Brief Overview

Noah Text® Overview

What is Noah Text®?

Noah Text® is a method of displaying text that makes it easier to decode and read with fluency while building overall reading skill.  Highly recommended by structured literacy specialists who support the science of reading, it is a word-level scaffold that provides extra support and accessibility for struggling and striving readers, dyslexics, and English-language learners.

How does Noah Text® work?

Noah Text® works by highlighting linguistic and orthographic rimes, syllables, and long vowels while keeping words intact. This in turn enhances reading fluency, stamina, accuracy, and comprehension that transfers to plain text reading. Grounded in the science of reading, Noah Text® is an evidence-based method of displaying text that can be applied to font. Noah Text® builds reading skills by:

  • Allowing readers to see sound-parts within words for proper decoding and enunciation
  • Freeing up cognitive resources for readers to devote to comprehension
  • Supplementing and bolstering learning by continuing to show students the structure of words
  • Promoting reading confidence while helping facilitate orthographic mapping
  • Advancing reading skills beyond basic proficiency to tackle higher-level learning

What does Noah Text® look like?

Here is a short paragraph rendered in Noah Text®:

English has a complex syllable structure; thus, you'll notice Noah Text makes syllable breaks obvious. In addition, predictable writing systems have clear vowel identifiers. Therefore, Noah Text accentuates the long vowels, similar to acute accent marks used in many transparent systems.

To illustrate, we take a word like “unbelievable” and write it in Noah Text® format as “unbelievable.” This approach effectively breaks complex words into smaller and more familiar patterns (i.e., un + be + liev + a + ble) while keeping words intact. As a result, resistant and struggling readers begin to enjoy reading while simultaneously building their reading skills.

Noah Text

What problem does Noah Text® solve?

Noah Text® was designed to address the fact that the English writing system is one of the most irregular, complex in the world, requiring two to three times more reading instruction time and practice than most other languages, which leads to much higher rates of dyslexia and struggle.*  Estimates are that from fifth grade on, the average student encounters 10,000 new words per year in print, but many students do not read proficiently beyond the fourth-grade level.  Many students continue to need support even after learning to decode.  Noah Text® provides this support, creating a more fluid and relaxed independent reading experience. Noah Text® is intuitive and easy to use, requiring little to no instruction to get started.

How can educators engage with Noah Text®?

Noah Text, LLC provides technology support to enable educators and the content providers who serve them to convert plain text to Noah Text®.  This includes a free conversion tool and browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that automatically convert web pages to Noah Text®.  As well, Noah Text provides a growing selection of books and can be found in a specialized software program designed in collaboration with New Century Education Foundation and Michigan State University College of Education. In addition, Noah Text, LLC has been reaching out to publishers to collaborate with them in converting books and other educational materials to Noah Text® that schools systems require. Please contact us at [email protected].

*The key predictor of children requiring intensive reading instruction in English is poor phonological awareness skills. Yet this is rarely the case in languages with consistent writing systems, as the predictability of the language itself ameliorates this issue, enabling students to self-teach. That’s why we need to make our writing system as predictable as possible by making critical orthographic-sound patterns visible to the reader.

Noah Text® is a patent pending methodology.