#17 H5P – Speak the words Activity Tutorial

🎙️ Creating a “Speak the Words” Activity in H5P (WordPress)

This activity allows students to speak into a microphone, and speech recognition software will match their spoken input to accepted answers. Great for:

• Pronunciation practice
• Vocabulary recall
• Language comprehension

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🛠️ Step-by-Step Setup

1. Install the “Speak the Words” Module

• Go to the H5P plugin in WordPress.
• Click Add New.
• Search for the content type “Speak the Words”.
• If not installed, click “Get” to add it.

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2. Basic Task Creation

Field	Description
Title	Name of your activity (e.g. Speak the Words)
Task Description	The prompt or question the student will see (e.g. “Speak the following phrase: The boy walked to school by himself.”)
Accepted Answers	List all acceptable answers (e.g. the boy walked to school by himself)
Correct Feedback	e.g. Good job!
Incorrect Feedback	e.g. No, try again.
Speech Input Language	Must match the spoken language of the expected answer (e.g. English (US), Russian, etc.)

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🎯 Three Use Cases

📘 1. Basic Q&A in English (Not ideal)

• Prompt: What is the name of our planet?
• Answers: Earth, the Earth, planet Earth
• Speech input and accepted answers both in English.

⚠️ This use case isn’t ideal—students might as well just type it. Speaking isn’t necessary unless you’re testing pronunciation.

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🌍 2. Language Learning (e.g. Russian vocabulary)

• Prompt: What is the informal Russian word for hello?
• Answer: Привет
• Set Speech Input Language to Russian.
• Ensures pronunciation is checked correctly. If input language is wrong (e.g. English), it won’t recognize the answer correctly.

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🗣️ 3. English Pronunciation Testing

• Prompt: Speak the following phrase: The boy walked to school by himself.
• Answer: the boy walked to school by himself
• Speech input language set to English (US).
• Great for checking fluency and pronunciation in English learners.

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⚙️ Important Settings & Limitations

Feature	Details
One Prompt per Activity	Each “Speak the Words” activity supports only one question. To include multiple prompts, use a Question Set or Interactive Book.
No Partial Scoring	Students either get full points or none — even if they speak most of the phrase correctly.
Speech Recognition Works Best in Chrome	Requires permission to use the microphone. Firefox and others may not support it properly.
No Toolbar	You can hide extra options/toolbars if desired for a cleaner experience.

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🔁 Example Walkthrough

1. Prompt: Speak the following phrase: The boy walked to school by himself.
2. Student says: “The boy walked to school by himself” → ✅ Good job!
3. Student says: “The girl walked to school by herself” → ❌ No, try again.
4. Click Show Solution → See accepted answers + what was actually heard.

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✅ Ideal For:

• English pronunciation testing
• Foreign language vocabulary recall
• Speaking/listening comprehension tasks
• Beginner-intermediate ESL/EFL learners

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⚠️ Final Notes

• Works only in Chrome.
• Requires microphone access.
• Great speech recognition accuracy, even better than many standalone tools.
• For multiple questions, use it within:
  • Question Set
  • Interactive Book

📢 Want more interactive content tutorials?

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Got questions or creative ways you’re using H5P? Drop them in the comments—I’d love to hear what you’re building!