Sharon Domier's blog

I am going to add a few links here so that I can find them again and possibly flesh them out further – or find someone who wants to test them out.

I believe so strongly in the need to pair reading with listening whenever possible in order to build real fluency, but it is only recently that software is allowing us to do this more conveniently. I used a Kindle book in English recently that was tied to the audiobook version and allowed me to flip between the two or use them at the same time. So I did and the text was highlighted as the audio portion ran. This was brilliant and made me really want the same thing for Japanese. I chatted about this with a Japanese instructor the other day and she was excited to hear about the English one because she said that she often gets lost when trying to do the two at the same time. The information (and wording about Kindle books is here) What you are looking for is to make sure that you have the Audible narration as well as the Kindle e-book. The category is eBooks with Audible. Likewise, another feature that is super interesting for language learners/growing readers is Word Wise, that provides explanations above difficult terms.

Now I am on a hunt to find the same thing for Japanese. I have been buying my ebooks from eBookJapan because I can use an American credit card and my IP address, country of residence isn’t an issue. I can also purchase from audiobook.jp. But there are no audiobooks in eBookJapan, nor are there texts in audiobook.jp. I also haven’t seen the option in BookWalker or honto.jp.

So, Amazon Japan? I check the website and there is no link for eBook with Audio. There is for Word Wise, but when I select that it limits me to English language books. Can it be that the technology hasn’t made it to the Japanese market yet? It may be. I wonder why not. I did find this website talking about it though, so I am going to read through it and see what I can figure out.

Having checked with friends in Japan who have both Kindle and Audible memberships, there isn’t a whispersync option available to them. One person MacGuyvers it by listening to the audiobook on his iPhone and reading the text on his iPad. That is what it takes at the moment and it is better than nothing.

But I may have found an application that has been designed for content creators to incorporate audio into their own ebooks. One is called kataribe (storyteller). It worked on an iphone/ipad. This review claims it to be a good option for Japanese students with learning disabilities. And that means it is also likely good for L2 students. The app itself has almost no instructions though, and I would much rather create things on a laptop with a keyboard than my ipad, so I am going to hunt down some samples and web pages.
?????

The Kataribe application for iPad/iPhone offers tadoku graded reader creators an amazing opportunity to incorporate voice recordings tied to text in the books. It is a very simple app to use and I would love to see it tested by tadoku folks.

https://apps.apple.com/it/app/?????????????-????/id1202733539

There are other options for iOS out there like Hinagiku:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/????-?????????????????????/id1124643029
and
Nojigiku is the viewer.

??? (wadaico) is an add-in to Word that uses automatic generation of audio using the Microsoft speech platform. There is a brief video showing how it works.

oh, this page is not well organized, but I finally hit the right terminology to start finding stuff. There is a much greater interest in Japan now for accessibility, and more tools coming out. Good news.

From the Access Reading site. All kinds of add-in tools to explore for content creators.