Bangor export program

Computer programs developed at Bangor University to improve dyslexic's linguistic skills are now being used in Romania to teach English to local children.

Xavier Educational Software, a small business based at Bangor's department of psychology, wrote the program to meet the needs of the department's reknowned Dyslexia Unit.

One of the many British schools to use the software in its special needs classes is Madeley High School near Crewe. Madeley has developed close links with Nicolaenu School at Sacele-Brasov, Romania, following a visit to Britain last year by one of Nicolaenu's teachers Cristina Ursachi.

She was impressed with the Bangor software and inquired about obtaining it for her school.

This spring, her pupils were using the materials following Bangor psychology department's decision to donate 17 programs to Romania. They are being run on an old BBC computer - a gift from Madeley School.

The Romanian pupils are utilising the software to learn the English alphabet, together with a refinement of spelling and punctuation as well as sentence construction.

And as the programs include digitised speech, the children are also able to hear the English language being spoken.

Simultaneously, they are grasping the basics of British maths, as some of the programs encompass fractions, telling the time as well as British coinage and currency.