You can use speech synthesis with text processors to generate spoken language, linked with text that you can follow along.

 

Qtranslate

This is a free system, which links in with Google speech and translate. You can use this anywhere that you can highlight text, for instance with text in WORD, or even directly with web pages. See here here how to set it up.

You can set Qtranslate to read text as soon as you highlight anything. You set this by first right clicking on the icon in the taskbar. Then select mouse mode. Then select ‘show translation and read’.  This uses Google (see below), and shows the translation as well. It works with most text (including WORD) – even directly on most web pages, although it does of course depend on a web connection.

 

 

 

Google Translate

A different approach is to just use Google translate directly. This means you have a single female voice, the speed is standard (and goes slow every other time), and it only reads the complete text. However, you can see an English translation at the same time if there are parts you are having problems with. Best if you have a larger amount of separate text to work with.

 

 

 

Textaloud

 

My favourite separate program is Textaloud , coupled with the French Voices ‘Acapela Antoine 22’, and ‘Ivona Céline’.

You can put any French text into this – just use copy and paste. Alternatively, It integrates with Microsoft WORD, and manages anything you can put into this.

 

The big advantage of using this program is that you can change the voices easily, and also alter the speaking rate. I like to use this with me reading some text aloud, at the same time as listening to the speech from the program. The trick is to slow the rate down so that you can just about keep pace with it. As you improve, you can speed it up to normal speech rate. "Ça marche bien !"

You can also record sound files (a whole book if you want), which you can listen to separately.  However, the main point of this approach is to have the redundancy of speech + text, and to develop the relationship between the two.

Unfortunately, Textaloud costs £27.65, the Antoine voice cost $35, and the Céline voice costs €39 (I think they used to be a lot cheaper!)

 

 

 

 

Texts to Use

 

The main idea is to use this approach to develop your ability to listen to French, and to lead into being able to speak it correctly. However, ideally you want to work with text which you can also understand, so the same principles of matching to a high level apply here.

 

You can therefore use anything you are currently reading - see the Reading section under Resources.

 

Unfortunately, you can't copy and paste stuff from Kindle, so you have to get text from online sources. As always, the lower levels are the more difficult to source.