material. All kinds of text files, as well as audiobooks, can be read aloud.
What is the Purpose of Text to Speech?
Text-to-speech aims to help people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, struggling with reading, and being visually impaired. However, anyone interested in gaining advantages from this newly emerging technology is welcome to do so.
Why Should You Consider Using Text to Speech While Studying?
Each student has a different learning style, and students who are learning better aural can prefer using text-to-speech. Text-to-speech tools are designed to improve reading comprehension and allow everyone to learn quickly. Also, students with learning disabilities such as ADHD or reading disabilities and special education strengthen their reading skills with text-to-speech.
Surely, you don’t have to be an auditory learner to study text-to-speech. If you want to make a change while studying to improve your learning process, you can give a chance to text-to-speech technology/assistive technology.
How to Use Text to Speech While Studying?
Sometimes you may have many PDFs, slide shows, and texts to read and comprehend. In such cases, you don’t have to try to read every written content. You can use text to speech feature and listen to the content. Text-to-speech software can be more than helpful for language learners, giving them a chance to hear the proper pronunciation.
How to Use Text-to-Speech on Microsoft Word
One of the most common platforms students and teachers use is Microsoft Word. There is no need for an extra extension that will allow you to use it on web pages, Google Docs, or an app for using text-to-speech with Word.
To activate text-to-speech on your Word document:
- Open a Word document and write whatever you want
- Click the “Review” button at the top of the page
- Click the “Read Aloud” button at the top left of the page
How to Use Text to Speech on Microsoft PowerPoint?
Another most frequently used program by students is Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft also provides its text-to-speech feature without an extension.
To activate text-to-speech on your PowerPoint document:
- Open a PowerPoint document and select the slide or the text box you want to listen aloud
- In the toolbar, click the “Aa” button
- Select the “Text Box” option
- Type or copy-paste your text into the text box.
- In the toolbar, click the microphone icon.
How to Use Text-to-Speech on PDFs?
You can listen to your PDF document aloud using various internet extensions or downloading apps.
The preferred text-to-speech apps or extensions can vary according to your device.
How Text to Speech Helps Students?
Especially when there is a lot of content you have to go through, you can feel overwhelmed. In these cases, you can consider using text-to-speech to improve your studying.
Text-to-speech can help you with:
- Improve your comprehension
- Increased information recall
- Saving time
- Multitasking
- Increased ability to pay attention
- Improved word recognition
- Improved motivation
1- Improve Your Comprehension
While reading a text, you can be lost in thoughts, and once you have finished reading, you will realize you did not understand the content.
2- Increased Information Recall
When you have to read a lot of stuff, you can be confused or even not remember the content. But if you listen to the texts via text-to-speech, you can use different high-quality human voice options for each course and enhance overall literacy skills.
3- Saving Time
Reading all the course books and novels you have as an assignment can be quite overwhelming at some point, even if you like reading. Also, reading takes a lot more time than listening, so your projects cannot be done on time all the time.
4- Multitasking
While reading something, it is pretty hard to deal with something else. But you can multitask if you listen to your course materials with text-to-speech.
5- Increased Ability to Pay Attention
Sometimes it is easier to pay attention to auditory content/ audio files than written ones. Reading for a long time can make you sleepy and tired; thus, your attention span will shorten.
But listening to your course materials via text-to-speech can increase your ability to pay attention because listening is much easier when it is long-termed.
6- Improved Word Recognition
Occasionally, you may not remember or know a word in the text you are reading. It is possible to guess the meaning of a word through the context, but guessing is more complicated if you are reading it.
It leads to powerful educational assistance for students with vision impairments. Text-to-speech supports struggling readers as they learn.
7- Improved Motivation
Using text-to-speech will contribute to your study skill development. When you develop your studying skills, you will feel more motivated, and your success will increase.
