Type of exercises:

• 6 levels of reading semantic exercises.
• Picking items belonging/not belonging to categories and guessing categories from items presented

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: None

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:    

• Need sentence level reading
• Quite hard, abstract questions
• Creates new exercises each time you use so no ‘learning’ of answers

Beware:    
    American vocab (e.g. food and drink items, authors)
    Some vocabulary is quite abstract
 

Type of exercises:

• 4 levels of reading comprehension exercises.
• Ranging from single paragraphs with short sentences up to very long stories with long sentences based on novels.

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: Yes. If a wrong answer is given, it will highlight the area of the text to look at to obtain the correct answer.

Prompts/cues given: Yes. Can highlight the text word by word to aid concentration. Chunks of text to read are highlighted to aid finding correct answer. Can alter number of multiple choice options.

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• The long stories are quite long and complicated.
• On levels 3 & 4 some answers are inferred from the text
• Progress tracking to move user on as they improve
   

Type of exercises:

• Multiple choice and gapfiller sentence,
• phrase and definition completion

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: Can choose number of multiple choice options & type of cue

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free, life time technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Need mouse to exit before the end of the exercise session
• Extensive number of items to complete
• Some flexibility with answers (multiple correct answers)

N.B:
    Have to delete previous answer before correcting a response
    Writing tasks but also working on semantics
    Need sentence level reading

Type of exercises:

• Category discrimination & reasoning (semantics)
• Category naming & completion (semantics)
• Cause & effect (what would happen if…)
• Conditional statements (if X then Y…)
• Deductive reasoning (semantics)
• Form & function (semantics)
• Inferential naming (semantics)
• Logical thinking
• Problem solving (pragmatics)
• Reasons why (pragmatics)
• Situation Reasoning (pragmatics)
• Things in common (semantics)

Access: Mouse for all exercises except inferential naming which also requires keyboard

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No, based on clinician experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Easy to use? No. The user must click on an answer, then click again to input their answer and then click again to move onto the next question.

The internet subscription exercises are very slow to accept the answer making multiple activations possible and therefore potentially confusing.

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: None

Tutorials: Yes

Free trial: Yes but not the complete program

Support: Via Livechat. The suppliers can also log onto the user’s computer. Support takes place 9am-5pm New York time

Comments:

• The online subscription allows access to all the modules available so as the user progresses they don’t need to purchase new modules. It feels like an app when downloaded on an ipad
• The CD version has more functions than the internet subscription version
• A download version exists for $19.95 per program but works only on Windows, not mac
• The pragmatics exercises are aimed at ‘what if’ scenarios
• Remote access to results is possible as long as the SLT has the user’s login & password.

N.B:
    US terminology
    Voice is American and computer generated
    Need single word/simple sentence level reading or good auditory comprehension to complete the tasks
    US terminology & vocabulary
    No visual rewards for correct answers
 

Type of exercises:

• Reading comprehension with multiple choice answers.
• Reading of bills, adverts, product labels, timetables.
• Locating services and recipes.

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: Yes. If a wrong answer is given, it will highlight the area of the text to look at to obtain the correct answer.

Prompts/cues given: Chunks of text to read are highlighted to aid finding correct answer.

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Very American (e.g. American product labels, prices in $, American vocabulary)
• Not real life clippings
• Some exercises only have 2 items to read

N.B:   

• Very American.
• Not many exercises so would quickly complete the whole programme.

Type of exercises:

• Multiple choice and gapfiller sentence, phrase and definition completion

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: None

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free, life time technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Need mouse to exit before the end of the exercise session
• Extensive number of items to complete
• Some flexibility with answers (multiple correct answers)

N.B:

• Have to delete previous answer before correcting a response
• Writing tasks but also working on semantics
• Need sentence level reading

Type of exercises:

• Letter and word recognition
• Written naming
• Multiple choice matching tasks
• Gap filling naming tasks

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: Not a particular theory base, SLT experience

Personalisation of content: No

Error handling: Only for picture naming exercises.

Prompts/cues given: Only in the deluxe version. Cues given for picture naming exercises but not other 6 exercise sets

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments: Need to backspace previous answer before entering new, correct response

Type of exercises:

• Multiple choice and gapfiller exercises for generating words that ‘sound like’ or are ‘the opposite to’ or are ‘the same as’

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: Not a specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: Yes. Gives cues after each wrong answer.

Prompts/cues given: No

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Some Americanisms
• Some items are very high level
• Model voice is American
• Need deluxe version for recording results
• Need deluxe version for user selectable cues

N.B:
    Need spelling skills
    Need whole word reading
 

Type of exercises:

• Verbal single word naming of numbers, amounts and time
• Verbal single word repetition of numbers, amounts and time

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: Not a specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: Yes

Correction of own speaking attempts: No

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: No

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Up to 150 exercises for each ‘lesson’.
• No visual cues (e.g. pictorial representation of a number or a clock face)
• Aimed at reading aloud numbers, time or money amounts

N.B:
  Model voice is American

Type of exercises:

• Following written instructions to place shapes. 1-3 step instructions.
• Also sequencing exercises with shapes and written memory to a degree

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: No

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• More for work on prepositions and sequencing than direction following
• Can change colours to aid visual difficulties
• Can remove written direction to work on written memory skills too

N.B:
   Need very good sentence level reading