The Effect of Text-to-speech Software on the Reading Skill of Poor Readers of English in a Bengali Medium School

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of text-to-speech software used by K-YAN Projectors on the poor readers of English in a government sponsored Bengali medium school. A majority of the learners of Bengali medium government sponsored schools have very little exposure to English. They learn English as their second language which is also a foreign language to them. They can scarcely pronounce words correctly and are seldom fluent at reading as well as speaking English. This generates a general fear and dislike for English among the Bengali medium students which also has a serious consequence on their confidence. These learners fail to attain all the four language learning skills namely- listening, reading, speaking and writing. To correct this problem and to give our selected language learners proper language exposure we installed ‘Balabolka’, free text-to-speech software, in our K-YAN device and arranged some consecutive listening-reading classes and then recorded their improvement in reading skill, confidence, fluency and pronunciation via statistical measures. The statistics showed positive growth in learners' confidence, fluency, pronunciation and reading skill. This experiment clearly highlights the necessity of deploying text-to-speech software in crowded English language learning classes in government sponsored Bengali medium schools of West Bengal.