In an earlier post titled How Challenging Is that Online Text?, I shared the Readability tool that can help educators determine how hard an online text is to see if it is a good match for their students. Then in a training last week, someone asked me if there was a tool that could make a challenging text simpler. Yes, there is!

Rewordify allows the user to:

  • Simplify the wording of a text for improved comprehension
  • Learn new vocabulary
  • Design engaging lessons
  • Track his/her reading statistics and progress

Simplify Website Text

Teachers can copy and paste text into the yellow box on the Rewordify homepage or enter the URL for the web page they want to simplify.

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When teachers copy and paste a URL into the box, they have two options: 1) Rewordify the web page and display it (retaining all photographs) or 2) Rewordify the web page text only.

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If teachers click “Rewordify web page & display it,” the web page will appear with yellow wording adjustments in yellow throughout.

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If the user hovers over any of the yellow words or phrases, the original text will appear. For example, the word “propaganda” in the title is translated into “talk or information that tries to change people’s minds.”

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Develop Vocabulary with Learning Sessions

If users copy and paste a chunk of text into the yellow window, the software identifies the challenging words and the user can decide which words they want to learn. The user can also hand pick words they want to learn that may not have been identified by Rewordify. This gives the user some control over vocabulary development.

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For each word in a Learning Session, the user:

  • listens to an audio file pronouncing the word
  • sees the word used in context
  • types the word
  • selects a synonym for the word

In addition to simplifying online texts, Rewordify has a large collection of classic literature and public documents that have been reworded to be more simple. These offer teachers looking to differentiate reading instruction another option to use when designing lessons.

For more websites where teachers can find texts that are written at different Lexile levels, check out my post “3 Websites Where You Can Find Complex Texts.”

10 Responses

  1. A question about that: rewordify suggests “speeded up” for “accelerate”, and left “Antigraft” alone. (Microsoft spellchecker would probably suggest “antigravity”.)

    Shouldn’t the proper verb phrase be “sped up”? I have a feeling those may be two distinct tenses.

    (I can hardly wait to try it on something of Faulkner’s.)

    • Well, sped up and speeded up are actually both correct. They both represent its past tense and past participle form. I’d definitely say sped up in my own writing, but the other isn’t incorrect.

      I wonder what it would do with Shakespeare. I’m going to try it out!

      Catlin

  2. Will this work for languages other than English? If not, do you know of any similar apps or sites that would do something similar for say French? Thanks for your help!

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