Summer of Reading with Read&Write – Reading Basics
Welcome to post two in our “Summer of Reading with Read&Write” series. For a quick reminder, Read&Write is free for all staff and students at RRC Polytech to use! While it has many, many, features, we’re highlighting all of the reading features in this blog series.
Disclaimer: this post assumes that users have both installed and signed into Read&Write, and self-registered in the Read&Write Tutorial in LEARN. If you haven’t, we suggest reviewing our Summer Reading with Read&Write – Kick Off blog post.
Read Aloud
With Read&Write you can have digital text read aloud, in a variety of voices, languages, and speeds!
Why Use Read Aloud?
Everybody learns differently! Some may find listening to content instead of reading a more reliable way to take in information. Some may need to multitask and listen while completing another task (such as cleaning, or going for a walk). Others may find that computer use increases headaches or migraines and use read aloud to reduce their screen time.
How to Read Aloud with Read&Write
Rather than rewrite those instructions here, we suggest checking out the Read Aloud (Play) section of the Read&Write Tutorial. This link gives text and video based instructions on how to have digital text read aloud both in the desktop and web extension versions of Read&Write.
Customize Your “Reading” (Listening) Experience
Ever try listening to text read aloud by a mono-tone robot reading at the pace a snail moves? It’s not only difficult, but odds are you’re more focused on how annoying the voice is, rather than digesting the information that is being read aloud. This is not what we want. But never fear, Read&Write has different settings you can adjust to customize your reading/listening experience.
Voice
With Read&Write you can select from a variety of natural sounding voices – pick one that sounds “good” to you (easy to listen to, not distracting, etc…).
Hint: the more natural sounding voices have “Eleven Labs” in the name (for the desktop). On the web extension you can choose to search for the “AI enhanced” voices. These will be the most natural, real, human sounding voices available.
Reading Speed
An often overlooked setting that is really valuable. Think of it like this: if someone is speaking to you too fast, you’ll most likely get frustrated and stop listening, or at the very least, only catch part of what they are saying. On the reverse, if someone is speaking too slow, you’ll most likely get bored with the conversation and stop listening. The same is true when listening to content read aloud to you.
Choosing an appropriate reading speed is also impacted by things such as how tired you are, how difficult the content you are reading is, and if there are a lot of terms that you don’t understand.
Long story short, adjust the reading speed, and adjust it often! Find that middle ground where you’re not bored, or frustrated, with the speed the information is being presented to you at.
Reading Settings
The Reading Settings consists of two settings, essentially “what” and “how” does Read&Write read to you?
With the “reading mode” you can choose “what” is read together, either sentences or paragraphs. Then you can choose to turn “continuous reading” on or off.
- Sentence mode with continuous reading off – Read&Write would read a sentence and then stop
- Sentence mode with continuous reading on – Read&Write would read a sentence, take a short pause, then read the next sentence
- Paragraph mode with continuous reading off – Read&Write would read a paragraph and then stop
- Paragraph mode with continuous reading on – Read&Write would read a paragraph, take a short pause, then read the next paragraph
Voice options, reading speed, and reading settings are discussed further in the Speech Settings of the Read&Write Tutorial.
“Homework”
As a means of testing your knowledge from this blog post, your “homework” is to:
- Open a PDF file in the PDF reader of Read&Write
- Have the file read aloud to you
- Customize how Read&Write reads to you through the voice, speed, and reading modes
AI Usage Acknowledgement
This post was jointly written by Copilot and a human.