Features Set:  

Letter Chase Speed Reader includes 15 stories for reading practice, comprehension tests and speed tests. The program contains Exercises, Tachistoscope Reader, Horizontal Reader and Vertical Reader.

The Exercises are useful as a warm–up; words are flashed to the left or right of your screen and then you choose the correct word from multiple–choice options. The Tachistoscope Reader flashes individual words or phrases in the middle of your computer screen. The Horizontal Reader displays the full text covered by shaded boxes; as the reading progresses, groups of words are uncovered one at a time at a specific speed.

Like the Horizontal Reader, the Vertical Reader also displays the full text covered by shaded boxes. As the reading progresses, groups of words are uncovered vertically. For example, two or three sentences are partially uncovered, and then the remainders of the sentences are uncovered. Yet, this type of reading practice may cause confusion since the uncovered text does not follow the sentence order.

Ease of Use:  

Letter Chase Speed Reader contains a menu toolbar on the main page for easy navigation and the main sections of the program are separated into three windows, which can be manually resized.

The newest version of the program works on Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

Ease of Installation/Setup:  

You can download the program directly from the Letter Chase website with a credit card and they will email you the registration number. They use RegSoft, a third–party company, to process their credit card orders.

Help/Support:  

The program has a basic embedded help menu, yet you can’t search the index with keywords. Letter Chase provides phone and email information for ordering, but no specific technical help contacts. We emailed them with several questions, but they did not reply.

Letter Chase Speed Reader is a good program that contains over a dozen stories for eye warm–up exercises, reading practice, comprehension tests and speed tests. However, the design of the vertical reading practice causes confusion and they did not return our emails.

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