Inviting a welcome friend: using text-to-speech software to read assignments

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

AI is everywhere now. Some hail the positives, while others concede the negatives of job losses and increased automation of the workforce, seemingly unstoppable since the Industrial Revolution. Personally, I’d rather go to a till staffed by a friendly employee than use a self-checkout machine in a supermarket. Society needs human contact, which is essential for our emotional wellbeing, mental health, and a sense of belonging. One of the positives to come out of AI is undoubtedly text-to-speech software which converts text into spoken words, effectively reading it for you. As our awareness of neurodiversity grows, so too our knowledge and appreciation of assistive technologies. Text-to-speech has come a long way since it was first developed in the 1930s.

Development of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech has surprisingly long origins. The first computer-based speech-synthesis systems emerged in the 1950s, yet the earliest known text-to-speech programme was VODER , developed by Bell Laboratories in 1939 and was demonstrated at New York’s prestigious World’s Fair. In a fascinating blog post Grundhauser (2017) described that this first attempt at replicating the human voice apparently spoke ‘like a robot demon’ and ‘could create 20 or so different electric buzzes and chirps, which the operator would manipulate using 10 keys, a wrist plate, and a pedal’. It is even credited with inspiring Numbers by Kraftwerk that transformed musical genres as diverse as techno, hip-hop, new wave, and early rap (Sanusi, 2023). A general English text-to-speech system was developed by Noriko Umeda in 1968 at the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Japan.

Sounds like a real human

In recent years text-to-speech has drastically improved since the mechanical narration it used to render. There are some exceptions to this innovation like eBook text-to-speech, for instance, which need some development. We have named some of the pros and cons in our Library Wellbeing guide. The deliciously-named IceCreamApps site provides a list of eight recommended eBook screen readers, if you are interested. The fundamental issue is that there is no universal screen reader that works for everything online. That aside, the revelation is Microsoft’s Speak text-to-speech feature. It reads like a dream. Or rather, like a human voice. The ’voice’ is female, well-spoken, annunciating to give emphasis, giving pauses where needed and is easy on the ear.  If you are not happy with the ‘voice’ then you can go to Microsoft’s Speech Platform enabling you to choose a different voice package. It’s a bit like choosing your speech choice on a SATNAV when you drive a car. Text-to-speech software has been humanised, the ultimate acclaim of any person-centred AI technology.

Drawbacks are minimal. Homonyms are occasionally an issue like the word ‘reading’ (e.g. reading text) pronounced as ‘Reading’ (the Berkshire town located west of London).  I have also caught myself anthropomorphising the ‘voice’ as a person (‘her’). There are many benefits to using text-to-speech.

Benefits on literacy

Although few studies indicate whether text-to-speech increases literacy, rates of listening comprehension was found in a study by Brunow & Cullen (2021) to be beneficial, although it is not comparable to the interventionist support of a human teacher. Research conducted by Svensson et al. (2019) have found that reading ability, motivation, and performance increases with the use of text-to-speech. These suggest that text-to-speech is supplementary, rather than comprehensive, and does not substitute human involvement in the educational process (Wood et al., 2018).

Visual stress

One of the benefits of using text-to-speech is to alleviate visual stress, reducing eye strain. This function is necessary when someone has a neurodiverse condition like dyslexia or ADHD. Text-to-speech relies upon auditory skills rather than the complexity of visually reading a page. This is a revolutionary step for dyslexic students struggling to read text on the screen.

Editing and proofreading

For the purposes of editing and proofreading the immediate benefits of text-to-speech are huge and impactful, allowing for error detection, spelling and grammatical mistakes, awkward sentence structures and consistency and coherence.  I have found it particularly useful in identifying word misplacement.

Writing style analysis

Even though I am not dyslexic I use MS Speak. I used it repeatedly for this blog post, both in Word and in WordPress. What does my writing sound like? Are there any errors, misplaced words, gaps, too many words..? How does it flow? What is the personality of my writing voice? These are simple questions and text-to-speech, I feel, has the ready answers. Such writing style analysis identifies your writing voice using natural language processing (NLP) tools, analysing writing patterns, sentence structures and other linguistic features.

The allyship of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech software has become an indispensable ally in writing. Will you invite this accessible technology into your assignments and check your writing? Nowadays I would not write a longer piece of writing without it. Text-to-speech is a welcome friend in that regard.

References

Brunow, D.A. & Cullen, T.A. (2021). Effect of Text-to-Speech and Human Reader on Listening Comprehension for Students with Learning Disabilities. Computers in the schools: Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, and Applied Research, 38 (3), 214-231.

Grundhauser, E. (2017). The Voder, the first machine to create human speech. Available from: The Voder, the First Machine to Create Human Speech – Atlas Obscura [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Icecreamapps.com. (2024). Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps. Available from: Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Sanusi, T. (2023). From Hawking to Siri: The evolution of speech synthesis. Available from: From Hawking to Siri: The Evolution of Speech Synthesis | Deepgram [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Svensson, I., Nordström, T., Lindeblad, E., Gustafson, S., Björn, M., Sand, C., … Nilsson, S. (2021). Effects of assistive technology for students with reading and writing disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 16 (2), 196–208.

University of Lincoln. (2024). Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln. Available from: Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Wood, S.G. et al. (2018) ‘Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students with Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(1), 73–84.

AI and Academic Writing

gfreestoneLeave a comment

Where are we with AI and academic writing? Frankly the situation is a little chaotic. The institution line is still often that of ‘academic offence’, even though the institutions know this would be extremely hard to enforce. One reason for this being that anti-plagiarism software like Turnitin are in a perpetual catchup mode with the AI available, so unless everyone sticks with chatgpt (free on openai (they won’t)) then Turnitin’s detection algorithms will be outpaced by newcomers and rephrasers. Another one is that sometimes students write in styles identical to (an) AI. The common form of this is the very capable second (or more) language student; owing to the academic way the language is often learned, these students follow precise rules and sometimes do it extremely well. In turn, they follow the rules into stylistic use and end up sounding sufficiently like chatgpt that the software (and sometimes staff) pick it up, in turn they end up hauled in front of some disciplinary body just for being extremely smart.

This means that enforcement is hard to achieve, as one has to coordinate appearance of AI like style with some other evidence e.g. sudden alteration is style. This is possible, but time consuming for academics and if the student goes straight in with using the AI throughtout, then no style change detection will be possible; rephrasing software compounds the issue. Bearing in mind we’re in the total infancy of this technology, this is a difficult situation. I say difficult with no little thought; the situation is difficult not because of a negative connotation of difficulty, but rather because it is literally difficult to know what to do from here.

The essential question being ‘is assessment by academic writing in its current form a dead horse that we need to stop flogging?’ and if it isn’t dead yet, how long before it is dead (if indeed it will be dead at some point)? How will we know? Personally I would say it isn’t dead yet, but its death is probably between 2-5 years away. How will we know? We’ll know because the ability of AI to construct academic writing for students (and staff) will have permanently outstripped our ability to detect it either with software or with our minds.

That is, both in content and style, AI will produce work for students who wish to use it that will mean, if they don’t want to, then at least for the written components, their engagement with the material can be pretty much nil. Furthermore any student who, let’s say for integrity reasons, chooses to write their own work, may find themselves penalised by handicapping themselves to their human writing skills. Thus their integrity will get them quite possibly a lesser grade than their AI using colleagues.

But as we’re not there (yet) what can we do in this strange hinterland? This issue itself seems related to the future of AI and our interactions with it. That is, how guilty we feel about the interactions that we encourage, turns partially on what it will become. However since we cannot know where we are headed we don’t know how guilty to feel. What do I mean by ‘feeling guilty’? I mean this sense that we are cheating when we get AI to do work for us. Isn’t this a kind of crucial border, this meeting place between a legitimate productive use and losing part of ourselves which we possibly need to preserve?

Maybe we can sketch out two broad trajectories. In one, AI supplants our need for writing skills as it can produce any text we need more accurately and with greater detail than we can achieve. In another, writing skills continue to be needed because AI continues to fail to capture human synthetic abilities to generate insights. Because these insights were formed from human generated cognitive concatenations (consciously or unconsciously) the argumentative structures cannot be automatically written up by the AI and hence the ability to lay out the argument etc is still needed.

What is obvious is the blur of these heuristics. The former seems strange insofar as it indicates that whatever we want to write on, the AI can do it for us. This aligns this trajectory roughly with what some (mostly undergraduate) students might use it for, whilst the latter one seems more indicative of research usage.

The blur occurs because in the first case the student will still have an idea that they want the AI to write the essay on (admitting they also might not). Either way they have to engage with the AI and unless they literally want to hand in the first thing it writes, they have to do some thinking and engaging. No one is saying this minimal engagement is a good thing, it just means that even the laziest version has to have some effort in it. The second trajectory suggests that writing is still needed, however once the researcher has had this synthesising insight, whilst the AI may not be able to reconstruct their argument by itself, it can certainly help if you give it the different propositions and ask for paragraphs to be constructed around them. The point generally being that with the second trajectory, unless the academic is a kind of purist, doesn’t deny that AI could be used to help out with the writing.

It seems fairly clear that trajectory one we want to avoid, yet trajectory two could easily encompass quite a lot of AI written input. It seems to me the crucial part here was the academic’s synthesising idea. This idea was only made possible by the reading and thinking (conscious and unconscious) that the academic did. This reminds us that of course what is important in the educational/research process is actually comprehension. The first option strikes us as so bad, because comprehension is extremely low. I tried to highlight how the redeeming part or trajectory one is that it is on a gradient on which some students will at least have an idea on the topic, that they then get the AI to write the paper and then they read it to make sure it’s good. This redeeming aspect is their thinking engagement and comprehension.

Going forward with AI we need to find ways to emphasise comprehension of subject matters. We also need to accept the potential of AI to write for us, to help us write our ideas. The danger does lie in the lack of comprehension, but arguably there is a lot of lack of comphrension already, AI is just bringing out of the system the latent lack of student integrity and exposing it.

Academic writing in the traditional sense may well be ultimately largely supplanted by AI, but academic reading (and all other forms of learning, argument formation and thinking) cannot be allowed to do so. Indeed, in exposing the possible lack of motivation in the system, we can use this to think of new ways to engage students in understanding their subjects and helping them want to understand their subjects. The best the AI can be for us is probably be a new interlocutor. As soon as we have our new research insight, it goes into the system (the available research). From here it can be accessed by the AI to help other researchers, who must think carefully and through their own multiple inputs create new insights.

So the guilt issue should not be view so much as an issue with writing; it’s an issue with comprehension. We need to absolve ourselves of this nebulous guilt by the best practice of writing with AI and ensure that we remain active comprehenders, processors and producers of information —as opposed to passive receivers of AI insights. So long as we are exercising our capacities to think and comprehend to the best of our ability, then the AI becomes a partner that could be incredibly empowering. The danger lies in our, handing cognition and production over to it.

Podcasts and social confidence

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Podcasts. I love them. The range of subject matter available is astonishing. I listen to several, ranging from esoteric to travelogues to sport on a regular basis. Each have their own personality: some quirky, others informative, and if you are lucky – both.

Soaring in popularity, over forty percent of internet users listen to at least one podcast a month in the UK alone (Götting, 2023).  UK podcast demographic data is revealing too: listeners tend to be younger males, higher earners, looking for innovation, urbanised, into sports and fitness, keen to learn new things, and politically left leaning (Götting, 2023). They also have greater informational needs too, as well as experiencing a heightened sense of community (Ellwood, 2022). The market is huge and accessible with YouTube, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Wondery, Sticher, Spotify and BBCiPlayer occupying some of the main platforms. Yet their influence goes beyond consumerist tastes or self-identity.

Podcasts can also boost our social confidence. Like reading, podcasts can influence us subconsciously. Their conversational style can be infectious. For when I am presenting or in a meeting, I am mindful of the way I sound, conscious of the use of my voice and energy generated in the room. Have you ever sat in a lecture or a meeting and sensed the energy of the person who is speaking? It has an instrumental quality. Each of us have a projection of some kind. Radio, podcasts, the listening ear all have a duty to perform. Tobin & Guadagno’s (2022) illuminating study into podcast listening elicited positive outcomes such as parasocial relationships and social engagement, and fulfilled basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Their research also found that listening to podcasts improve active listening skills and subconsciously they may influence the way we act socially.

Since Covid, many of us started to present online for the first time, which is something which felt very alien to begin with. Podcasts are one way to think about the way we want to present ourselves. Chatty, friendly, engaging, social, adaptable, podcasts are a brilliant way of entering a space where the possibilities of being demonstrably authentic and comfortable in our skins to a broader public. Examine the way some presenters engage with their audience, or how they deal with someone asking a difficult or challenging question, it is often something to admire and absorb. These are the tools of the trade when presenting with social confidence, which are, perhaps, subconsciously channelled via podcast listening.

What podcasts do you listen to? Do they orientate your worldview or conversational style?

References

Ellwood, B. (2022). Listening to podcasts may help satisfy our psychological need for social connection, study finds. Available from: Listening to podcasts may help satisfy our psychological need for social connection, study finds (psypost.org) [Accessed 29th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2022). Leading podcast platforms in the U.S. 2020, by age group. Available from: Top podcast platforms in the U.S. 2020 | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2024). Podcast listenership: selected countries and regions worldwide 2022-2026. Available from: Podcast listeners worldwide by country and region 2022-2026 | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2023). Podcasts in the UK – statistics & facts | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk). Available from: Podcasts in the UK – statistics & facts | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Tobin, S. J. & Guadagno, R. E. (2022). Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening. PLoS ONE 17(4). Available from: Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening | PLOS ONE [Accessed 29th April 2024]

Looking beyond the cover: Becoming what you read

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Being free, unshackled from the rigours of expectation, is important when you want to develop your writing voice and express things in your own way. When I was an undergraduate at Essex, a lecturer said to me that I had some good ideas and nice turns of phrases now and then, but my writing style was sometimes wooden. Ouch. It was a low blow, and I have never forgotten that remark. How would I improve and write in a way that was less awkward?

Reading is essential in unlocking that stuck gear. Hitherto, it’s important to enjoy what you read rather than viewing reading as a purely educational task; in the past I fell into the self-identity trap that I wanted people to think I was clever by the books I read. After I graduated and got a job in a London FE college I used to egotistically show off what I was reading to fellow commuters like the Thought Police were going to raid the Tube at any moment and check whether the cover was commendable enough to evade arrest. Certain authors spring to mind warranting immediate arrest.  An Orwellian or Kafkaesque dystopian society which nobody wants to live in. It was largely a false projection; an image of self that personified vanity but did little in the way of reading for pleasure. Yet anyone recall that beautifully dreamy scene in Raging Bull by the swimming pool when Jake LaMotta first meets his wife? Perhaps I had that in mind. Showing off book covers is hardly a sensible endeavour, yet as a mature student at that time I was making up for lost time and had to prove myself.

Choosing what you read is key to influencing your style of writing. What writing do I now enjoy? It can be much dependent on my frame of mind, but when arriving at a sweet spot I want to indulge as much as I can. Over the pandemic I devoured the works of Thomas Hardy. Gorgeous stuff. Nowadays it might be travel or sports writing, autobiographies or social history. Whatever it is, it must be suitable for a long train commute and the reading mood has to feel right – like wearing appropriate clothing for the weather.

What writer would I like to emulate nowadays? I’ve always had a soft spot for travel writing. As a child I moved around a lot, different towns, counties, even countries; travel was the shifting sands of my childhood. Perhaps that’s why I like travel writing, and a particular sort mixed with cultural history, intelligent humour, keen social observation and a side order of insightful reflection. I especially like reading about societies. What is it like to be there? Standing in a strange town square people watching, taking it all in as a casual observer yet Día morphically embedded in that society. A book can take you there. Learning about Le Flanuer in my undergraduate days has inspired many book purchases and many a read.

I recently read The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman: a bone-shaking tour through cycling’s Flemish heartlands, which I adored. It had all the right components. I sat enthralled on the train journey home anxious that I was not going to miss my stop – easily done when glued to a book, absorbed in its world; a kind of joyous escapism in 300 pages. Offbeat and humorous, intelligence bordering on the academic, it showed me the way I wanted to go as a writer, and reading for pleasure showed me the way. It seemed like the perfect idea to go down the road I wanted to, and not to meet the opinions of others.

Perhaps we are what we read? Rather, it is discovering ourselves in the process that matters, not the vaunted benediction of others; an internal study – not a social mirror. Yet it is a two-sided activity. Consider what Alexei Sayle (2010, 26) observed about his father’s varied book collection:

‘…the hundred or so volumes housed in two wooden bookcases in the front room all dated from before the war and provided a vivid picture of the life of a working-class radical in the 1930s. Though Joe never got to speak much about what he felt even in the brief silences when Molly wasn’t shouting at the neighbours, these books were like geological rock strata that revealed the evolutionary layers of his personality’.

References

Sayle, A. (2010). Stalin ate my homework. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Starting from scratch: Delivering Thematic Analysis sessions for the first time.

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Starting Thematic Analysis (TA) is a daunting task for most first-time researchers. TA is not something I have personally undertaken as part of my studies, yet it grew organically as most things at work do, taking root in the job and slowly but surely gaining ground. What had previously been taken for granted was now being overtaken with new ideas, fresh inspiration. Why did I decide to start running sessions for Writing Development on this type of qualitative analysis? It’s a slightly unusual story.

I had applied for an internal job at the University and one of the interview questions the panel asked me was ‘what methodology can you teach?’ I struggled to find an answer. It was a hot day and I felt under pressure to perform. It didn’t work out – I failed to get the job. I had to face reality – although I felt that I had bounteous experience supporting students with thematic analysis, it was never formalised. I never afforded myself the time to set aside and plan a session on thematic analysis as I was always too busy with back-to-back student appointments in my job as an Academic Subject Librarian for the Lincoln International Business School. I only worked for Writing Development three hours a week back then – not enough time to plan a new session or grapple with new concepts. Routinely I taught reflective writing or report writing year after year for Writing Development, with little option to broaden my wings and soar into unchartered territory. Starting as a full-time Writing Development Advisor last year gave me that opportunity.

That standalone interview question inspired me to think things anew.  Gone were days that the same old format would fit the bill. Writing Development needed new ideas, fresh approaches. Statistics about sessions on topics that we have not covered before far exceeding older, more established workshops. Students needed eye-catching variety, not an unquestioned itinerary of events. Our concept of the student experience is often far different than student needs and standing still could mean the format goes stale after a while.

How did I start? I conducted some preliminary research, pulled together some slides and met an academic from the Lincoln International Business School. We met and shared content, discussed ideas. What were the seminal works on Reflexive Thematic Analysis? Do you need to be a visual learner to carry out thematic analysis? Would this presentation work? It was a promising start: ‘I think students would really benefit from your workshop’ she said. Everyone needs encouragement, especially when embarking on something untested. It ignited my hopes of doing something different. I called it ‘Thematic Analysis for the first-time researcher’. No pun intended. Then I recorded the session and added it to the Writing Development site, before delivering a webinar on the slides. I subsequently adapted the slides and researched some more, adding richer depth to the content. I believed in a practical, step-by-step guide, envisioning students going through the same tentative stages as myself. During the first webinar, students popped questions into chat, generating ideas and different perceptions.

Diversifying what you offer is a key response to today’s unpredictable Higher Education climate. Statistics in this data-driven era has never been more scrutinised. What began as an unanswered question in a job interview eventually helped others embark on their research journey while sending me on a road of discovery which made the role more interesting and fulfilling as a result.

Ego Problems in Writing Support

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The ego is sometimes used to mean a kind of self-agrandizing principle of the psyche. Ego-centric can also mean that we focus on ourselves at the expense of others; this is a related but not identical meaning to the first sense. These differing meanings are related insofar as they both entail some psychic action by which we seek to prop up ourselves as individuals, one by self-promotion, one by self-interest. Both generally are related to a degree of insecurity in the individual in question. All people are different and have different histories; the ego level is contingent up various factors related to these differences.

A one-to-one support session is necessarily a meeting of egos. There is an imbalanced power relation between the student and the support worker. This is not an ego-trip itself, but a position of necessity. The student wants help with their writing and the writing support worker theoretically has the skills/knowledge to help them. This means it is not only a position of necessity but a position of responsibility, that is, the writing support worker is responsible for the student. Interestingly this means the power relation is more complicated than it first appears, for from this perspective the student is actually in control. They place the burden of their writing problems upon the support worker, whom they expect, to a greater or lesser extent, to solve them.

The initial manifestation of the support worker in this relation will be varied, but we all can be seduced by the desire to please, to be liked. Much more important than being liked though, is needing the student to trust us; this means we need to have (some) confidence in ourselves. If we project confidence, the student will trust us —unless we screw up so much that it’s painfully laid out for them to see. There is a difficult borderline (depending on our ego-structures) between the successful projection of confidence with the aim of inspiring trust and the confidence which inspires ‘being-liked’. We’re not supposed to care about ‘being-liked’ but because of the borderline, it can sometimes be hard to not do so.

I have often found myself lost in the early stages of a consult. Worried I won’t know where to go with it. Listening to the student, scanning the work. Looking to convey a mixture of honesty, but not so much honesty to give away the rising sense of ‘what to do with this?’ whilst also bringing the aforementioned confidence. I referred before to periods of quiet reading in the session that help let the problems in the work show themselves. These periods enable me to find a space in which any desire to be ‘liked’ can largely be eradicated as I get deeper into the work. Slowly seeing the problems emerge from the reading and talking about what they are trying to say, brings has a satisfaction that is not egoistic but only has its own satisfaction, like finding the solution of a puzzle on one’s own.

However this is not the end of the struggle. If the problems are successfully identified and a path forwards (that is not too disheartening) is found, then the student will often be very pleased. This pleasedness is then projected onto the the support worker in the form ‘being-liked’. Which is worse now, as it is not artifical (in the sense of inspired by the projection of confidence) but a genuine pleasure that their writing problems (for now) are resolved. It is course hard not to take some excess of pleasure in the pleasedness of the student, however it is to be avoided as much as possible.

The reason for this is that the classical issue of hubris is a very real one. If we allow the either spoken, or unspoken praise of the student to go in, then we may generate an attitude that will serve us very badly on another occasion. The projection of confidence, secure in the knowledge this is a contrivance is one thing, but the real thing is perilous. The tempered projection of confidence, should always contain the possibility of admitting to not know the way forward —a piece of writing for another time- whereas when hubris crashes into such difficulties the result will be an embarrassing mess, leaving the student lacking faith in the service and the support worker with another level of ego crisis to resolve.

Signposting dyslexic students to Wellbeing

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Reflective insights from a three-point map

Over the years I have frequently encountered undiagnosed dyslexia during 1-1s. Lately I have been reflecting on my own responses when a piece of writing exhibits traits of dyslexia, breaking them down into three parts. Not that I am an expert. These are purely general observations gleaned through years of experience. A feeling or perception, in other words. In a meeting with a student common dyslexia characteristics may become known from the first or second paragraph. Little signs that might explain the student’s difficulty with writing an assignment, indicating that further exploration is needed and the three-point map is carefully unfurled.

These three steps that I recognise as my approach to signposting students to Wellbeing and advise them about obtaining a screening for dyslexia are a regular reminder that although I am not an expert, or sufficiently qualified to diagnose dyslexia, there are brilliant services available to students at the University helping them to progress in their studies through correct diagnosis. If they are diagnosed with dyslexia, students may receive funding for an accessible laptop or obtain software like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

1st step: Initial signs

When I first met dyslexic students, I was looking for such tell-tale signs as misplaced word order or spelling, but I am increasingly aware that these are not the most common traits. Nowadays, tell-tale signs are more likely to include spending ages on an assignment, difficulty with translating their ideas onto paper, disorganised structure, confusion around capitalisation, and muddled syntax.

These broad observations lead to a short series of leading questions, which might illuminate the path ahead.

2nd step: Leading questions

The second stage in the process of considering signposting a student with potential dyslexia to Student Wellbeing might involve the following:

Q. ‘So, how long did you spend writing this 2000-word essay?’

A. ‘It took me all night to write two paragraphs’ or ‘I spent all day in the Library and produced nothing’.

Q. ‘Have you struggled with writing?’ (i.e. an open-ended question.

A. ‘Yes, when I was at school…’

Then we may comfortably enter into a discussion about screening: ‘have you ever thought you may be dyslexic?’

I would then point out where Student Wellbeing is located on the Brayford campus and their drop-in times.

As I indicated earlier in one of my blog posts, establishing the therapeutic relationship is essential in sensitively handling this discussion and attuned to whatever the student is saying through employing active listening skills (not interrupting, listening not responding, withholding judgement, and so forth). Otherwise, such a discussion might upset the student and discourage them from seeking further help.

3rd step: Learning strategies and signposting

Following on from this stage, we might discuss blue-sky thinking, problem solving, mind maps….getting the student to think visually; exploring ideas, not sentences.  LinkedIn has recently championed Dyslexia Thinking as a skill, not as an impediment.

Writing sentences can be a great inhibitor for a dyslexic student. Hurdles in word form. Breaking a sentence up into constituent parts drawn from ideas or images from a mind map is a great way of formulating a sentence. Bullet points can also kick-start an essay; an easy way to get started without worrying about the mental block of paragraphs. Think of small starts, but with big ideas.

It is often a relief for the student to realise that there is an issue where their struggles at school and college could be explained. Such a moment can be life-changing. Dyslexia is often hereditary. One of the student’s parents might be dyslexic. It may be common knowledge that they struggled in school and experience the same issues as their children, but it can be largely unspoken in family circles. Understood, but not officially diagnosed. As society moves on from the notion that dyslexia is an obstacle – as LinkedIn has recently done – students can feel confident at achieving academic success, and look forward to a brighter future.

Digging for words: Alex Quigley’s ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’

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The first chapter of Alex Quigley’s Closing the Vocabulary Gap reads like a resounding call to arms. A restricted vocabulary hinders a child’s academic progress, which impairs their mental health and future employment prospects as an adult. To succeed academically, developing word consciousness is fundamental. By way of a benchmark, readers of Closing the Vocabulary Gap typically know between 50 and 60 thousand words: in other words, a competent reader.

Knowing vocabulary is transformative: there is over a million words in the English language. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet there are 30,557 words alone. Students need to equip themselves with at least 50,000 words to thrive, otherwise their lack of ‘vocabulary knowledge deficit can prove an insurmountable hurdle’ (Quigley, 2018, 3). Vocabulary gaps start at an early age. Studies reveal that children with poorer vocabulary at aged five experience higher rates of unemployment along with poorer mental health problems (Nagy, 1987, 7). Although it is not a ‘bullet-proof solution’ (Quigley, 2018, 3) it is argued that academic achievement rests on broad vocabulary development:

Vocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities – not just skill in reading, writing, listening and speaking, but also general knowledge of science, history and the arts’ (Hirsch, 2013).

Many children are in tears sitting their SATS reading examination in primary school – in one Key Stage 2 SATS reading examination the words ‘unearthed’, ‘drought’, ‘freshwater oasis’, ‘parched’, ‘receding’, ‘suffocation’ were contained in a single paragraph.  To meaningfully comprehend a text, you would need at least 95% reading comprehension. However, imagine reading a 300-word passage and not understanding 15 words then multiplying that for an 85,000-word textbook as a graphic illustration of the challenge ahead. Pupils struggle with harder GCSEs as A-Level concepts are absorbed into the curriculum. It is perhaps no surprise that socio-economic status lies at the heart of academic achievement, compounding the problem:

‘From birth to 48 months, parents in professional families spoke 32 million more words to their children than parents in welfare families, and this talk gap between the ages of 0 and 3 year – not parent education, socio-economic status, or race – explains the vocabulary and language gap at age 3 and the reading and math achievement gap aged 10’ (Horowitz and Samuels, 2017 ,151).

Someone (indubitably a male) educated at Eton College will have access to the best education available. Compare that with an under-privileged inner-city school and a chasm – not a gap – appears. Vocabulary can be simply outlined as the difference between rich and poor. Yet simply having access to a dictionary can make a big difference, and we have a great opportunity in the here and now, regardless of our social status:

‘by closing the vocabulary gaps for children in our classrooms with their peers, we can offer them the vital academic tools for school success, alongside the capability to communicate with confidence in the world beyond the school gates’ (Quigley, 2018, 2).

All very simple in theory. But where is the hook? How do we get children to read in the first place? By what means do we spark interest and inspire children to pick up a book and read on their own? A good 10-year-old reader encounters a million words in a year. Using public libraries are free. They are warm, inviting places. Having access to thousands of books on a wide variety of subjects opens the mind and gives the reader plenty of opportunity to expand their vocabulary. This is one solution.

Children need to be exposed to more complex reading earlier on. Reading lots of books for pleasure is key to expanding vocabulary but such practice does not hold all the answers. Word learning is necessary to crack the academic code; developing word consciousness where the child is curious about a meaning of a word is essential in digging deeper – to its etymology. Digging down to its roots and unearthing word parts – known as morphology exposes meaning. Take circle for instance. The roots of circle are ‘cycl’. This word part has many functions: ‘recycle’, ‘bicycle’, ‘cyclone’, ‘encyclopaedia’, ‘tricycle’, and ‘motorcycle’., thus creating word families. Deconstructing the core purpose of a word gives it traction, motivating the reader to learn more. Get digging, uncover the roots of words, break down each word and know its design. Only then we will be able to traverse the socio-economic chasm and fulfil our true student potential in our vocabulary journey.

References

Carpenter, K. (2020). Education, Education, Education: 500 years of Learning at Eton College. Available from: Education, Education, Education: 500 Years of Learning at Eton College – History of Education Society [Accessed 22nd February 2024].

Hirsch Jr, E.D. (2013). A wealth of words. The key to increasing upward mobility is expanding vocabulary. City Journal, 23 (1). Available from: A Wealth of Words | Education Analysis | Expanding Vocabulary (city-journal.org) [Accessed 21st February 2024].

Horowitz, R., & Samuels, S. J. (2017). The achievement gap in reading: Complex causes, persistent issues, possible solutions. New York: Routledge.

Nagy, W.E. & Herman, P.A. (1987). Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Implications for acquisition and instruction (in) McKeown, M. & Curtis, M. (eds.) The nature of vocabulary acquisition, 19-35. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Eelbaum Associates.

Quigley, A. (2018). Closing the vocabulary gap. London: Routledge.

Helping Students by Looking for the Animating Principle in Their Work

gfreestoneLeave a comment

After looking at many pieces of student’s work in a one-to-one setting, I’ve come to identify a kind of process of how my ability to help appears to work. What follows are some kind of reflective notes on this process. As my reflection proceeds I make recourse to a concept I am calling the ‘animating principle’ of the writing to try to describe what’s going on.

When working with a student the very first thing is to put the student at ease with a friendly introduction. Next I need to find out what they need help with. They may have quite a specific kind of issue, for instance they want to know how to be more critical in their writing, or it may be something more general like how to write more academically.

Knowing my own mind and abilities, I am aware it’s very important that the whole situation be relaxed. If tension exists in the system, this will impair my ability to read their work/understand their issue and hence to give any useful advice. Also since I now likely have to digest the issue, either from reading their work/brief/learning outcomes, I always feel I have to spell out that I’m now going to do some reading and thinking but that they shouldn’t worry about the silence. This is all about removing tension. I think it’s important to spell this out as, whilst it might seem obvious, if I don’t say it they may feel uncomfortable or even keep interjecting and neither of these are desireable —though interjecting might be later on.

For me, this initial reading may not be massively in depth. I am trying to keep my focus on reading carefully, whilst also taking note of how long the text is and also trying to bear in mind the issue they’ve asked me about. This can get more complicated because I may notice other problems with the writing. If these are outside the remit of the query, then there is something of an ethical dilemma. On the one hand I do not wish to gloss over aspects of the writing that need looking at, but on the other the session is finite, so if I begin to spread out into too many issues I may a) overwhelm the student with information and b) not cover the issue they came for in a satisfactory manner. The resolution of this may be to recommend another session or to check in with them as to what stage they are at in the writing —the student may be aware of some things and expect to pick them up themselves later on. Some form of acknowledging these issues is required though.

After this initial reading I may have a general sense of major issues and may be able to offer advice about the work. I am always aware (or rather I should be aware) that at this stage the student’s work will likely not have disclosed itself properly to me. So at this point I will relay my thoughts so far back to the student and talk to them variously about it. This will usually give me a deeper connection to what they want and let me see if I am working in the right area.

I will then make a second reading of the work. By now the work and the learning outcomes have seeped into me at a deeper level and I am able to see the work clearer. The areas of the work start to become clearer, the structural problems, the lacks of criticality. This stage will involve less intense silence, but there may well be some. Again if I am thinking for a moment I will let the student know, so they understand I am not just sat in silence.

It is around the stage of this second reading/talking that I find the truly fascinating part of the process occurs. What roughly tends to happen is that, if I have remained relaxed and open, absorbed the work/inquiry and applied thought to the issue (asking myself, what is needed here? what nudge does the work need to cohere?) the general solution/advice will disclose itself by a some means I do not pretend to understand. There is a moment when something clicks and then I have the strong sensation that the way forward is clear. From this opening, I will feel a sense of where the essential problems are in the work, and begin to work out advice on how they might solve them.

This does not mean I will not offer nuts and bolts writing advice. As stated, there is always a question about where do you should focus. However if we are trying to work on issues such as structure, criticality, analysis or flow, then though the individual problems may look extremely various, it is often the same fundamental issue that drives them. This is what I have elsewhere referred to as the lack of an animating principle in the writing.

The repeated readings and questions then, are probes that try to find the animating principle (or lack of one) in the writing. This is a kind of holistic approach, as the aspects we are taught about academic writing come much more naturally if the writing has an animating principle. Criticality for instance arises by itself if we are truly interested in the topic; our interest will make us question the veracity of statements in our desire for understanding. Likewise our logical coherence will flow, because we have a tale we are trying to tell and our rhetorical powers of persuasion (if appropriate) will also be improved because we are invested in the movement of the writing.

It is true that the animating principle is easier to track and utilise when the writing has hit a certain level. However at all levels there is still the question/title that has been set by the tutor. Engaged thinking about this question can help bring out an interesting perspective in a question that might appear quite uninspiring. Yes of course, there can be many issues that might need fixing at the level of grammar and spelling, but improving these details after engagement has been achieved (or even suffering them to some extent to work on over time) will still yield a better piece of work than simply mopping up the periphery.

The Importance of Editing.

Molly BrooksLeave a comment

Editing. The part always left until the end, the part we always dread – and most often, the part that is left out. It is a crucial fragment of the academic writing process yet is most often ignored due to lack of time management, panic or sometimes not recognising its importance.

Most often in my appointments, I find that the advice I give out time and time again is surrounding editing and the value of reading through your assignment with a critical lens. Students often doubt their work, not giving themselves the credit they deserve – my view: if you have the ability to write in depth about your subject knowledge, you know what you are talking about. Step one to the editing process is all about confidence, when you read through your work you have to imagine you are reading secondary material – would you use this yourself? Why not? That’s your starting point.

By identifying the gaps in your argument, you are able to make adjustments before the deadline allowing yourself to get better marks. A quick skim read an hour before the deadline will only create panic and anxiety if you notice the mistakes but have no time to correct them. Failing that, by not editing at all, the first person to see the mistakes is your tutor.

We can break editing into three parts: academic, grammar and what I like to call, ‘easy reading.’

1. Academic – this is arguably the most important reason to edit. In an essay you are being marked on how well you can articulate your academic knowledge, but also how well you can present your own ideas. When you read through your assignment as an editor, not a writer, you must focus on identifying your key ideas and whether the way you have presented them is clear to the reader. The best way to tackle this is to read aloud (maybe not on the library third floor – but at home, or to a friend) to make sure that it makes sense. By changing the way you read your own work, you will notice things that you would have missed previously. If it doesn’t make sense, or you would not contribute this idea in a seminar then it is time to either re-word or scrap it. (Be brutal.)

2. Grammar – whether you love it or hate it, grammar is a crucial part to any form of writing but especially within the academic world. While the first recommendation will always be to familiarise yourself with grammar rules, it is not always realistic – especially when its assignment season! There are plenty of tools to help you get acquainted with these pesky rules, the most accessible at any time of the day is online grammar guides. While googling ‘is it a semi-colon or a comma?’ may help you temporarily it is not a permanent fix and can often disrupt writing flow. Use a guide that breaks it down step-by-step, but one from an academic source (universities, recognisable websites from classes etc.). As tempting as it may be AVOID AI generated editors – they may do the work for you, but not always in the correct way (Not to mention the risk of an academic offence – remember you’re the one getting a degree, not your computer!).  As with academic tone, by reading your work aloud it will help you identify grammar mistakes, for instance if you are running out of breath you definitely need a comma! For more tricky issues, come and see us in Writing Development!

3. ‘Easy Reading’ – while this isn’t marked like academic argument and grammar, the way your work reads to the marker makes a massive difference in terms of how generous your marks are. This is mainly because if an assignment reads well, it is easy to identify what the student is saying. Well, what does ‘reads well’ or ‘easy reading’ really mean? There is no distinct way to define this, but essentially you want to make sure your work reads smoothly, with no clunky sentences, random capital letters or awkward spacing. This also includes following layout guides in your subject handbook. Fortunately, if you have taken the time to edit academic tone and grammar, this should naturally fall into place. The final stage of editing is to be able to read through and/or read aloud your assignment without having to pause due to awkward phrasing or clunky sentences. My top tip in this stage is to print your work and read it from paper rather than a screen – our eyes become adjusted to the laptop so much that sometimes they are unable to identify the mistakes that we spot on paper (our default settings!).

By following this step-to-step, and giving your work the editing it deserves, you should find that you will naturally benefit from a reduced word count, higher quality writing and clearer ideas which in turn generate higher marks. However, in order to get the most out of editing, you must factor in time to your writing process. Once you have finished writing your assignment, don’t look at it until the following day so you can then read it with fresh eyes. By not allowing enough time, you are not allowing yourself to edit properly – because if not properly, why edit at all?