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What is Sound English®?

Sound English® books meet the need to provide adults who are new to Australian English with suitable reading material. Although there are many excellent resources available for children, there is a shortage of resources that:

   • have high quality, simple reading material that is of interest to adults
   • support learners as they learn the sounds used in Australian pronunciation
   • present spelling choices in a carefully structured, easy-to-follow manner.

Each book includes detailed but simple tutor notes.

Who can it help?

Sound English® is an ideal resource for teachers and volunteer tutors of:

   • adults newly arrived in Australia who are beginning to speak and read English
   • adults and secondary school aged students who have difficulty with basic literacy.

How is it structured?

There are three levels: Preliminary, Level 1 and Level 2.

Preliminary
          
 Ten books that introduce essential sight words and provide illustrations that form a useful basis for discussions.
      Level 1
       
       
       		 Twenty books that introduce 23 basic sounds of Australian English. The language is simple, with a full-colour illustration on every page.
      Level 2
       
       
       		 Twenty books that introduce the remaining 21 sounds using more complex text designed to provide repeated exposure to sounds covered in earlier books.

Software

Sound English® Software is an important enhancement to the Sound English® texts, with the first package featuring the Level 1 books. It is based on the highly acclaimed approach used in Greygum Software’s Fitzroy Talking Readers, Spinout Stories, and their PM Story Books, Gems and Stars software.

As each page is shown on the screen students can try reading it aloud, then hear male and female voices model the correct pronunciation in an Australian accent. If a word is causing difficulty students can click on it to hear it spoken by a different voice.

An essential part of the software is a set of questions and activities for each of the stories, along with facilities for students to write their own text for each story, then print it and make it into their own book.

The software is suitable for Windows (XP and later, including Win7) and Mac OS X. The first two packages (Level 1, Books 1-10 and Level 1, Books 11-20) are likely to be released in mid-2012. We apologise for the delay, which is due to the illness of one of the authors.

 


Preliminary Book 8
Sandals

 

 

 

 


Level 2 Book 2
A new future for Trudy and Luke