This is the first in a series of research articles to appear in up-coming issues of the newsletter.

Text-Reading Software by Pat Campbell

How do you teach adults who have severe barriers to learning? Could textreading software provide the support these learners need? This type of software uses a computer synthesized voice to read aloud any onscreen text selected by the learners. Action Read, a community literacy centre in Guelph, Ontario, launched a study to explore whether text-reading software could help literacy learners.

Participants
A total of 13 learners who had been enrolled at Action Read for at least a year participated in the study. They had made slow progress since coming to Action Read. These learners had difficulty and became frustrated when reading text without assistance or accommodations.

Determining Unassisted Reading Levels
In Ontario, there are five literacy and basic skills (LBS) levels that correspond to Grades K-9. The learners’ unassisted reading levels were assessed before they started using the text-reading software. Learners were asked to read symbols, individual letters, wordlists and complete written documents without assistance or accommodations.

Tutors and Students Working Together
Volunteer tutors were recruited to work with the learners who field-tested the text- reading software. Each learner was asked to select a topic of interest to research. The learners were able to use the text-reading software to read out menu items, internet links and so on. Once a large block of text was identified, it could be read aloud by the software. After a few hours of instructions, the majority of learners were able to use the software with minimal assistance from the tutors. The tutors shifted their focus to helping the learners to sift and collection information.

Improvement in Reading Levels
After completing their individualized projects, the learners were assessed to determine their assisted reading levels. The assisted reading level was the highest level of materials that could be read and understood, with the assistance of text-reading software.

The findings indicated that all learners improved their reading by one or two LBS levels, with an average improvement of 1.2 LBS levels. . On average, each learner spent approximately 28.5 hours using the software. The findings clearly showed that text-readers greatly increased the volume of text students could read in a given time and the level of material which they could access. Clearly, text-readers were shown to be helpful to literacy learners.

To obtain the full-text document for this study, visit the Directory of Canadian Adult Literacy Research in English at http://www.nald.ca/crd/. The name of the study is Literacy and Adaptive Technology Project.