WordAloud software "free" to English schools

WordAloud^® - teaching English and literacy worldwide

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

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WordAloud for Dyslexics

Dyslexia aid: WordAloud is a valuable aid for dyslexics, for both reading and writing. The word-at-a-time display is particularly suited for dyslexics who have a problem with moving the focus of their eyes accurately from word to word across the page and back again to the start of the next line. WordAloud allows the dyslexic user to adjust the size and font of the text, and the colour of the text and background, for optimal comfort in reading. You can read the text with or without the built-in speech.

Speed reading: You can read at any speed - in fact WordAloud can be used (without the speech) for speed reading. Most people read a word at a time on the printed page. With WordAloud, you can read faster, because you do not have to move your eyes. Nor are you tempted to look back at words you have already read. Most people do this when they are reading off the printed page, and it slows their reading down, typically by about 20%. The word-at-a-time display also helps you to concentrate. This is important if you have any kind of attention problem, such as ADD or ADHD.

Speech prompt: If you are reading without the speech and you come to a difficult word, you can just click on the word to hear it spoken. You also have an option to collect these words in a word list, so that you can practice them later.

Writing aid: WordAloud has a writing facility, where you type in the text in the same size, font and colour as the text you were reading. You can hear the text spoken, word by word, as you write. To save your text, copy and paste it into a file, e.g. a Microsoft Word document. For longer writing, transfer your text, sentence by sentence, to the end of the file, which you can have opened alongside WordAloud. When you've finished, you can read the whole file in WordAloud, using the clipboard feature.

It is recommended that you use WordAloud with a keyboard which has lower case letters on the keys. Such a keyboard is available at low cost, e.g. £8.21 plus £5 delivery from MISCO, see www.misco.co.uk.

Intervention: WordAloud can be used by a teacher or tutor to bring you up to strength on your reading. This is sometimes called 'remediation'. WordAloud is suitable whatever your age, because you can choose any reading material you like. However the WordAloud package does include some phonics material - simple poems, stories and word lists. We recommend that you have some phonics teaching. Often people are backward in their reading because they were not taught sufficient awareness of the sounds of the language, and how those sounds are represented in writing. This is sometimes called 'phonemic awareness'.

Learning to read: There is a paper on learning to read on this web site. In particular the "synthetic phonics" approach is recommended, see the last part of this article on dyslexia from the Observer. See also our paper on synthetic phonics on this web site. We claim that, given the right teaching and tools, dyslexics can be taught to read successfully.