ConnSENSEReview Soliloquy v 4

ConnSENSE Review: Soliloquy Reading Assistant V.4

Product reviewed: Soliloquy Reading Assistant
Soliloquy Learning
100 fifth Avenue Suite #410
Waltham, MA 02451
877-235-6036
Price: $450-500.00 Stand Alone Version
Contact company for Network, Internet and Family pricing
www.soliloquylearning.com

Soliloquy Reading Assistant is a computer software program designed to help students improve reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Reading fluency was identified by the studies reviewed by the National Reading Panel as one of the five essential building blocks of scientifically based reading instruction. Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, effortlessly and with proper expression and intonation. Fluent readers sound as though they are speaking when they read. Fluency has been identified as the bridge between word identification and comprehension. Since fluent readers do not have to concentrate on the decoding of text, they can devote their attention to the meaning of the text which is the essence of reading.

Up until this point, developing fluency involved two people, the reader and the listener. Research has shown that children develop reading fluency as the result of two things; repeated oral reading of passages under teacher/adult guidance and having fluency modeled by being read to aloud. In order for children to become fluent readers, they need opportunity to practice reading aloud each day, as well as hearing text read aloud in a fluent manner. This can become difficult to accomplish in a typical classroom where there are many children and few adults to serve as guided oral reading partners. Soliloquy Reading Assistant is software designed to provide students with the opportunity to become fluent readers by using voice recognition software, thereby eliminating the need for a second person to serve as the guiding listener. The software can also read to the student, providing a fluency model.

I put the software to the test myself and was pleasantly surprised at what I discovered on my own. The software installed easily; since I knew that it worked on principles of voice recognition, I was expecting a lengthy training period but that was not the case. There were some sentences that I was asked to repeat into a microphone attached to a headset that comes with the program. I was up and running in under 5 minutes. The program contains a library of texts ranging in grade levels from 1st through 11th. After making a selection, the story appears on the computer in the template of a book complete with pictures. After donning the microphone and headset and running a sound check I was ready to begin.

In keeping with the research on the ways to increase fluency, the student has two primary options; reading the text aloud to the computer and listening as the text is read aloud by the computer. In the Read to Me mode the text is read by a person with perfectly modeled fluency including rate, rhythm and intonation. The text is highlighted a sentence at a time and reading proceeds, with the pages turning automatically. In the Record my Reading mode the student reads as the text is highlighted one sentence at a time. The software acts as a listener as the text is read aloud. As in guided reading, if the student encountered a major block in decoding, the program will stop the reader by highlighting the miscued word in a yellow color. If the student does not read the word correctly in a predetermined amount of time it will be read to the student by the narrator. If during reading the student makes a minor error, the program will make note of it “behind the scenes” but will not interrupt the flow of the reader. For example, I was reading a story about a cat named “Bootsy” and I intentionally read the name as “Bitsy”. Since this type of error would not cause a breakdown in the comprehension of material, and stopping the reader may, the reader is allowed to continue uninterrupted.

At the end of the reading the student can click on a tab called “Word Colors” to get visual feedback on their readings. The text that has been read smoothly and correctly appears in green (Great), words that were mispronounced or gave some level of challenge but were decoded appear in blue (Try Again); and words that had to be read to the student appear in red (Needs Work). For students who don’t complete the reading, the unread text appears in black (Not Yet Read). Each passage has a point value associated with it, as well as a fluency goal score. Students earn points by reading fluently and by taking a comprehension quiz at the end of the reading, ensuring not only accurate decoding but also comprehension, establishing the attainment of fluency. All of the texts are included in the program; the stand alone version comes with them stored on CD’s. I found that the texts included were age/grade level equivalent; in other words, content selections that were at the 1st and 2nd grade levels would be most appropriate for children in that age range.

As a student reads, his or her voice is recorded. At any time the reader can click on the “Play My Reading” icon to hear the text read back to them in their own voice while the corresponding text is highlighted. This was one feature that I could have done without exploring as I could not believe how pathetically boring I sounded. Somehow my kids all became fluent readers in spite of me!

Other features of the program include the option to have individual words read aloud by clicking on them. Additionally, each page contains vocabulary words that a student can click on to have them defined. Many of the definitions contain pictures to illustrate the meaning and some have “Fun Facts” a feature that can be clicked on to find out just a little bit more information. The dictionary has an audio feature and the definitions are read aloud. This type of contextual vocabulary development also reflects guidelines posed the the National Reading Panel.

The program has a whole host of administrator features including an extensive data collection feature that can be used to create a regression analysis to predict which users are likely to make progress and to what degree during the course of the year. As complicated as that may sound to all you data phobics, individual and group data can be easily collected and used to track progress and manage reporting. Soliloquy Reading Assistant appears to be an innovative way to provide students with the opportunity to improve reading fluency when there is a shortage of listeners to guide reading. Soliloquy, it's not just for Shakespeare anymore.

Recently, our publisher, Chauncy Rucker had an opportunity to sit down with Jonathan Bower, CEO of Soliloquy at TRLD in San Francisco. A podcast of his conversation with Mr. Bower can be found at http://www.connsensebulletin.com/csb002.mp3

Reference: Put Reading First
http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/Cierra.pdf