Speech in Action

Outfit7.com’s Talking Tom Cat 2

I am investigating the possibilities of Apple’s iPad, to find out the kinds of activities and functionality that are available in the increasingly wide field of applications. (Er, yes, I admit it: this involves play and enjoyment and laughter). This is all with a view to producing a second edition of Streaming Speech: Listening and Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English as an iPad app.

A free application that I really have enjoyed is Outfit7′s Talking Tom Cat 2. Which imitates anything you say to him. You can record and mail a video of the cat’s performance. As easy as pie. So it should be easy (naive little me thinks) to build in a function whereby a student can do a pronunciation performance of some kind, and post it to a teacher, or a friend, for evaluation.