Note: This article is an independent review of Rapid Reading by Pearson. We have no association or affiliation with the product or with Pearson.
If your children are learning English in school, then they probably use a course book. There are many different books for English learning, from many publishing houses, and there is a great diversity both in content and quality.
In school, the teacher is the one who usually decides on a certain course book. But at parents’ request, the teacher might introduce another book in parallel with or instead of the current book, if the parents’ committee prefers. So you should be informed about the possibilities.
We have provided just a small review of one of the most important international publishing houses of English books for primary school, Longman. We have chosen primary level since this is the most influential part of the child’s development, and we have chosen literacy as the subject.
Longman has a brand for its Longman School Books entitled Pearson. Longman provides a new program for the primary school, the Rapid Reading program, which is actually a series of books and software for English reading. It is an innovative approach, which was tested and proven to work for those who are struggling to learn.
Rapid Reading has a rapid learning "assistant" that comes with speech recognition software, which monitors the pupils as they read aloud and alerts them if they’ve made a mistake or if they are hesitating or stumbling. The program is designed to be attractive to children.
Rapid Reading includes 112 fiction and non-fiction short stories with colorful images designed to attract and stimulate the child’s attention. The program is interactive for both the child and the teacher.
For the children, Rapid Reading includes quizzes to test the child’s comprehension and progress in reading. For every positive result, be it even small, the software offers PowerPoint rewards. With these, the program correctly evaluates your child through assessment texts; on the basis of these assessments, your child will go on to the next level or not.
For parents and teachers, there are monitoring and recording programs so that one can get a clear view of the child’s progress and of the positive and negative aspects of the pupil’s reading and comprehension capabilities.
The program is an ideal aid for any pupil. It introduces main characters and key concepts and introduces new words, so it enriches the pupil’s vocabulary and sets the scene for each story beforehand. The child begins learning to use their imagination when reading a story.
So if you want a book for English, or series of books, that can help your child’s development in a fun, stimulating way, try the Rapid Reading program by Pearson from Longman.