Reading Skills
Read & Write Gold Software
Read & Write Gold is a brilliant piece of software which can help all students with their study skills.
It should be available on all college computers (do let us know if you can’t get it to load on a computer you have used). If you struggle with reading (or if you are an auditory learner, or just fancy resting your eyes and being read to for a bit!) Read & Write Gold can be very useful because:
- it can read texts out loud to you, so if you have a long (or even short!) handout or worksheet from a subject which is a document in Word, PowerPoint or Excel, or even if its a webpage or email, just open Read & Write Gold, click where you want it to start reading and press play.
BREAK - it can also read pdf documents, and it has some success with scanned in pages as well (if you have any problem with this, contact the IT department or visit the Study Centre for advice).
BREAK - it can proofread your work for you - if you’re not sure whether you have phrased something quite right, or you just need to hear it read in someone else’s voice (we often miss errors when we read through work in our head or by ourselves), Read & Write Gold can help.
BREAK - it can read aloud as you type, as well as onscreen options and menus.
BREAK - you can use it to read any of the Study Skills courses out loud to you! Especially the long bits...
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How to use Read & Write Gold:
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To use Read & Write Gold in college, look for this icon on your desktop or by using the 'search programs and files' button under the 'Start' bar and typing in the program name:
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This will open the toolbar (be patient, as it may be slow to load depending on the computer you are using and the size of your user profile). The toolbar can be moved to the top or the side of your screen. If it is locked at the top/side, you can move it again by clicking on the anchor icon on the far right and sliding the top of the toolbar to your preferred location.
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The text-to-speech part of the toolbar is very simple to use. Just place your mouse cursor where you want the program to start reading from, or select and highlight a section of text, then click on the Play button (the green arrow):
There is a small selection of voices to choose from, and you can change the pitch (high or low), speed (slow or fast) and volume (loud or soft) to suit your preferences by clicking on the black arrow next to the Play button and opening the Speech Options menu:
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No text-to-speech voice is perfect yet, but once you've got used to this one, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!
To stop any reading, just click on the Stop button (red square).
It's that simple to get started! So why not try it out?
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Quick Activity
This is an optional activity, but it is a very good idea to give it a try. Open the Read & Write Gold toolbar. Once it's loaded, try highlighting a paragraph of text from this page and then press play. Don't forget to alter the voice to make it sound right for you. Now try typing something in a Word document and then getting it to read that out loud.
If you're ready to explore the settings further, including how to correct mispronunciations, how to use Read & Write Gold to read out menus and other on-screen elements, or how to read from a screenshot, then work through this edited version of the official instruction manual (8 pages).
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It is possible to buy Read & Write Gold for use at home or on the iPad. However, if it is a bit pricey for you, but you would like something to use at home, you can find free Text to Speech software online - do a search for ‘free Text to Speech online’ and try them out, e.g. NaturalReader or ReadSpeaker, which just need you to copy and paste text into them.
We've also had a lot of fun playing with From Text To Speech; it has "natural sounding voices" with British and US English accents - recommended are Peter (Brit.) or Ryan (US) - as well as French, German, Spanish, Italian and Arabic. Yes, it's true, it can be amusing to hear your work read out with a French or German accent; but on a more serious note, it might also be useful if you need someone to proofread your French, german, Spanish or Italian coursework...
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If you would like further training on how to use this software or if you have any queries, please contact the Study Centre by emailing us at studysupport@godalming.ac.uk.
There are also instructions on how to use the whole software package (which does a lot more than just reading out loud!) at the links below:
