What's the Problem?
Learning to read is always a challenge, and in English a huge one. Many children in the UK and USA never reach fluency in the early years, and go through school unable to cope with lessons. They leave with poor skills which limit their prospects in education, work, health, earnings, and lives.
The help many learners lack is an adult to help them through the early texts by reading the words they cannot, so they can learn and progress.
What's the Answer?
An app that tells you the sound of any word you touch, means you need never be stuck. Read what you can, touch the words you don't know, and keep reading. After a few touches, a word will be learnt, and your skill increases. As it does, reading becomes more satisfying, self esteem grows, and competence keeps increasing. This increases motivation and engagement.
Apps are infinitely patient, free to use, and available 24/7 to anyone with a phone or tablet. They don't embarrass you, either.
What's the Project?
The Read Easy project will build and test the app, and make it available free to every learner. It can be made available in any accent, and eventually in any language. It can support any method of literacy teaching, giving learners a bottomless supply of support in gaining fluency.
Once the prototype has been tested, full development will be crowdsourced so that it can be scaled worldwide and taken into many languages.
It will also be available for language learners, with translation built in; and to authors to publish any book in sound-assisted form. Sales of books will finance the ongoing development of free materials for all.
How can I get involved?
You are welcome to register your interest in: -
> Testing the app with beginning learners
>Testing it with catch-up learners or illiterate adults
> Researching the impact of the Read Easy app on learners
>Helping translation to regional accents
>Helping translation to other languages
>Bringing books/authors into the project
>Funding the project