Language experience is defined as

a general method in which children’s oral language, such as their narratives about their experience and observations, is dictated and written down; what is written then becomes the basis for reading. Thus, skills are taught in the context of the child’s own direct experience with language and the world1.

I’ll be looking at some of the extant research related to these efforts. My school is looking at Read 180 as an intervention. I don’t know enough about it to make a judgement as to how effective it would be, however my understanding is that it’s pretty pricy. Dragonware looks like it’s fairly inexpensive. On the Macintosh side, MacSpeech Dictate just won Best of Show at Macworld 2008. A Macintosh implementation of speech recognition software is particularly appealing due to Leopard’s Universal Access and its ability to read text to the individual.

1. Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G. J., Norby, M. M., & Ronning R. R. (2004). Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall