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Continuing improvements in speech recognition technology may lead to some useful CALL applications to ESL/EFL: "By the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR), oral tasks can be practiced more easily because it is the computer itself which understands and gives feedback to the learner so that the learner feels much more involved, and in contrast to traditional methods, a learner can enjoy engaging in activities more."

"Several new tools allow you to type the text you would normally say, and have text-to-speech technology (TTS) generate the voiceover for you. Later, if the content changes, editing the typed text will be way easier than re-recording an entire voiceover. Read on to learn about three different TTS tools for PowerPoint." As the text-to-speech technology gets better, this is a great solution, and has the advantage of giving students some practice in listening/reading.

A brief presentation (1:02 min.) of what the Wiki-to-Speech tool can do. W-to-S allows you to use your computer's (Mac or PC) text-to-speech capability to record the comments written into your slideshow. For use with mobile technology as well, W-to-Speech looks like a great way to enhance presentations posted to an asynchronous site like SlideShare.

"Speech Recognition is a free Google Docs Add-on that will allow to you speak to create a document. " T/H to R Byrne.

Appears to be able to translate text to speech in multiple languages. Worth a try.

A corpus based on transcripts of academic speech events at the U. of Michigan. Includes more informal speech as well, and so is very ueful for academic learners.

A lesson plan for writing dialogue/short play online at a cartoon creation site. "Lesser controlled computer room writing activity. This activity can be adapted to the level and grammar area of your choice. Level: Intermediate & above Location: Computer room Topic: Writing direct speech in a cartoon Language Focus: Direct speech, present tenses etc Time: 30 minutes"

"This paper focuses on the evolution of my awareness of the importance of teaching connected speech forms in ESL/EFL classrooms. It also includes my recent efforts to compile the literature on the topic and formulate the rules underlying continuous speech forms including such concepts as word stress, utterance stress and timing, elisions, reductions, insertions, intrusions, simple transitions, assimilations, contractions, and combinations of all of the above."

Explains how to use Dragon Naturally Speaking (by Nuance), a speech-to-text tool, to leave narrative feedback on student work. Though not free, Dragon can considerably reduce teacher time in making comments and vastly improve feedback to students on their writing.

This avatar based text-to-speech gives students a chance to making talking characters for their website, and give themselves practice in listening and speaking. Fun, too.

This is a really nice example of how students use a podcast to present a project and self-evaluate their own speaking.

Yeh uses a podcast to listen to and comment on students' speeches.

This is another way to turn a PowerPoint presentation into something more useful. You can start with pictures or PowerPoint files, then add text to describe each slide. The text will be converted to speech (20 languages/ 70+ voices) as a voiceover. The completed slides and audio are then converted to video and published on YouTube. This might be a fun project for students, and may possibly help with their writing skills.

This is a must website to find out more about apps for children with speech, auditory, and visual special needs.

A downloadable, free web accessibilty checklist: "Whether your course includes one web assignment or is a full-blown online journey, you're developing and managing online content for your students, who may have disabilities like "…blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these. "And just like your instructional material, your online content should be understandable-and accessible-by your diverse students. Your online content should include the basic web accessibility features."

Ignatia suggests using a private wiki because of text-to-speech options, and secure social media-driven learning locations, such as a movie archive on Facebook. Subtitle options may be difficult with, e.g., YouTube, if you have an accent, but it can be done with an audio recorder (though it is labor intensive). This might be a good blog to follow further.

Another photo editing tool with a focus on cutesy effects, e.g., add a speech bubble or text, frames, change to an oil painting, etc.

Great idea for presentations, whether yours or your students. You need to have a verifiable account and website where links will go, e.g., a blog. You then enable your YouTube account for external links. You can add annotations as speech bubble, note title, spotlight, or label. You control where it is inserted in the video.

This site allows you to practice speaking with any video (previews, ads, short clips) listed on the site. A speech recognition platform awards a score on how well your pronunciation matches that modeled in the video clip. Has quite a few categories, e.g., business, daily life, news & politics, technology, etc. So you can practice in specific subject areas.

"Within YouTube there is a free tool for creating audio slideshows. You supply the images and YouTube supplies the audio track. You can pick from thousands of audio tracks to match to your slides. After adding your slides and selecting an audio track you can add speech bubbles to your slides." "Creating an audio slideshow with annotations in YouTube is a good way for students to share the highlights of some basic research that they have conducted. " However, the audio is really just background music. I wonder if it could be adapted to adding a teacher- or student-made spoken audio track. R. Byrne

"ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com and the University of Oregon: Voiceboards, LiveChat, and Quizzes and Surveys. Our newest tool, TCast, allows teachers to record and place audio or video files anywhere in a lesson--in 3 easy steps. Each of these tools really opens up the scope and sequence of lessons centered around spoken language tasks." Jeff Magoto has done a great presentation on how to use ANVILL, which is a wonderful, free, A/V tool available now internationally.