Soliloquy Reading Assistant's UK Edition Wins Education Resources Award

Soliloquy Learning's Reading Assistant (UK Edition) was honored with an award in the Education Resources Category for Special Education at the ninth annual Education Resources Awards. The award recognizes the quality of educational products and resources as applied to special education students.

Soliloquy Learning's Reading Assistant (UK Edition) was released jointly with Harcourt in the UK. Harcourt UK's popular Rapid series content for elementary special needs students was included on the Reading Assistant platform. The Soliloquy Reading Assistant is a reading program that combines speech recognition technology with scientifically-based interventions to help elementary and secondary students strengthen their reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Students use the Soliloquy Reading Assistant by reading e-books into a computer using a standard headset and microphone. Through Soliloquy Reading Assistant's speech-recognition technology, the program is able to "listen" and recognize when readers stumble or make mistakes on specific words. When a student struggles, the program assists or corrects him/her by reading the word, meanwhile making records in the background for teacher review. Vocabulary assistance and comprehension questions are other features of the program. When students do not know a word's meaning, they can click it to gain access to a context-sensitive definition, pronunciation, and photographic memory aid. When students reach the end of a reading passage, comprehension questions are presented to ensure understanding and to focus students on acquiring meaning in addition to speed. Students can then have the program read the story to them, and compare the model with their own readings to improve their pronunciation.