Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

Here is another free etext reader that works effectively, and it has particularly impressed me. This one is not a demo or partial version. Even if you are already familiar with another etext reader, you may find it worthwhile to have a look at Speakonia. I’ve listed it on my Productivity page.

Speakonia (downloadable program) is a free text-to-speech etext reader built using Microsoft Speech Technology. Speakonia offers considerable flexibility and several useful features. You can copy and paste text into the Speakonia interface and have that text read to you. Or, you can have Speakonia read any highlighted text. Speakonia also offers a “Read the Web” feature, but I find that it works best to highlight text on a webpage and then have the text read. By dragging the bottom of the interace up, Speakonia can be collapsed on your screen to leave a convenient toolbar. This “toolbar” can be positioned wherever you wish on the desktop while highlighted text is read. You then have access to buttons that allow you to pause and resume reading at will. You can choose from standard Microsoft voices and adjust both pitch and reading rate. Speakonia even gives you the option of saving text as audio wav files.

Speakonia can also be used as an invaluable editing tool for your own writing. You can type directly into the Speakonia interface and then hear it read what you have written. You can either save what you have written as a text file or copy and paste it into a document in another program. Speakonia has been developed by CFS Technologies, and you can download the program from their website.

This program runs in Windows only.