For grown-ups
What it does
CaptionQuest plays a narrated chapter from one of our cast stories with the words shown on screen and lit up as they are read. The reader chooses how much the narrator reads. On the reader's lines, the narration pauses and the words light up at a slower pace. The reader reads the line, aloud or silently, then taps Next line. If a line is hard, Hear this line plays it.
The six levels
- Listen along. Every line is read to you. Follow the words as they light up.
- A few lines. The narrator steps back on about one line in five. Those lines are yours.
- One in three. About one line in three is yours.
- Half and half. You and the narrator take turns, line by line.
- Mostly you. You read most lines. The narrator joins in now and then.
- Solo. Every line is yours. The narrator stays quiet.
A reader who is not confident can start with Listen along, which looks and feels like listening to a show. Each time, CaptionQuest asks how it felt and suggests the next level. It never labels a reader.
Take a part
In Take a part, the reader picks a short drama and one character. The cast reads every other part, and the story waits whenever it is that character's turn. This is readers' theatre: rereading the same scene to perform it is one of the best-supported ways to build fluency, and it gives a reason to read a passage several times.
Why read along
Showing the words while they are spoken ("same-language subtitles") connects the sound of a sentence to its print. Stepping the narration back turns listening into reading, one line at a time. Rereading a favourite chapter at a higher level is the point: repeated reading is one of the best-supported fluency routines.
What it does not do
It does not listen to or record the reader. There is no score, no timer on the reader, and no reading level. The highlight follows each recorded line's timing; the recordings mark lines, not individual words, so word timing is estimated. It is a reading routine, not a promise of a test result.
Privacy
No account. The only thing kept on this device is the level last used for each chapter. Nothing is sent anywhere.