Why Need4Reading was created
My wife attended a number of courses in the USA and other countries in the education field.
This subsequently resulted in her working as a tutor with ESL (English Second Language) students and later with young children who were having difficulties in learning to read.
It became apparent that this requires a great amount of time to develop these skills in the student. She then originated that it may be a good idea to write a program to enable students to develop their reading skills through the use of a computer program. Development work started on the program approximately three years ago.
ESL students were always requesting that they wanted to see how the words were actually spoken and would have her repeat the words many times for the purpose of studying the mouth movements. This required the use of video clips in the program.
The program was developed as a tutorial program with all of the necessary material to produce a student who can READ AND COMPREHEND the English language. The program will cover only the basics and is not intended to tutor grammar or writing. It will contain material to year 8.
The program is intended for the serious student and is not designed as an entertainment program.
Starting from the basics.
1. Phonics alphabet with pictures of each letter with video clips.
2. Phonics words with pictures and video clips. (Approx. 150 words)
3. The Alphabet in Upper Case and Lower case letters.
4. Blends which cover combination vowels and consonants. With words and video clips. (Approx. 300 words)
5. Comprehension section which takes a sentence and removes three words at random and displays them on buttons below the sentence. The student is then required to select the omitted words in the sentence from the buttons and place them back into the sentence. The correct order of selection is required thus demonstrating the comprehension of the sentence, by the student. This section will contain approximately 600 sentences and video clips.
We recommend that this program be supervised and a low gradient or beginner's dictionary be used.
If the student is having difficulties completing a section, the words in the sentences should be carefully checked to ensure that the student fully understands the words s/he is reading.
The student may now proceed to complete the level.
We wish you the Student and Supervisor / Parent all the very best in the use of this program.
We believe that if the program is used as designed you will be very pleased with the result, and would recommend the program to other persons that are in similar circumstances.
Please do not hesitate to write in regard to the N4R.
Best regards,
Howard & Ursula Bruce