Pearson Unveils Enhancements to WriteToLearn
Innovative Web-based Tool for Building Strong Readers and Writers Now Features Hundreds More Essay Topics and Reading Passages
BOULDER, Colo. - March 23, 2010 - For all U.S. high
school graduates to be college and career-ready, strong reading and
writing skills are the golden ticket. Today Pearson unveiled hundreds of
additions to the reading and essay writing capabilities of
WriteToLearn™, the company's complete online tool for building the
reading comprehension and writing skills that are critical for academic
success. Since its launch five years ago, hundreds of schools across the
country have turned to WriteToLearn to harness the power of technology to
help their students build writing and reading comprehension abilities.
With WriteToLearn, students practice essay writing and summarization
skills, and their efforts are measured by Pearson's state-of-the-art
Knowledge Analysis Technologies™ (KAT) engine. The KAT Engine is a
unique automated assessment technology that evaluates the meaning of
text, not just grammatical correctness or spelling.
"It's simple: reading and writing skills are critical to
achievement in all subject areas. For students to be successful in math,
science, history or any other discipline they pursue, they must have the
literacy skills requisite to tackle the content being taught," said
Lynn Streeter, president of the Knowledge Technologies group of Pearson,
developer of WriteToLearn. "With each update to WriteToLearn, we
are demonstrating our commitment to making it an even more powerful tool
for ensuring that students build these important skills while learning
in an engaging, motivating online environment."
With this update, WriteToLearn now features nearly 200 new reading
passages in science from Pearson's popular Scott Foresman Science for
grades 4, 5 and 6, growing its library to nearly 800 engaging reading
passages from subjects across the curriculum. Students read these
passages online and then summarize them using the online writing tool.
They receive immediate feedback from WriteToLearn, detailing the steps
they can take to improve their writing. A "scoreboard" shows
students their progress as they work to move into the
"excellent" zone.
For struggling readers and English Language Learners, WriteToLearn
provides text-to-speech capabilities with added dictionary and spot word
translation so they can listen to the reading passages before writing
their summaries.
More than 125 new essay topics relevant to contemporary classrooms have
also been added to WriteToLearn. Now teachers can choose from an even
larger library of prompts when assigning essays to their students. For
essays, WriteToLearn provides feedback on six popular traits of
writing - ideas, organization, conventions, sentence fluency, word
choice and voice - and allows students and teachers to focus on each of
these important dimensions of writing.
In addition to choosing from a robust library of essay topics that come
with WriteToLearn, teachers can create their own topics to assign to
their students. To expand teacher's capabilities for providing students
with meaningful feedback to improve their writing, WriteToLearn now
features enhanced student feedback on teacher created prompts. This
enhanced feedback gives students additional, targeted guidance for
revising future drafts of their essays.
All schools and districts with current WriteToLearn accounts will
receive the updates free of charge. More information about WriteToLearn
is available at www.WriteToLearn.net.
About Pearson
Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the global leader in education and education
technology, reaches and engages today's digital natives with effective
and personalized learning, as well as dedicated professional development
for their teachers. This commitment is demonstrated in the company's
investment in innovative print and digital education materials for preK
through college, student information systems and learning management
systems, teacher professional development, career certification programs,
and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the
industry. Pearson's commitment to education for all is supported by the
global philanthropic initiatives of the Pearson Foundation. Pearson's
other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the
Penguin Group. For more information, go to www.pearson.com.
For more information, press only:
Adam Gaber, Pearson, 800-745-8489, adam.gaber@pearson.com
Lisa Wolfe, L. Wolfe Communications, 773-227-1049, lwolfe@lwolfe.com
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