Hello,

The experience of Doris with her profoundly dyslexic/dysgraphic son
suggests that WordAloud, which displays a word at a time, while speaking
it, and which allows the user to work by themselves at their own pace,
could improve reading levels dramatically among many students with
learning difficulties.

I have used WordAloud with a 7-year old dyslexic boy; his mother typed
in his current favourite book and he was able to read aloud most of
the words as they were displayed (with WordAloud's speech turned off).
When stuck, his mother helped him with the decoding, and we obtained a
very useful indication of his particular decoding problems.

A student can learn to read by themselves, i.e. without a parent or
teacher looking over their shoulder.  At first they can have the speech
on all the time.  But then they can turn the speech off, and use
the speech synthesiser to prompt them only when they are stuck
on a word.  These words can be automatically collected into a word
list.

A key factor of course is the motivation.  Making measurable progress
must itself be a motivating force for most people.

BTW, you can download a free evaluation copy of WordAloud from
www.wordaloud.co.uk and there's a special offer of $29.95 for
a personal copy of the product, which includes the wordlist
facility.

Cheers from Chiswick,

John
--
In message  <[log in to unmask]>
Doris via [log in to unmask] writes:

>I do not know if this helps specifically with your
>issue, but it seems like it may be useful information.
>
>My profoundly dyslexic/dysgraphic son has had amazing
>success learning to read (and improving his typed
>writing) by reading along with tapes of books. He
>jumped about 2yrs reading level over one summer with
>no guidance, just listening and reading along with
>books he loved. It also increased his verbal fluency.

>Doris
>--- "Martin, Terry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Greetings all:
>>
>> I am looking for your opinions on recommending voice
>> recognition for learning disabled students.  First I
>> am looking for what you think of this tool overall
>> for LD individuals.  Does it work?  What kind of
>> success have you had with it?  What kinds of LD
>> individuals are using it?  What are your success
>> stories and what are your horror stories.  I am not
>> comfortable recommending it especially for those who
>> cannot read or write.  It seems like the wrong tool.
>>  I do understand the thinking that it is better to
>> get something out of him than nothing.  It may work
>> at first, however, if they cannot read or spell well
>> enough to correct the recognition errors,
>> eventually, their voice profile is going to be
>> worthless.  Then, they will have to start over
>> again.  Is this productive?  Will a state agency pay
>> for retraining again on the same product?  What does
>> everyone think?
>>
>> I do have a specific case where a 23-year old cannot
>> read or write.  He claims that he can recognize some
>> words.  He is very smart with automobiles.  The
>> employer likes him very much.  The evaluator is
>> recommending Naturally Speaking.  The evaluator does
>> not like voice recognition because they do not think
>> it works well.  I will probably end up doing the
>> training.  If this does not work, the person will
>> probably lose the job that he has right now.  I have
>> not talked with the person yet myself.  This is all
>> that I know for the moment.  The person's job
>> requires him to write reports on what was fixed on
>> the car that his team worked on.  What are your
>> thoughts?
>>
>> Thank you for the assistance.
>>
>_____________________________________________________
>> Terry Martin -- President
>> VOILA Technology, Inc.
>> 54 Castle Road
>> Rochester, NY 14623
>> Phone:  (716) 321-1451
>> FAX:  (716) 334-3971
>> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>> URL:  http://www.mainaccess.com

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

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