 |
|
| Tech Tips |
|
Software That Teaches English as a Second Language
Software developed to teach English as a second language can be used as a great therapy tool in the hands of a creative clinician. This software tends to be very interactive and engaging, focuses on practical, everyday communication skills, and is usually reasonably priced. Many of these programs can be found by walking down the aisle of "Best Buy" or exploring software at www.amazon.com. They require a bit of creativity on the part of the clinician to figure out how to use them with clients and students to help them reach specific goals. A great value is Instant Immersion English v. 2.0 which costs $18.88 and is both Mac and PC compatible. It includes Talk Now! American English by EuroTalk and World Talk by EuroTalk.
The Talk Now! American English includes categories such as phrases, colors, numbers, food, shopping, and time. There are hundreds of items to practice in a game format for improving talking and listening. The computer says aloud the names of pictured items and also has the ability for digitally recording the speaker's utterances. World Talk includes ten interactive games to play featuring topics such as food, weather, directions, sentence construction, and animals. A "Recording Studio" can be used for practicing verbal expression, sentence construction, and word retrieval. In the section "Word Practice," the computer pronounces selected words and the user can imitate them. Alternately, the user can try to say them first and then click on the words as needed for support. There are also exercises to improve auditory comprehension.
Text to Speech Software
Software with text-to-speech capabilities can read aloud text on a computer screen. With the help of a creative clinician, this multisensory input is very helpful for helping people with all communication and cognitive challenges. It's visually engaging and increases reading speed, comprehension, retention, speech and written expression. There are quite a few text-to-speech products on the market that vary in the features they offer.
- Reading features may include the ability to control auditory features and visual presentation, and the ability to save the documents as auditory files that can be downloaded to handheld devices.
- Options such as voice, rate of speech, highlighting, and screen display may be individualized, depending on the software.
- Text can be read back a letter, word, line, sentence, or paragraph at a time.
- Words can be magnified as they are read aloud.
- Many text reading programs can work with e-mail, websites, and Microsoft Word and PDF documents.
A few of the programs which are for Windows based systems that I use frequently in my practice and are very affordable are:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
