How Read&Write helps learners with dyslexia at Oldham College

She then proofread her work using Read&Write

My struggle with dyslexia all started in my primary school where all the support was offered to me was my pink coloured paper and overlay. That was all the help I got with the school although they and I both noticed how much I was struggling with completing work within limited and my spelling and handwriting never extending to get my pen licence when everyone else had theirs. To put my spelling into perspective my thirteen-year-old brother can spell better than me and I am nineteen years old I was only just able to scrape my pass in my spelling SATS.

I then entered my high school where I didn’t get to keep my help. My brother who is a year younger got to keep his help. He was diagnosed and it runs through family so it was already probably known that I had it.

I had a few extremely good teachers, my year 8 maths would print out the PowerPoints and let me work through them at my own pace. Then there was my science year 9 and 11 teacher, who would print me off every worksheet and question. Then there was my year 9 and 11 English teacher who would sit me at the front and then if I didn't get something or understand what we were doing he would come and sit with me and explain it to me differently. At the end of the year 10 they sat me down did three little tests and said they would give me 25% extra time and that was it although those three teachers new something else was going on.

I went on to college to sit applied science and struggled throughout my first year. I struggled with that and trying to resit English language and failed that again. Then I started to see Liz and started toe by toe which was slowly making a difference. By then I had all my other help such as a laptop in class and exams, speech to text, a reading pen, read and write and fifty percent extra time also including my overlay and pink paper. In my second year i went on to sit my English language in November and jumped to a grade 5.

The Read&Write difference

You can really see the difference in both pieces – the proofread piece has considerably fewer spelling errors, better punctuation and sentence structure than the first, which is pretty difficult to read. Hannah can use the vocabulary she wants in her piece without worrying how to spell it – she can voice type (or use the predictive text feature in the toolbar) for any words that are giving her huge difficulty, but the majority of these words would have been corrected using the CheckIt! feature which will correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Hannah has also used the speech options to hear what she has typed read aloud. This is a really useful feature for proofreading as what is actually on the screen is read back to you, rather than you reading what you think is there! It will also alert you to sentences that are too long, or don’t make sense at all, or if the same idea has been repeated, etc.

Finally, Hannah massively benefits from a pink background which she can switch on in Read&Write using the screen masking feature. This will stop the text from appearing blurry on the screen; her eyes will also be physically more comfortable while she is working, so she can stay focused for longer.