Mac OS X, Apple’s operating system, has many built in services that can be used with many applications (native operating system applications and some third party applications).
One service feature is speaking text. I will use Safari, Apple’s built in web browser, for example. While surfing online, if you come across a page with a lot of text, click and drag to highlight the selected area of text. Click on the name of the application, in this case – Safari, select Services, select Speech, and then select Start Speaking Text. Mac OS X will read the highlighted text.
This could be useful to allow students to hear how sentences sound, listen to pronunciation of new vocabulary words, and/or listen to news stories while doing something else.
** One thing to note: the computer voice(s) in Mac OS X, 10.4 (Tiger) sounds very computer-like. In Mac OS X, 10.5 (Leopard), there is a new voice called, “Alex” that incorporates a lot of new technology that makes Alex sound closer to life-like with pauses, intonations, and breaths.
