[Technology 837] Re: Changing reading levels of text questionsMariann Fedele MariannF at lacnyc.orgWed Feb 7 12:49:25 EST 2007
Hello Patti and all, I asked one of my colleagues, Dr. Winston Lawrence, to provide a brief response to you post. The below message is forwarded to the list on his behalf: Hi Mariann: I am not aware of any software that can translate content from one reading level to another. I agree with Denis that the process has to be done in one's head. In other words you have to rewrite the material that may be written at a 12th grade level and produce a text that will be at the 6th or 7th grade level. When you are done, you would do a readability check to see the reading level. In our plain language work at the LAC, we have been mindful of the fact that substituting one word for another - swapping words or using synonyms - is not the way to go. We look at the whole passage and try to determine the purpose(s) of the text and then do a rewrite. The point raised as regards the use of pictures is also a valid - that pictures do not automatically allow low literate students to gain greater meaning. Recently, we conducted some interviews with students and showed them some visuals related to HIV from some brochures. They gave very different interpretations to the visuals and said that the visuals did not make any sense. So in using pictures, one needs to be careful about one's assumptions. The pictures need to have a known schema and should mirror the text as much as possible. Otherwise it is meaningless. -------------------------------------------------------------- Winston Lawrence Ed. D Senior Professional Development Associate Literacy Assistance Center 32 Broadway, 10th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: 212-803-3326 Fax: 212-785-3685 Email: winstonl at lacnyc.org Mariann Fedele Associate Director, NYC Regional Adult Education Network Literacy Assistance Center Moderator, NIFL Technology and Literacy Discussion List 32 Broadway 10th Floor New York, New York 10004 212-803-3325 mariannf at lacnyc.org www.lacnyc.org ________________________________ From: technology-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:technology-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Patti White Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 4:21 PM To: The Technology and Literacy Discussion List Subject: [Technology 832] Changing reading levels of text questions I received the following request and I'm stumped. Here's the request: ________________________________ Do you know of a computer program that takes text and offers suggestions for dropping the reading level...... As in maybe 10th grade to 5th grade.....Is there software that does that other than just using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability stats and doing it by hand??? Next question....When you are adapting text for folks with literacy issues........you know how you drop the reading level down and augment with pictures.....Is there a term that is used for that ....something like ...modified text with pictures or something like that.....???? ________________________________ The only thing I can find that might help is the Auto Summarize feature in Microsoft Word, but it's not really appropriate. Does anyone know of some software that will drop the reading level of text? And is there a term for that process? Thanks for whatever help anyone can give, Patti White Patti White, M.Ed. Disabilities Project Manager Arkansas Adult Learning Resource Center prwhite at madisoncounty.net http://aalrc.org/resources/ld/index.aspx 800.569.3539 ph/fax/tty -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/technology/attachments/20070207/6678ea51/attachment.html
More information about the Technology mailing list |