HIBOU: an eBook to improve Text Comprehension and Reading Fluency for Beginning Readers of French
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Tools and Resources to Empower People with REAding DIfficulties (READI) within the 13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Abstract
In this paper, we present HIBOU, an eBook application initially developed for iOs, displaying adapted texts (i.e. simplified), and proposing text comprehension activities. The application has been used in six elementary schools in France to evaluate and train reading fluency and comprehension skills on beginning readers of French. HIBOU displays two versions of French literary and documentary texts from the ALECTOR corpus, the ‘original’, and a simplified version. Text simplifications have been manually performed at the lexical, syntactic, and discursive levels. The child can read in autonomy and has access to different games on word identification. HIBOU is at present being developed to be online in a platform that will be available at elementary schools in France.