Alice Reads Help
Alice Reads 4 Help.
Double-click on a paragraph to read it. The color will change to green.
Or use ( ALT a ) to read selected text . Or right click to use Alice Reads Context Menu once you have selected some text.
You can read selected text and change text color by ALT z. A mouse click stops reading.
Use ALT x to have Alice read a selection of text and then you record for yourself the same section and play it back automatically.
This lets you see how well you are reading aloud. (If you use a headset, only you can hear what you just read.)
You can read entire document with ( ALT ; ) and stop with (ALT / ) or pause with ( ALT . ) and resume with (ALT , ).
You can pronounce individual words by double clicking in Word mode. Change to Word mode by ALT w.
Change back to Paragraph mode by ALT q. Then double clicking reads the whole paragraph again.
Read from selected text to the end of the document with (ALT t).
Select Text and Right Click the mouse for Alice Reads Context Menu.
Point cursor to Alice Reads on the menu and click Read.
After highlighting a word or phrase to read it, you can read it again as many times you like by ( ALT a ).
This is good to learn pronunciation. Use context menu for high-quality reading and other languages.
You can record yourself reading and play it back with ALT r.
To hear brief verbal Instruction: CTRL i
Alice likes:
Keyboard Shortcuts.
Read page (from current element): ALT ;
Cancel reading: ALT /
Pause reading: ALT .
Resume reading: ALT ,
Read highlighted Text: ALT z (turns text green).
Read highlighted Text: ALT p (turns text purple).
Read highlighted Text: ALT c (turns text brown).
Just read the highlighted text ALT a (no color change).
Read a selection of text and then record with you mic the same passage and play it back: ALT x.
This allows you to practice you reading out-loud. It is fun to see how you sound!
A headset is useful for this exercise. The text color changes so you can tell what to read.
The computer will set the record time according to the length of the passage.
Practice reading the Story of Dr. Dolittle or Alice in Wonderland.
Record yourself reading and play it back: ALT r. (headset recommended.)
This allows you to read aloud anywhere you like. The computer will record for
about 24 seconds. Then you can press ENTER to hear what you recorded.
Read from the highlighted text to end of the document: ALT t (no color change).
Read Selected Text by paragraph (node) with pausing: ALT s.
Load this Help Page: ALT i or CTRL h.
Word mode: ALT w.
Paragraph mode: ALT q.
Edit a File: ALT e (Simple Online editor--Can create and read the text with Alice Reads)
Download Page: ALT d (Downloads current page with color changes.)
Upload Page: ALT u (Uploads page with saved color changes.)
Mouse Functions.
Double-click: Reads paragraph. (turns text green). In Word mode, ALT w, reads one word (purple text). Paragraph mode: ALT q.
Single click: Stops any reading going on.
Hold and Drag Mouse: Selects text.
Alice Reads 4 Translation Capability.
Use the context menu to hear translations. Not available yet in document (page) mode.
Select text and right click for Alice Reads menu. If you select Read, Alice will automatically read in the
language of the text. Or you can choose to read a particular language. If you make a mistake,
Alice will read the text in its own language and then translate and read in the language you have chosen.
There are also selections to translate and read line-by-line in some popular languages.
The translated text is not shown on screen but can be viewed by using the paste option in Word Pad or word processor.
Use the context menu to read and translate many languages. Play with it and discover!
If you select read French on English text, for example, Alice will read both the English and the French translation.
Translations are copied automatically to the system copy-paste buffer.
Practice Reads.
Click the links below to practice reading with Alice Reads. Non-English Speakers
can translate and read selected text in their own language using the context menu. If you
speak Mandarin, select Read Chinese. 如果你
说普通话，选择阅读中文。
Some good works to read by Lewis Carroll are listed below.
Other Stories
Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Colors.
Alice reads uses colors with keyboard shortcuts to make learning more fun.
Double-clicking a word makes it purple and reads it. Keep track of words you are learning this way.
ALT z and ALT x read the selected text and change the text colors. green and purple respectively.
The best way to do this is to triple-click to select text node and then use either keyboard shortcut.
More color options are in development to make Alice Reads more fun.
Changing Voices.
The default voice is British English (female voice, en-GB). It is the best quality voice.
You can also use the context menu to read a selection in the US English voice.
The text is parsed by punctuation to make it read more slowly and with better emphasis.
Alice Reads is primarily intended for early readers and others learning English. Slow is better.
To avoid reading English in funny sounding accents, Alice Reads will translate to the language first.
Then Alice reads the English phrase and then the translated phrase in the chosen language.
You can also do this with other language combinations by playing with the Context Menu choices.
So instead of playing with voices, the student is encouraged to play with actual languages themselves.
(The reason why there are different TTS voices is because not all words are available in a foreign language,
So then the word is read in English with an accent of the other language speaker.)
Alice Reads is designed to facilitate foreign language learning, or two languages at the same time.
The reason why the en-GB voice is the default is the the en-US voice varies in default pitch depending on the platform.
We want to avoid the user having to adjust the pitch. Those programs that adjust pitch, basically, need to.
Educational Design.
Alice Reads is designed as an educational tool. It is not a closed-design teaching program. It teaches reading by reading.
You can download many good literary words from https://www.gutenberg.org/ There are many texts in foreign languages also.
The age level depends on the books you select to read. You can put your own material on sites.google.org. You can make
your own list of books or put text you have written yourself to see how it sounds. You can also insert pictures into your own pages.
So teachers and students can make their own books.
Error Handling & Compatibility.
Alice Reads will automatically use the right language if "Read" is selected in the context menu. It may make some mistakes
occasionally for the Romance languages. Also, Arabic is not yet working because of voice availability.
Alice Reads needs some punctuation within each 255 characters or she may stop reading. The parsing mostly solves this.
Alice Reads has different voices on a Mac or on Windows 10 if Microsoft voices are active.
On a Chrome Book, you will not get the voice you want unless you set it up under settings.
This Chrome Extension does not yet work in Chrome on phones or Android tablets. Those use special apps
from app stores and do not use Chrome extensions.
This Chrome Extension will work on the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge and other Chromium based browsers.
Alice Reads does not work on Firefox.
Installation:
Alice Reads is not yet on Play Store so you have to load the extension in Chrome in Developer mode. Code folder needs
to stay in the place it is loaded from. Use "Load Unpacked" and select folder. Download latest Alice Reads 4 from GitHub.