Reading Sounds

The work of writing closed captions for television and DVD is not simply transcribing dialogue, as one might assume at first, but consists largely of making rhetorical choices. For Sean Zdenek, when captioners describe a sound they are interpreting and creating contexts, they are assigning significance, they are creating meaning that doesn t necessarily exist in the soundtrack or the script. And in nine chapters he analyzes the numerous complex rhetorical choices captioners make, from abbreviating dialogue so it will fit on the screen and keep pace with the editing, to whether and how to describe background sounds, accents, or slurred speech, to nonlinguistic forms of sound communication such as sighing, screaming, or laughing, to describing music, captioned silences (as when a continuous noise suddenly stops), and sarcasm, surprise, and other forms of meaning associated with vocal tone. Throughout, he also looks at closed captioning style manuals and draws on interviews with professional captioners and hearing-impaired viewers. Threading through all this is the novel argument that closed captions can be viewed as texts worthy of rhetorical analysis and that this analysis can lead the entertainment industry to better standards and practices for closed captioning, thereby better serve the needs of hearing-impaired viewers. The author also looks ahead to the work yet to be done in bringing better captioning practices to videos on the Internet, where captioning can take on additional functions such as enhancing searchability. While scholarly work has been done on captioning from a legal perspective, from a historical perspective, and from a technical perspective, no one has ever done what Zdenek does here, and the original analytical models he offers are richly interdisciplinary, drawing on work from the fields of technical communication, rhetoric, media studies, and disability studies."

Imagine a common movie scene: a hero confronts a villain. Captioning such a moment would at first glance seem as basic as transcribing the dialogue. But consider the choices involved: How do you convey the sarcasm in a comeback? Do you include a henchman’s muttering in the background? Does the villain emit a scream, a grunt, or a howl as he goes down? And how do you note a gunshot without spoiling the scene? These are the choices closed captioners face every day. Captioners must decide whether and how to describe background noises, accents, laughter, musical cues, and even silences. When captioners describe a sound—or choose to ignore it—they are applying their own subjective interpretations to otherwise objective noises, creating meaning that does not necessarily exist in the soundtrack or the script. Reading Sounds looks at closed-captioning as a potent source of meaning in rhetorical analysis. Through nine engrossing chapters, Sean Zdenek demonstrates how the choices captioners make affect the way deaf and hard of hearing viewers experience media. He draws on hundreds of real-life examples, as well as interviews with both professional captioners and regular viewers of closed captioning. Zdenek’s analysis is an engrossing look at how we make the audible visible, one that proves that better standards for closed captioning create a better entertainment experience for all viewers.

Linked to the National Literacy Strategy, this classroom resource is designed to help teachers to develop the essential phonic skills that children need in order to become fluent readers. Practical activities and 86 worksheets focus on basic listening skills, an understanding of the difference between words and letters, the ability to hear separate syllables in words, learning to hear and generate rhymes and alliterations, learning about onsets and rhymes, learning to use analogy to help with reading, and learning to hear individual phonemes in words.

Experts are raving about this "must-have" resource for primary teachers that includes dozens of fun activities to help children listen to language and play with sounds. Activity cards can be cut out and laminated to create a handy reference file of fun ideas. A wide selection of reproducibles (picture cards, word cards, and manipulatives) is included.

Once your child is familiar with letters of the alphabet and matched them to their sounds, they can start putting sounds together into words. Book 8 started your child reading and writing whole words, and Book 9 c ontinues with further activities. In Excel English Early Skills: Reading with Sounds (2), your child will: practise blending simple single-letter sounds into meaningful words lea rn to choose the correct word from a list of words with the same endings and patterns write whole words for pictures The activities in each book are divided into double pages. Each double page allows your child to practise one particular skill many times so that th e skill is reinforced. This book has a clear, easy-to-follow page design with clear explanations to help both parents and children.

Once your child has learned all the letters of the alphabet and match ed them to their sounds, they can start putting these sounds together in to words. In Excel English Early Skills: Reading with So unds (1), your child will learn to: blend single-letter sou nds into meaningful words recognise word patterns and rhymes match up and write word endings The activities in t his book are divided into double pages. Each double page allows your chi ld to practice one particular skills many times so that the skill is rei nforced. Every page has an extra extension activity to further enrich yo ur child's learning.

Delightful illustrations and short, simple exercises help young learners develop essential skills with confidence. Each standards-based activity focuses on a specific skill. Clear instructions and examples help children complete the lessons successfully. Since each page includes a suggestion for extending the learning and reinforcing the skill, the books are ideal for any setting--a whole classroom, small group tutoring, or at-home learning.

READY, SET, READ! Introduce your child to long vowel sounds with this fun and colorful box set! Inside you’ll find 12 leveled storybooks featuring friendly animal characters, an activity sheet, and a helpful parent guide. Perfect for advancing readers! Kids will learn to: • Recognize consistent long vowel sounds and word families • Blend consistent long vowel word families with initial consonants and diagraphs • Read sentences with simple long vowel sight words THE READING HOUSE is a step-by-step learn-to-read program that takes kids aged 4-7 from letter recognition all the way up to independent reading. With four distinct stages, choosing the box set that’s just right for your reader is simple. The sets in Stage Three: Advancing Reader help children master long vowel sounds and words. The simple stories, decodable words, picture cues, and bright, colorful artwork make it easy to raise a confident, happy reader!