Support of reading fluency

The software developed to support reading fluency aims to increase the reading speed of students by hiding the displayed syllables and words in line with the subject’s current reading speed. The development took place on the initiative of and in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Andreas Mayer, LMU Munich, chair for speech therapy (speech therapy and language support).

Research Project: Förderung der Lesegeschwindigkeit durch ein softwaregestütztes Training auf der Grundlage des Text-Fading-Paradigmas

By hiding the reading material, the students should be encouraged to direct their attention away from the individual letters to larger written units (syllables, words) and to process them holistically and simultaneously. The speed of the fade out is increased in parallel with the increase in the reading speed.

This software creates randomized reading exercise templates, both from the supplied stock of the most common words and trigrams and from freely configurable words and texts. Reading training control is intuitive and requires only a few user actions to select the template and start/stop a training session.

In addition, the software includes a fully automatic, unsupervised multiple choice mode, in which a short text is alternately hidden as a reading exercise, followed by a question about the content with four alternative answers. If the answers are correct, the fade-out speed is increased.

The training history is automatically logged by the software in the user database. A statistical evaluation option with graphic visualization of the key data is available to the trainer, including export functions, for further documentation of the student’s learning success.

The program for training the naming speed, which supports reading skills with basic exercises, was interrupted due to Corona, but has now been resumed.