American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary app is great phonetic dictionary that can help and support kids with spelling difficulties and dyslexia. This dictionary app allows you to enter words the way they sound - phonetic – making it easy to quickly find the spelling of a word.
The scope of dyslexia is a lot more than just reversing letters. "It is a broad term to define a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or accuracy in being able to read, speak, and spell." (Wikipedia). Kids with dyslexia can suffer at school; feel excluded simply because they need to learn in a different way. Quite often in the past, dyslexia was not diagnosed and many kids affected by it were often qualified as slow learners, or even trouble.
I am neither a scientific nor a pro for dyslexia; I am simply a mom with a kid with dyslexia, trying to help and support by looking for tools that can help. The development of mobile technologies and the use of apps on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad can help some kids. One of my son’s great struggles is spelling. For years now, he has had difficulties with words. Knowing how to spell a new word is always tricky. At school teachers tell him “if you don’t know how to spell a word look in a dictionary”.
Looking up in a dictionary is a great advice for the majority of children but for those that are affected by dyslexia it just adds up the pressure. The answer from my son is always “Mom I do not understand, how can I look in a dictionary if I don’t know which letters to look for?”
People not familiar with such symptoms, simply reply then try harder!
Let's just take some words to illustrate.
Ask my son to spell:
- LOVE and he will spell LUV,
- PHOTOS he will spell FOTO
- MOUNTAIN he will spell MONTEN
- Or FRIEND and it will be FRIND
There is the problem, he writes phonetics. He is not the only one and I am sure all parents with similar kids would have experienced such spelling.
What can you do to help your dyslexic kids with spelling?
In this case, be supportive, help them, repeat over and over again. Just don’t give up supporting them.
Not long ago, I was asked to review American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, a dictionary app that help you find words within seconds.
American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary is not the usual app dictionary. This dictionary app let you search for the spelling of a word simply be typing phonetics.
How does it work?
If he was trying to spell QUEEN, he would write KWEEN. With most dictionaries, starting with K, he would never find the correct spelling. Using American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary, he simply enters the first 2 or 3 letter KWE and he gets a list of word:
From there he can see the list and select KWEEN, QUEEN. He then knows which one is the correct spelling.
American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary is designed to allow users to locate a word by the way it sounds (phonetically). As a resource tool, it can be used as a phonetic dictionary and qualifies as being suitable for ESL, EFL and dyslexics.
Many misspells happens because dyslexic kids tend to transpose letters commonly misinterpreted in hearing such as:
't' with 'd' 'au' with 'ow' 'b' with 'p'
'ch' with 'sh' 'ph' with 'f' 'ou' with 'ow'
'kn' with 'n' 'th' with 'f' 'qu' with 'kw' 'c' with 's'
American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary takes these major misspells into consideration to provide great tool to support kids that struggle with looking up a word in the dictionary.
This dictionary app is helping my son a lot, all the words might not be there but there are so many to help and support him. I just wanted to share the info with you in case you are looking for such a great tool.
The American Wordspeller© & Phonetic Dictionary is available for download via the iTunes App Store.
It is also available as an Android App and a 'plug-in' is available for Mac.
If you know, or are using some other apps that you fin d helpful for kids with dyslexia, please let us know and drop a comment or send me an e-mail : (Nathalie@funeducationalapps.com)
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very cool..
Posted by: willz0072002@yahoo.com | 02/16/2011 at 05:06 AM
thanks so much for participating in my Wednesday blog hop! following you now!
Posted by: Vanessa: The Queen of Swag! | 02/17/2011 at 09:11 PM
Have you seen this app--Sound Literacy? The "learn more" link on the homepage isn't working for me, but there are videos that show what it's all about. It's based on Orton-Gillingham methods.
Posted by: neansai@gmail.com | 03/24/2011 at 12:35 AM
Very easy to learn English spellings with full of fun. Keep sharing more game like it.
Posted by: speed felt | 05/20/2011 at 08:30 AM
Great iPhone app. I would like to say that it can be perfectly used by people, who learn the English language as well.
Posted by: Kinder Hangman iPhone App | 09/14/2011 at 11:15 AM
Well, actually, we just released, this month, an ESL version of the American Wordspeller & Phonetic Dictionary App. It primarily focuses on misspellings given to those of Spanish & Asian spelling skills.
http://itunes.com/apps/americanwordspeller
Posted by: Diane Frank | 09/27/2011 at 03:26 AM