Reviews

Using multilingual talking stories with pupils and parents
BECTA Online Case Study, 12 April 2002

Talking stories on CD are a useful resource for early readers, especially if they are also early speakers in English. Here, Rajinder Arora and Fay Godwin describe the benefits - for pupils and parents alike - of using the Multilingual Talking Stories disc created by Hounslow Language Service.

Community languages, BSL and symbols
It consists of a set of multilingual computer talking stories based on traditional tales. The disc has been developed using the Clicker 4 program and is designed to be as inclusive as possible. There are three stories, and each is written in eleven versions. Nine versions have English with another language (Panjabi, Bengali, Hindi, Albanian, Somali, Arabic, Urdu, Gujarati and Portuguese). Staff members of Hounslow Language Service have been closely involved in translating and recording the stories. Another version of each story has English with British Sign Language using video, and one has symbol-supported English using Rebus symbols from Widget Software. All the stories and activities are fully switch accessible so that users who cannot operate a keyboard or mouse are able to use the materials.

Clicker 4, the program needed to run the CD, is a highly recommended resource for EAL children at any level of English, and is also parent friendly. It can be used for building sentences which are supported by pictures, and for substituting words and pictures within sentences. It has a library of over 1,000 curriculum-related pictures and words. It does not take long to master and is a great motivator. It also has key vocabulary for science and history as well as the facility to develop writing frame support with added illustrations. Purchasing the program from Crick Software in order to use the multilingual CD therefore comes with many bonuses.

Extracts from article at http://www.becta.org.uk/teachers/teachers.cfm?section=1_3_2_4&id=742

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