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This Chrome extension does exactly the same thing as the website next to this post, only the extension allows you to have a website read to you at the push of a button.

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Read Aloud uses text-to-speech (TTS) technology to convert webpage text to audio.  It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, and online university course materials.

Read Aloud allows you to select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft.  Some of the cloud-based voices may require additional in-app purchase to enable.

Read Aloud can read PDF, Google Docs, Google Play books, Amazon Kindle, and EPUB (via the excellent EPUBReader extension from epubread.com).

Read Aloud is intended for users who prefer to listen to content instead of reading, those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities, and children learning to read.

To use Read Aloud, navigate to the web page you want to read, then click the Read Aloud icon on the Chrome menu.  In addition, the shortcut keys ALT-P, ALT-O, ALT-Comma, and ALT-Period can be used to Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind, and Forward.  You may also select the text you want to read before activating the extension.  Right clicking on the selected text will provide you with yet another option to activate Read Aloud via the context menu.

To change the voice, reading speed, pitch, or enable text highlighting, go to the Options page either by right clicking on the Read Aloud icon and choose Options, or by clicking the Gear button on the extension popup (you'll need to stop playback to see the Gear button).

Read Aloud is an open-source project.  If you wish to contribute bug fixes or translations, please visit the GitHub page at https://github.com/ken107/read-aloud.

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Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader

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Read aloud the current web-page article with one click, using text to speech (TTS). Supports 40+ languages.

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This website allows you to hear what is written on your page while you read it! This is extremely helpful for comprehension and general focus on your screen.

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Free Text to Speech Online with Realistic AI Voices

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Convert text into ultra-realistic audio. Have any text read aloud with AI Voices. AI text reader for pdfs, books, documents, and webpages.

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This link is extremely helpful when trying to write a debate. It gives you a step by step guide on how to write each part of the debate.

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K S Lane debated at a high-school level for four years and enjoys following debates online.

Whether it was for an English class, as a part of a club, or just for pleasure, almost everyone has had to write a debate at some point or another in their life. However, just because most people have done it before doesn't mean that writing a debate is easy. There are a hundred different things to consider: should you lead by appealing to your audience's emotions or cut straight to the chase with some cold hard facts? How many arguments should you include in your debate? Do you need to add a conclusion? To help you take away the guesswork, this article demonstrates how to structure and write a debate in six easy steps. By following this method you're giving yourself the best possible chance at coming out on top in your next verbal sparring match.

Step One: A Strong Opening

Every good debate starts with a strong opening line. If you're dealing with something emotionally charged, as debate topics tend to be, then starting with a similarly emotional opener is the best way to go. For example, if you were arguing for your country to take in more refugees then an opening line might be something like, "Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be forced to leave your home? To be so scared of violence or other persecution that you and your family have to leave behind everything you've ever known and travel to a new country?" Don't get caught up in the idea that facts are completely separate from emotions, either. Adding a powerful statistic to the opening line of your debate can work just as well. For example, if you were arguing that your school should increase suicide awareness you could start with, "Did you know that close to 800,000 people die of suicide every year?" If your topic isn't obviously emotional then sticking to a surprising or concerning statistic can still inject a bit of feeling into your opening line. You should be aiming to make your audience and your adjudicator sit up a little straighter in their chairs.

Step Two: Defining the Topic

After your opening you need to make the subject that you're talking about crystal-clear to your listeners. To do this, state your topic and your team's position on the topic. For example, "Today we're here to discuss the topic X. As the affirmative/negative side, my team firmly believes that Y." You should also make certain to define any key words in your topic. This doesn't have to be a literal dictionary definition, but could rather be your view on what the word means in the context of the topic or the issue at large. While this may seem pedantic, it's important to do so that you know that you and your opponent are on the same page. It's incredibly hard to debate someone when they have a different idea of what the topic means than you do. If you're not the first speaker in the debate, then you should use this slot to either agree with or contend the definition that your opponent gave. If they didn't give a definition, feel free to provide your own as if you were the first speaker).

Step Three: Signposting

Signposting may seem annoying and unnecessary. If you're a word-enthusiast it can even seem like it's disrupting the flow of your otherwise smooth and lyrical speech. However, it's completely and totally necessary in the structure of a good debate. You may think that you've written the best and most easy to follow debate in the world, but the fact is that the audience isn't you. They don't know the topic you're covering in the depth that you know it and they're certainly not as invested in the debate as you are. They might zone out for a few moments in the introduction and then get completely lost. This is what makes signposting so important; it's a way to simply and effectively remind your listener of what you're talking about and where you're up to in your speech. At the end of your introduction add a few sentences that tells the listener how many points you're going to be making and in what order you're going to be making them. For example, "To begin my case, I'm going to argue X. I'll then move on to demonstrate Y and will conclude by examining Z." At the start of each argument you can then remind the audience of what you're talking about by saying, "Firstly, I'm going to be arguing X." While this may seem simplistic and like you're expecting the audience to have fallen asleep on you, it's actually completely essential and makes your debate easier to follow.

Step Four: Rebuttal

The phrase 'sometimes the best offence is a good defence' isn't just a cliché. If you've ever watched a professional debate you'll know that the most compelling part is usually when one side takes one of the arguments of the opposition and then absolutely shreds it to pieces. While it's fantastic to watch, it's also the most difficult part of any debate to execute correctly. Rebutting arguments forces you to think completely on the spot. You have about thirty seconds to take an argument that your opposition has likely spent hours researching and honing and convincingly refute it. Luckily, there are some strategies that you can use while rebutting that make the challenge a little less daunting. These include:

1. Pre-research: If you've got your debate topic before the day of the debate then the best asset that you have is time. Use it. After you've crafted your own arguments put yourself in your opponent's shoes and try to anticipate what the arguments that they're going to use are. Once you have a good list write out a rebuttal for each of them. This way when you're in the actual debate and hear an argument from your opponent that you'd already anticipated you can whip out a pre-prepared rebuttal complete with facts and figures to boost your credibility, rather than having to come up with something completely on the spot.

2. "What's the point?" If your opposition is arguing for a change to be made there's a key idea you can focus on when you're rebutting them. If your opponent is advocating for some elaborate change of a government policy or social ideology but they've neglected to explain what the benefits to the said change are then that's your opportunity to swoop: "My opponent has explained their proposed change in extreme detail. However, they've failed to explain what the point of the change is." If your interlocutor has explained the benefits of the change, but not very well, then you can use the same approach but soften it a little: "My opponent has stated that his/her proposed changes with have the benefit of X. However, given the amount of effort that would be required to make the changes X simply isn't worth it."

3. Economic Challenges: Bringing up economic challenges is so useful because it works with virtually every debate topic imaginable. Any topic on social justice, a current issue, a governmental policy or something completely left-field will have an economic link. If your opponent says that your country should be letting in more refugees rebut them by explaining the burden on the economy that it would create to relocate so many more people. If they argue that your country should stop letting in refugees, rebut them by talking about the potential that skilled refugees have to benefit the economy. It's an incredibly durable argument which is why it makes for a great on-the-spot rebuttal.

4. Use your own arguments: Twisting your own arguments to rebut an opponent's point is a simple but effective way to mount a defence against your own case. Of course, going overboard and rattling out your entire pre-prepared argument is a huge mistake (what will you talk about later?!) but you can distill the body of your speech into distinct points that you can use to rebut your opposition. For example, if you're debating about tolerance towards refugees and your opponent brings up the idea that refugees can cause societal unrest you can reshape one of your planned arguments, that refugees contribute to multiculturalism and allow the best bits of different cultures to be merged, and say that, "Rather than causing societal unrest refugees actually contribute greatly to society through helping to encourage multiculturalism, which I'll elaborate on in my own arguments later." In one sentence you've rebutted your opponent's argument and also set things up nicely to introduce your own argument when the time comes.

Step Five: Your Arguments

And now we've reached the most important part of your debate; the arguments. To make things easier, I've broken this heading down into four simple subtopics.

1. Deciding what to argue: If you get lucky with your debate topic then twenty arguments for and against might immediately spring to mind. If it's more of a niche topic, however, it may require research to come up with talking points. Look into the background of the issue. Read news articles and opinion pieces and even try browsing some debating websites for ideas. Once you have a really good understanding of the topic the right arguments will jump out at you no matter how difficult your position is.

2. The layout: Writing an argument for a debate is almost the same thing as writing a body paragraph for an essay. You should begin each argument by signposting, ie. "Firstly, I'm going to argue..." and then follow up with a one sentence summary of your argument. After this you need to elaborate on your point a little, give some facts and statistics to legitimise what you're saying, and then at the end link neatly back to the topic of the debate so it's clear to the audience that you're not just giving a passionate rant, but instead are making a carefully calculated point that ties in with a general thesis statement. Generally in a debate the best way to keep your speech going for long enough is to have three arguments. This is the sweet spot between having enough time to flesh out your points and not having to ramble for too long on the same thing. In regards to what order you should put your arguments in, the general consensus is that you should lead with a strong argument and end with one too. If you have an obviously weaker argument try to sandwich it in between the two better ones.

3. Finding evidence: If your topic is one that requires you to dredge up statistics and use experts at every turn then you need to make sure that you're doing it correctly. Inserting the right evidence into your debate makes you more credible, but using the wrong kind of evidence from the wrong kind of sources leaves you vulnerable to attack by the opposition. To find the right sort of evidence to cite the first step is to check the source. If it's a book, is it by a reputable author or published by a reputable house? If it's a website, is it an educational one? A government one? If it's a news article, who wrote it? Secondly, make sure that it's a recent fact or figure. If you're dredging up numbers from the 1980s and your opposition realises it then you're in real trouble. Thirdly, make sure that the evidence is backed up by at least three or more sources. Even if it's a convenient statistic that fits right into your argument it's going to do more harm than good unless you can verify it using other sources. Doing these three things takes time and makes evidence much harder to find, but in the long run it's worth it. Your evidence is the backbone of your argument; if it's not strong enough then the whole thing is going to collapse.

4. Persuasive strategies: In English class most students learn about written persuasive strategies; the ways that journalists and authors try to sway their audience towards a certain position by using humour, metaphors, and appeals to logic. What a lot of people aren't taught is that spoken persuasive strategies are pretty much the same. You can be as colourful in a debate as you would be in a written persuasive piece. You can use similes and alliterations to your heart's content. If you're debating at school then your English teacher will love you for it and if you're preparing your speech for a club or other external debating society you'll still be more well-regarded than people who don't have any 'spark' in their content. It goes without saying that you should keep things respectful- don't insult your opponents and don't use humour where it's not appropriate, but other than the obvious constraints you can (and should) use as many persuasive strategies as you can manage.

Step Six: Conclusion

The conclusion to any piece of writing is one of the most important parts. It sums up the points you've made in the body of your text and leaves the reader with a take home message that should make them feel as if they've gained something by reading your piece. For writing a debate, this rule is no different. Fortunately, aside from being one of the most important bits of your speech, writing a conclusion for a debate is also the easiest part. All you really have to do is sum up the arguments that you've made. Try not to repeat them word for word, but instead rephrase your topic sentences and, if you have the time, include an important statistic or two that you included as evidence. If you're the last speaker in a team debate you need to make sure that you also sum up your team member's best arguments in your conclusion too. At the very end you could choose to firmly restate your position on the subject or perhaps to reiterate to an emotional call that you made in your introduction. Finally, you should thank your audience for listening and your opponent for his or her time. You want to come across as grateful and humble, even if you have just delivered a killer speech.

To Sum Everything Up:

Your speech's structure should read as follows:

Questions & Answers

Question:

How long should a debate be?

Answer:

The length of a debate depends on what level you're debating at. A typical middle school debate probably wouldn't exceed five minutes, while high school and college debates often go over ten minutes. If you're unsure check with your teacher or your head adjudicator; it's important to get the length of your speech right to avoid losing marks.

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Whether it's for school or for an external club, writing a debate is tough. There are many different things to consider; formatting, style, and the arguments themselves are just the tip of the iceberg. To help you remove the guesswork, this article explores how to write a debate in six easy steps.

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Papers & Essays: Crash Course Study Skills #9

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Papers & Essays: Crash Course Study Skills #9

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Papers & Essays: Crash Course Study Skills #9

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Rules on when to use semicolons.

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A great source to help you understand how to start your essays and create ideas on how to outline an essay.

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On College Life and Writing | Bid4papers Blog

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An essay outline is a plan of your academic paper, where you structurize it and organize the main points into paragraphs so it would be easier for you to write an essay.
You can't write an essay without outlining. Fine, you can do that if a low grade is okay for you to get. But those willing to craft a paper that's worth A+ will need to create an essay outline and organize their research in one place before writing.

This guide is here to help you:

understand what is a paper outline,

learn how to write an essay outline,

get outline examples and templates to use when crafting yours.

So, let's a research essay outline journey begin!

What is an Essay Outline?

As you've already guessed it, an essay outline is a short plan of your research paper. Here you write down the main idea of your essay and structurize all arguments into paragraphs to make sure you won't miss anything while writing.

Sure enough, you can write an essay without outlining it. But it will be challenging to do. Outlining is an essential part of the writing process, and all authors do it for their works to impress readers.

Here's why you need an essay outline:

It will help you organize thoughts: when you research the data for your essay, you get tons of information that's hard to remember.

You'll understand the information flow and will be able to structurize it accordingly.

It will help you not to miss anything while writing your essay because you'll have a ready manuscript of your paper.

That said, an outline will help you write academic works better and faster. And while our writers are always here to help, it can't hurt to learn how to write an outline for an essay by your own, right?

How to Write an Essay Outline

While college essay types are many, the common structure for most of them is five-paragraph. Each essay needs Introduction, Body (paragraphs with arguments), and Conclusion; so, a general format of your essay outline will include all these components.

When outlining your essay, keep them in mind so you wouldn't miss any arguments, evidence, and examples while writing.

So, let's do this!

Key Parts of an Essay

Put them all into your essay outline:

Introduction. Here you'll mention the topic of your essay and its thesis. As you know, essays can't live without a thesis; so, a thesis statement in your outline will help you support it in each paragraph of your essay body.

Body paragraphs. There will be a minimum three paragraphs in your essay's body, so make sure to include each one in the outline. For each paragraph, write down a topic sentence with an argument relating to your thesis and mention all the support: data, facts, examples, and other evidence you'll use to prove the topic sentence of this paragraph.

Conclusion. Wrap up your essay here. Restate your thesis and summarize the goal of your paper.

In general, your essay outline will look like this:

Essay Outline: General

I. Introduction

II. Body. Paragraph-1

III. Body. Paragraph-2

IV. Body. Paragraph-3

V. Conclusion

Outline Format

As a rule, students use the linear style when formatting their essay outlines. It means they rank arguments in order of their importance - from major to minor ones.

Remember: your research essay outline doesn't have to include the complete sentences. It's only an outline, so feel free to format arguments and evidence the way it seems most comfortable and understandable for you. Just make sure it's visually clear and allows you to see if some sections are repetitive or redundant. It will help to avoid duplications in your essay.

Another point to consider:

While you are familiar with a given essay topic, it doesn't mean your readers are. So format your outline accordingly: assume that some people know nothing about it when preparing arguments and arranging them in a logical order.

Essay Outline Template

Templates can help you get a better idea of essay outlining. It's a great way to organize thoughts and determine the order in which you'll represent them to readers. So, make a list of the sections in your paper and fill in the corresponding example, depending on your essay type.

Persuasive Essay Outline Example

A persuasive essay is a type of academic writing where you use logic and arguments to convince readers of your point of view, using solid evidence such as research, stating facts, examples, and quotes from experts.

To create an outline for such an essay, consider the following example:
Taken from: TeacherVision.com
Narrative Essay Outline Example

A narrative essay is one in which you tell a story from your point of view or personal experience, providing specific and sensory details to get readers involved and understand your point.

For narrative essays, outlines like this one will work well:
Taken from: TeacherVision.com
Expository Essay Outline Example

An expository essay is a type of academic writing where you investigate the topic by evaluating the evidence and expounding the idea to describe, explain, and provide the information to a reader.

What about this example for your essay outline?
Taken from: TeacherVision.com
Research Essay Outline Example

A research essay is a type of academic paper where you need to analyze the works of others on a given topic and synthesize them with your own ideas on it. In other words, you analyze what others have to say on the topic, argue their points, and present own ideas backed up with that information.

For a research essay outline, consider this example:

Taken from: Austincc.edu
How to Make an Outline: the Process

As a rule, the only detail bothering those asking how to make an outline for an essay is the process itself. Students understand that an essay outline needs to specify all the main points and arguments of their future paper, but they still find it challenging to create.

More than that, professors may ask you to submit an essay outline for their review. That's why the skills of planning your papers will come in handy anyway. To learn the secrets of effective outline writing, you'll need to know what to do before outlining, what essay outline structure to choose for your work, and how to organize your outline so it would be as informative as possible.

Here's how to outline an essay:

What to Do Before Outlining

First and foremost, read your writing assignment carefully. Make sure you understand what essay type you need to write, how many arguments to use (except as noted), and how long your essay needs to be.

Answer the question, "What's the purpose of your essay?" Do you want to inform readers, persuade, or just entertain them? Depending on the goal, you'll know what thesis to consider, what writing techniques to use, and how to visualize research in your paper.

Identify the audience. Yes, it's a teacher who reads and evaluates your work; but whom do you want to read your essay? Do you write for classmates? Strangers? What do they know about your topic? Would they agree with your thesis? How might they react to your information?

Depending on that, you'll understand what arguments might work for your essay. It will also help you decide on resources to use for research and evidence to choose for your arguments. Consider credible sources such as Google Scholar or Oxford Academic to find references for your essay; take notes of them to use in your outline.

State your thesis so you could see what topic sentences to outline for your essay. A thesis needs to be arguable and provide enough details to hook readers so they would get them emotionally involved in your writing.

Once a thesis is ready, start structuring your essay outline.

Choose an Essay Outline Structure

From the above templates and examples, you've got a general idea of the basic structure for your essay outline. We used a standard alphanumeric structure there, but you can also use a decimal one for your outline to show how your ideas are related. Just compare:
Alphanumeric format: Decimal format:
An alphanumeric outline is the most common one, but you are welcome to use a decimal outline structure if it seems clearer and more comfortable for you. Also, feel free to use complete sentences or just brief phrases for each section of your essay outline.

However, if you need to submit it to a professor for a review, use sentences. It will help him understand the arguments and evidence you are going to use in your essay.

Organize Your Outline

Now it's time to fill in each section of your essay outline. For those lazy to read, here goes a short video:

For all others, start with outlining your introduction. Write a sentence about your topic and introduce your thesis. You can also mention an essay hook here - a sentence you'll use to make the audience interested in reading your work.

Outline your essay body: write down a topic sentence for each paragraph, provide supporting evidence you'll use when writing, and mention how they'll relate to the topic and your thesis. The more details you outline, the easier it will be to organize all the thoughts while writing.

Also, you can write a transition sentence for each paragraph so it would be faster to structure and band all arguments.

Finally, outline your essay conclusion. Restate your thesis and write a concluding statement, aka a sentence addressing the importance of your thesis and proposing solutions to the problem you addressed in the essay.

It's a Wrap!

Essays are many, and you need to write all of them in school and college. Persuasive, expository, narrative - their basic structure is the same but with tiny differences identifying their specifications and your knowledge of academic writing. Understanding those differences and outlining your writings accordingly is your chance to craft perfect works that get high grades.

An essay outline is what you need to organize the information and not miss anything while writing. When you know how to write an essay outline, you create papers better and faster. You keep in mind all essay components. You develop critical thinking. And you become a better writer.

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An essay outline is a plan of your academic paper, where you structurize it and organize the main points into paragraphs so it would be easier for you to write an essay. You can't write an essay without outlining. Fine, you can do that if a low grade is okay for you to get.

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This is a copy of the word web of dystopian media we created in class as an introduction to They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. (created by me for another lesson)

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Audio of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

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Cannici, Matthew / The Crucible Audio Files

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Shakespeare's Sonnets: Crash Course Literature 304

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An amazing guide to help you cite sources in MLA format.

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MLA Formatting and Style Guide - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

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MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

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A simple but incredibly useful flowchart to tell the difference between affect and effect.

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the difference between affect and effect