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Articles » Text-to-speech for study » Study accurate pronunciation with Speaking Notepad Speaking Notepad is a powerful and easy tool to learn foreign
languages, study pronunciation, stress and intonation of words and
sentences. Speaking Notepad combines text to speech and computer-assisted
language learning technology to make learning process fast, easy and
entertaining.
Many language learners feel uncertain and self-conscious about their pronunciation
skills. The reason for it may be not only incorrect pronunciation of words,
but also incorrect intonation.
What do we mean when speaking about intonation and why is intonation
so important for those who want to improve their pronunciation skills?
In linguistics, the term "intonation" can be defined as the
variation of pitch of the voice when speaking. Along with the word stress the
intonation represents a significant element of linguistic prosody. In respect
of intonation characteristics all languages can be divided into two large groups.
The languages which use pitch to convey some ideas or concepts, for example,
surprise, irony, etc. or to change a statement to a question, are called intonation
languages: English and French are well-known examples. Some
languages use pitch to recognize words: these are tonal
languages: Thai and Hausa are examples. An intermediate position
is occupied by languages with tonal word accent,
for instance Norwegian or Japanese.
So, the importance of intonation and stress in speaking is hard to
be overestimated. If you want a native speaker to understand you, you should
improve your intonation and speech. There are many strategies
in teaching pronunciation skills, correct word stress and accurate intonation,
here you'll find the most useful of them.
What are the main means of improving intonation while teaching pronunciation?
While teaching pronunciation and especially intonation it's
necessary to remember that the best way to achieve quick result is constant
practicing. First of all you should make up your mind what variant of the language
you want to focus on. For example, English pronunciation differs greatly
from American pronunciation, and their intonation patterns can be different
as well. Then start listening to speech of native speakers as frequently as
possible. You may listen to radio programs, songs, watching TV shows, films
and so on. But the most important is not only to listen to pronunciation, but
to repeat phrases and try to imitate the speakers. However, you can use text
to speech TTS technologies and read aloud programs
which can help you to improve intonation skills and teach stress
and pronunciation.
How to improve intonation skills, stress and speech using TTS programs?
In order to make the fulfillment of pronunciation exercises more comfortable
and efficient you can use Speaking Notepad - a handy text
to speech software - which will make improving your intonation skills
and speech much easier. With Speaking Notepad, powerful
read aloud program, you can pause text reproduction at any moment and repeat
a phrase as many times as you need it. Besides you can set the speed and the
pitch of the voice in accordance with your level of language knowledge. And
finally you can record your favourite parts of texts or dialogues to Mp3 and
Wav audio files and improve your pronunciation skills, intonation and
stress at your convenience. Speaking Notepad being
modern text to speech TTS software supports only intelligible and high-quality
voices. Make teaching pronunciation easy and efficient by downloading
Speaking Notepad - the best read aloud and text to speech program.
Try another text to speech software 1st Read It Aloud
- extremely quick and easy-to-use TTS converter. With 1st Read
It Aloud you make your computer read aloud by selecting the
necessary text and pressing the hot key. Using this handy read aloud program
you can convert emails, notes, texts and other documents to speech without copying
them to clipboard. Press the hot key and listen to natural sounding voice reading
aloud all your texts! Check up your pronunciation and intonation in
one click - download 1st Read It Aloud
right now!
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