Post date: Jan 28, 2014 3:2:2 PM
I used a Mac OS X for this assignment. Text-to-speech is a built-in feature. However, getting it to work with Mac Word 2011 was a bit of a challenge. I tried looking it up in Help and had no luck at all. After reading through several blogs, I finally found some help on a YouTube video. I had to go into my system preferences, click speech, and then select speak selected text with the chosen keys are pressed. Mine is set to Option+Esc.
Text-to-speech can be very motivating for students in writing. The act of using text-to-speech is engaging. When their writing is read back to them they can listen for proper word choice and sentence structure. It helps identify common spelling mistakes and encourages the writer to make the appropriate changes.