Students have many reading aids available to them. These can be accessed by highlighting a portion of the text. When you select a portion of the text (a few words or a sentence) you'll see the below menu.
When you select a single word, you have the additional option of "Define."
Highlight and take note
More details on highlighting & taking notes are here.
Hear it (text-to-speech)
FYI: Texts published by HarperCollins, PenguinRandomHouse, and Simon & Schuster will not have text-to-speech available.
STEP 1: Select a portion of the text, then click "HEAR IT"
STEP 2: Make sure your sound is turned on
You can adjust the speed at which the text is read and the voice of the reader. You can also replay the text.
There is also the option to highlight the words as they are spoken
Use text-to-speech to read entire text sections
Hear it (text-to-speech) with translation
Text-to Speech is currently available in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh.
STEP 1: Select a portion of the text, then click "TRANSLATE"
STEP 2: With the sound on, select the language you would like to translate the text to
FYI: There will be languages in the "Translate" drop down menu that are not currently supported by the "Hear It" feature
STEP 3: Highlight the translated text and select "HEAR IT"
FYI: If the "Hear It" feature does not appear when you have highlighted the translated text, that language is not available at this time
Translate
Translate is currently available in Spanish, French, German, English, Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Burmese, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cebuano, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, Frisian, Galician, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Māori, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Nyanja (Chichewa), Odia, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Sesotho, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhala (Sinhalese), Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sudanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino), Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, and Zulu.
Sometimes it may be helpful to translate a certain portion of the text, a question, or a note to another language. Our translate tool goes through Google Translate. All of the languages that are available on Google Translate are available in Actively Learn for our translation tool.
FYI: Text published by Simon & Schuster will not have translation options available.
When a student selects the translate option, they'll see the translation in the right hand of the screen (with the option to pick another language.)
Dictionary
When reading, students often come across new words. Having the ability to comprehend unfamiliar words is an essential skill that not only enhances the student's vocabulary but also improves their writing skills.
Students can define any word instantly (in text, questions, and notes)
Closed Captioning
Most of our videos have subtitles or Closed Captioning available for all of our users. Clicking on the CC button will toggle this feature on or off.