Hello,

A crucial skill of reading is decoding the words into sounds.

One wonders how 13-year-old Izak had been taught, that he could labelled
severely dyslexic, yet suddenly learn to read because of seeing words
highlighted as they were spoken by a speech synthesiser.   Did he really
pick up the decoding rules so quickly?  Why hadn't it dawned before?
If it is so easy for dyslexics to learn to read, there would be no need
for phonics.  A program like WordAloud (see www.wordaloud.co.uk), which
displays each word individually while speaking it, would have been
ideal for Izak, and probably a lot cheaper.  Yet for most people,
there is no immediate connection in the brain for associating whole
word visual recognition with the whole word sound. Most people need to
have phonics tuition.  (There's a whole article about this in
Scientific American March 2002, if you are sceptical about phonics.)
For dyslexics, I would recommend a phonics course like Top Marks to
learn the decoding rules before using a text reader like WordAloud.
(Using a screen reader would be a waste of money.)   And if parents
find that their child is not learning to read, they can use
WordAloud to find whether the child has alreadly been given adequate
phonics training and to identify particular decoding problems that
remain.

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

P.S.  Of course, what I have said about phonics and decoding does not
apply to profoundly deaf children, who can have immense difficulty
learning to read.
--
>From: "Kevin Price" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 1:24 PM
>Subject: NBC/MSNBC report on Assistive Technology
>
>THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD Izak Ross demonstrates software to groups of grownups.
>A whiz kid? That's not what Izak's teachers told his parents when he
>entered grade school.
>"They told us that Izak really didn't belong in school," says Lori
>Milstein, Izak's mother. "'Don't expect him to learn to read or write or
>go to high school or college.'"
>Izak has severe dyslexia, a reading disability. Three years ago, his
>mother found a computer program that turns written text into speech and
>helps people like Izak decipher the words.
>
>"As soon as you see the word highlighted and you hear the word spoken
>out loud, it creates a connect in the brain and allows you to recognize the
>word later," says Izak. And it made a huge difference in his performance
>at school. "It brought me from at the end of fifth grade from not reading,
>to reading fluently," says Izak. "And from the bottom of three classes to
>the top of three classes in the next year." Now Izak shows off the program
>at conferences on technology and disabilities.

--
Access the word, access the world! -- Try our WordAloud software!!

John Nissen, Cloudworld Ltd., Chiswick, London
Tel:   +44 (0) 845 458 3944 (local rate in the UK)
Fax:   +44 (0) 20 8742 8715
Web:   http://www.cloudworld.co.uk