For this class, my students are going to talk about present-day work conditions, so I thought that it would be a great opportunity to introduce them to some cultural aspects of Britain, to be absolutely precise, Victorian Britain.
In this post, I created a video with a set of Victorian characters speaking about what it was like for them to work in factories, focusing on their timetable, their rights, wages, and so on.
I’m well aware that one would expect the workers to talk as working-class people did in those times, but I think that it would have been too hard for my students to understand them, and apart from that, I couldn’t find a text-to-speech model that had this option (it was literally reading ‘Oi!’ as eu-ai :D).
To give the activity that extra wow effect, tomorrow I’ll put my hand to setting up a chatbot, but for the time being, let’s call it a day.
Nighty night!!!
Right! This morning I set up a chatbot using Mizou. Looks good although as I configured it so that students could interact with Dickens (who, by the way speaks with an American accent!), it seems to me that on some occasions, Dickens’ speech is going to be a little advanced for B2 students. In anycase, what students must do here is answer the questions related to present-day working conditions and compare them with those of the working-class people in Victorian times.
Click on the link below to try it out.