Learning to read, or getting better at reading, is easy with the PQs pop-up. There are only a few steps you have to learn. 

Touch WORD for help recognizing, for help understanding, touch ICON.  

 Steps for using the PQs Pop-Up App to recognize a word:

 Step 1: Whenever you see a word that you don’t recognize, click (or touch) it. Clicking on the word will cause the PQ App to pop-up and show you the word in a small blue box. If the word has a lot of letters, the word will appear broken into smaller and more easily readable parts. To see what I mean, click on the following word: segmented.

 Step 2: Once the word pops up in the blue box, try to read it again. If you still don’t recognize the word, click it (click inside the blue box). Watch and listen to how the letters are spoken and change their looks. Try to read it again. 

Step 3: If you still don’t recognize the word, click it again, watch, listen, and try again to recognize it. Watching and listening to the letters will help you figure out the word. Keep clicking the word and trying to read it until you recognize it.

Steps for using the PQs Pop-Up App’s WordExplore to understand a word. 

Step 1: Whenever you recognize a word but don’t know what it means, click the word to open the PQ Pop-Up App (just like you would for a word you don’t recognize). 

Step 2: Click on the WordExplore  button in the PQ Pop-Up App to open the Reference Panel. 

Step 3: If English is your primary language, click on the Dictionary  button to see the words definitions. If English is not your primary language, click on the Translator  button to see translations in your language. Note: if the Translator is not set to your language, click on the Translator Menu  button to select your language. 

Using the above steps, click on some of the practice words in the table below, and watch, and listen, as the PQs App helps you work them out, then click on the WordExplore button to explore the meaning of the words.

Speaker Buttons: Whenever you see this button at the beginning of a line or paragraph, click it and we will read the words to you. Sometimes the speaker button will be located at the end of a line, or paragraph. Sometimes there will be a button at the beginning and at the end of a line or paragraph. When the button is at the end, click it only when you are not sure you recognized each of the words, or when you didn’t understand what the sentence or paragraph meant.  

Stop Words: Sometimes clicking the 1st Speaker button will begin a stream of reading to you that will suddenly stop on words. When the reading stops on a word, the word will blink. That means that you should click on it, and use the Pop-Up to help you read it.  

TIPS:

After each click, always try to read the word before clicking it again. The more you try to read the word in-between each click, the better you will get at recognizing the word before the pop-up reads it.  The more you do this, the sooner you will learn to figure out words without having to click on them.

You can learn all you need about PQs by just using the PQ Pop-up and paying attention to the way letters look and sound. However, if you are interested in learning the logic behind PQs, click here for a guided tour.

That’s all you need to know to get started. Just click on the words you don’t recognize or don’t understand and the blue box will pop-up to help you. Clicking on the speaker button will read for you. 

Just remember: 1) Click on every word you don’t recognize. 2) Try to read the word in the Pop-up. If you can’t, click the word in the pop-up again. 3) Repeat clicking it, and trying to read it, until you recognize the word. 4) When you can recognize a word but don’t understand its meaning, click on the WordExplore  button!

 You can install the Chrome browser extension and add the same PQ App functionality experienced on this page to the pages of the web and to html documents on your local machine (and soon PDFs). To do so, click the following button: