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Research Article

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

1 Tushar Kanti Kar & Kausik Chatterjee
2
1 Assistant Teacher of English, Hatgacha Haridas Vidyapith (HS),
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
E-mail: kar.tushar86@gmail.com
Associate Professor, Satyapriya Roy College of Education, & Pic of IGNOU, India
2
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.
Keywords: K-YAN Projectors, English Language Teaching, Text-to-speech software,
Government School

Introduction sponsored schools of our country
belong to parents of low or middle
English language teaching is not new to
our country. English is taught in almost income groups. These students seldom
all the government schools and private get enough exposure to English in their
schools of our country. But still English family, surroundings or even in schools.
is a formidable language to most of the Unlike the English medium schools in
students. They are afraid of it and this vernacular schools, all the subjects are
fear of English ultimately undermines taught in the local language. Therefore,
their confidence. The root cause of this the learners get exposure to English
fear, however, is lack of exposure. Most language only in their English class.
of the students who read in government Besides, they seldom find a chance to

Indian Journal of Educational Technology 139
Volume 3, Issue 2, July 2021