# Building a Phonics Engine for Automated Text Guidance

Canonical page: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance

- SlideShare title: Building a phonics engine for automated text guidance
- Talk date: Not established
- SlideShare upload: 2015-10-09 (upload date, not the delivery date)
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- Topics: Access & reading
- Language: en
- Slides in the original listing: 22
- Coverage: Full text of all 22 slides, each paired with its original slide image (slide N is section N).
- Original listing: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/53729830
- Cover image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-01.png
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- TalkWeaver outline: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/talkweaver/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance-outline.md

## Slide 1: Building a Phonics Engine for Automated Text Guidance

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-1 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-01.png

![The iLearnRW project logo: the word “ilearn” in blue with “RW” in red above a curved line of stars.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-baeb0f72001b5327.png)

Dominik Lukeš

Dyslexia Action

Chris Litsas

NTUA

www.ilearnrw.eu

## Slide 2: Outline

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-2 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-02.png

- Struggling readers needs
- Linguistic background
- Phonics engine need
- Phonics engine specification
- Phonics engine implementation
- Phonics engine applications
- Next steps

## Slide 3: Needs of dyslexic people

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-3 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-03.png

- Identifying the syllables in a word
- Recognising the structure of words (stem, prefix, suffix)
- Highlighting typical or repeated patterns of English orthography
- Identifying phoneme/grapheme correspondence
- Learning the pronunciation of a word
- Learning the meaning of a word

## Slide 4: Linguistic background

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-4 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-04.png

> Dearest *creature* in *creation*\
> Studying English *pronunciation*,\
> I will teach you in my *verse*\
> Sounds like *corpse*, *corps*, *horse* and *worse*.
>
> Though the difference seems *little*,\
> We say *actual*, but *victual*,\
> *Seat*, *sweat*, *chaste*, *caste*, *Leigh*, *eight*, *height*,\
> *Put*, *nut*, *granite*, and *unite*.
>
> Gerard Nolst Trenité - The Chaos (1922)

## Slide 5: Linguistic background

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-5 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-05.png

- t**ough**, th**ough**, thr**ough**, b**ough**, th**ough**t, c**ough**, hicc**ough**
- hosp.i.tal vs. hos.pit.al
- kitt.en vs. kit.ten
- walked, stopped, faked, tried
- exgirlfriend vs. exigent vs. exit
- English vs. Greek

## Slide 6: Phonics engine need

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-6 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-06.png

- Finding all examples of ‘a’ spelled to rhyme with ‘hay’ in a text or a corpus.
- Sorting words by their phoneme/grapheme ratio.
- Identifying appropriate syllable boundaries in the written form of a multi-syllable word based on knowledge of the syllable boundaries in pronunciation

## Slide 7: Phonics engine specification

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-7 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-07.png

- provide automated guidance to students and teachers reading texts (using highlighting as well as explicit information)
- generate more extensive word lists for practice activities within the serious games
- provide information about word structure to the game engine

## Slide 8: Phonics engine implementation

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-8 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-08.png

- Profile of phonic difficulties
- Annotated phonic dictionary
- Look up routines

## Slide 9: Phonics profile - categories

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-9 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-09.png

Based on a modified and expanded version of Dyslexia Action Literacy Programme

- Consonants (49)
- Vowels (71)
- Blends and letter patterns (131)
- Syllables (13)
- Suffixes (92)
- Prefixes (42)
- Confusing letters (15)

## Slide 10: Phonics profile (JSON)

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-10 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-10.png

{"descriptions":\["a-æ"\],

"problemType":"LETTER_EQUALS_PHONEME",

"humanReadableDescription":"a=æ (at) \<\> Pronounce a as æ. For example: at, as, and",

"cluster":3,

"character":"Short vowel"}

## Slide 11: Phonic dictionary

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-11 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-11.png

|                               |                            |
|-------------------------------|----------------------------|
| Word form:                    | feelings                   |
| Related stem:                 | feeling                    |
| Pronunciation:                | ˈfiː.lɪŋz                  |
| Phoneme/Grapheme Mapping:     | f-f,ee-iː,l-l,i-ɪ,ng-ŋ,s-z |
| Orthographic syllabification: | fee.lings                  |
| Number of letters:            | 8                          |
| Number of phonemes:           | 6                          |
| Number of syllables:          | 2                          |
| Frequency band:               | 4                          |
| Suffix type:                  | SUFFIX_ADD                 |
| Suffix form:                  | s                          |
| Prefix type:                  | PREFIX_NONE                |
| Prefix form:                  | NULL                       |

## Slide 12: Building the phonic dictionary

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-12 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-12.png

- 5,000 most frequent words based on COCA
- Generated derived forms by reversing hunspell
- Used online tool to generate pronunciation
- Create rules for matching pronunciation with spelling patterns
- Create rules for displaying
- Mark suffixes and prefixes and types
- Adjust frequencies
- Manual fine tuning (lots of regex)

## Slide 13: Phonics engine applications

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-13 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-13.png

- Phonics aware reader
- Game support – generating word lists
- Game support – provide word structure
- Game support – link word structures to profile
- Text classification tool
- Online text annotation tool

## Slide 14: Phonics aware reader

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-14 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-14.png

![A word information card for “insects” showing its stem, its syllables “in-sects”, its sounds, and details of its suffix, syllables and vowels, with an OK button.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-3985805ec8ac000c.png)

## Slide 15: Phonics aware reader

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-15 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-15.png

![A Highlight Settings panel with a Text Rules list of vowel spellings such as a=æ (at) and e=e (get), each with an ON switch.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-97b9278f528e0bc6.png)

![Sample text in a large spaced typeface, “time. Fossils tell us that they were alive at the time of the mammoths.”, with some letters in lighter colours.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-bf2e8db6565e5f96.png)

## Slide 16: Game support

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-16 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-16.png

![A game screen in which the word “unless” is split into the coloured parts “un” and “less” above a scientist character, a clock and a percentage score.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-548612bce87e63a6.png)

## Slide 17: Online text tools

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-17 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-17.png

![A web tool with a profile menu showing “english_profile”, a box of pasted news text, and a Generic Metrics table: for example 186 words, 8 sentences and 5 paragraphs, with an average word length of 5.02 and a Flesch-Kincaid score of 12.76.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-93c71eab4c4cae1e.png)

## Slide 18: Online text tools

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-18 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-18.png

![A web tool showing counts of difficulties under Consonants, Vowels and Blends and Letter Patterns as numbered red circles, and a table of words such as financing, international, analysts, bank and and, with their syllables and phonetic spellings.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-4eb3ab1cf1392ddd.png)

## Slide 19: Online text tools

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-19 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-19.png

![An iLearnRW web page headed “english_profile, Difficulties List” listing vowel rules such as “iCe=aɪC (time)”, with an Active Rules panel showing the rule “a=æ (at)” and a Paint Problematic Word Parts menu.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-4631d1062cf28a2e.png)

## Slide 20: Online text tools

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-20 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-20.png

![Two paragraphs of news text about Greece and its creditors in which some letters a are shown in red.](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/media/img-ecb9ff0580e7bc0e.png)

## Slide 21: Next steps

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-21 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-21.png

- Bigger dictionary with more information on words
- Finetuning of look up routines
- More sophisticated highlighting routines
- More sophisticated NLP
  - PoS
  - Sentence structure
  - Semantics
    - WordNet, Framenet
    - Named Entities
    - Collocations

## Slide 22: www.ilearnrw.eu

Cite: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance#section-22 · Original slide image: https://slides.dominiklukes.net/readers/building-a-phonics-engine-for-automated-text-guidance/pages/page-22.png

Collections: [Reading, writing and accessibility](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/?collection=access), [Linguistics, metaphor and cognition](https://slides.dominiklukes.net/?collection=linguistics)