Technology-Based Tools for English Literacy Intervention: Examining Intervention Grain Size and Individual Differences

Abstract

Technology plays an increasingly important role in educational practice, including interventions for struggling learners (Torgesen et al., 2010; de Souza et al., 2018). This study focuses on the efficacy of tablet-based applications (see Word Reading, Grapholearn, and an experimental word-level program) for the purpose of supplementing early English literacy intervention with primary grades 1 and 2 children. The children were identified for learning support programs within Singaporean schools, which follow a bilingual policy, meaning children were learning reading in English plus an additional language. One hundred forty-seven children across seven schools participated (Mean age = 6.66). Within learning support classrooms, triplets of students matched on basic reading skills were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) phoneme-level, (2) rime-level, or (3) word-level focused interventions. All groups performed reading skills activities on iPads, across two phases over a 14-week period. Assessments for word reading accuracy and fluency, pseudoword decoding accuracy and fluency, and spelling were administered at four time points, pre- and post-intervention. Additional baseline measures were taken to assess individual differences in phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, general cognitive ability, statistical learning, and bilingual vocabulary knowledge. Mixed model analysis was conducted on the pre- to post-test measures across the two phases of the intervention (focused on accuracy then fluency). All groups made gains across the different literacy measures, while the phoneme-level intervention showed an advantage over the rime-level intervention, but not the word-level intervention, for decoding. There were also moderating effects of individual differences on outcomes. The general pattern of results showed an advantage of the word-level intervention for those with poorer phonological awareness for reading fluency; and a phoneme-level intervention advantage for those with poorer statistical learning ability. Children’s bilingual group (English plus Mandarin, English plus Malay, or English plus Tamil) also showed differential effects of the type of intervention (e.g., phoneme- or word-level) on different outcome measures. These results, along with data collected from the tablets during the intervention, suggest the need to examine the interplay between different types of technology-based interventions and individual differences in learning profiles.

Annotating digital text with phonemic cues to support decoding in struggling readers

“…Both Trainertext and SeeWord Reading, demonstrate the utility of an embedded support to provide concrete visual relationships between written text and spoken language: a foundational skill for literacy. Together these studies demonstrate that technologies focusing at the level of the phoneme and the syllable (or rime) not only benefit reading performance, but also adhere to known learning and pedagogical principles [33,34].…”

“…We focused on vowels because, in English, the highly inconsistent graphemephoneme mapping is a major hurdle for struggling readers. In a landscape of digital tools that provide instant corrections at the whole word level, the phonemic cue annotation in this study is one of a only a few learning aids that provides an element of instruction (at the phoneme level) to support generalizable skill [31,33,43,50]. Instead of being given the answer at the first sign of struggle, the child can utilize the phonemic cue to learn part of the word, yet still needs to exercise the building blocks of literacy to get the answer.…”

“…By providing a visual scaffold, the authors concluded that readers could leverage a phonics-based text adaptation to improve their decoding skill. Moreover, SeeWord Reading app, a digital tool which uses a picture-embedded font to demonstrate grapheme-phoneme correspondence [32], has demonstrated efficacy in studies performed both in Singapore and the United States [33]. Both Trainertext and SeeWord Reading, demonstrate the utility of an embedded support to provide concrete visual relationships between written text and spoken language: a foundational skill for literacy.…”

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

“…Of course this may change as technology evolves and learners adapt to the new technologies. Importantly, technology can be used as a beneficial tool in scaffolding the learning of struggling readers (de Souza et al, 2018;Lee, 2016Lee, , 2019O'Brien, Habib & Onnis, 2019).…”

Testing ICT-based Learning Model 'Creative Reading’ as A Trigger of Children’s Metalinguistic Awareness in Learning English

“…Technology plays an increasingly important role in educational practice, including interventions for struggling students (de Souza et al, 2018;Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Herron, and Lindamood, 2010). O'Brien, Habib, and Onnis, (2019) study focuses on the efficacy of tabletbased applications for the purpose of supplementing early English literacy interventions with grades 1 and 2 children. The results suggest the need to examine interactions between different types of technology-based interventions and individual differences in the learning profile.…”