Lasting effects on literacy skills with a computer-assisted learning using syllabic units in low-progress readers

Abstract

This study examines the effects of a computer-assisted learning (CAL) program in which syllabic units were highlighted inside words in comparison with a CAL program in which the words were not segmented, i.e. one requiring whole word recognition. In a randomised control trial design, two separate groups of French speaking poor readers (2 * 14) in first grade were constituted. They were matched on a range of reading measures and non verbal intelligence and trained intensively over a short period (10 h over a period of 5 weeks). Three tasks were proposed using a classical pre-test/training/post-test design, written word recognition, word reading aloud and word spelling. In addition, three post-test sessions were conducted: one just after training, one after 4 months, and a last one after 9 months. The experimental group trained with the CAL using syllabic units outperformed the control group using CAL with whole word recognition in all the three tasks and there were important lasting effects. The results are discussed in the light of the self-teaching hypothesis and phonological recoding.

Introduction

Computer-assisted learning (CAL) has already proven its effectiveness in educational programs designed for young children (MacArthur et al., 2001, Torgesen and Barker, 1995, Troia and Whitney, 2003). Many researchers have suggested that computer-assisted reading support can be effective in helping children at risk of reading failure (Magnan and Ecalle, 2006, Nicolson et al., 2000). Blok, Oostdam, Otter, and Overmaat (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of 42 studies published between 1990 and 2000 that examine the effectiveness of CAL on the acquisition of beginning reading skills in students aged 5–12. They found a positive effect of computer-assisted beginning reading instruction compared to instruction without CAL.

The general question raised in such studies is: What kind of exercise is able to provide the most compelling evidence of the effectiveness of CAL in low-progress readers? And under what conditions? The simple view of reading (Tunmer & Hoover, 1992) defines reading ability as a function of decoding and comprehension skills, namely written word identification and text comprehension. In this paper, we focus only on the first of these which constitutes a basic and essential low-level process in reading.

Word recognition involves two general and interdependent processes (see Morais (2003) for a review), particularly in young readers, the phonological recoding (or simply decoding) of new words and the visuo-orthographic processing of familiar words. Learning to read may be described as a progression from phonological recoding using different sub-lexical units (grapho-phonological process) to direct and automated word identification using unconscious mappings between orthographic and phonological segments. According to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1999), phonological recoding provides the essential and fundamental basis for the storage of well-specified orthographic representations which are indispensable to good readers (Cunningham, 2006, Kyte and Johnson, 2006, Nation et al., 2007). The main objective of this paper is to provide low-progress readers in grade 1 with a CAL program intended to help promote the phonological recoding process.

The most extensive work in this area has been conducted by Wise and colleagues. Olson et al., 1986, Olson and Wise, 1992, Wise et al., 2000 have explored the use of synthetic computer speech as a remedial tool for dyslexic children’s deficits in printed word recognition. In their initial studies, these authors selected children in 3rd to 6th grade who were in the lower 10% of their classes in reading. The children read stories on the computer for a half an hour each day. When they encountered difficult words in the stories, they could click on the words with a mouse to make the computer highlight and pronounce the words. During the session, the children answered occasional multiple-choice comprehension questions about the stories they were reading on the computer. At the end of the session, the computer presented some of the targeted words in a recognition test. The children read with the computer 3 or 4 days a week (30 min per day) for one semester. Globally they spent 10–14 h to a CAL program. The average word-reading gains of the computer-trained children significantly exceeded those of matched poor readers who remained in their regular reading class. However, some of the computer-trained children found it difficult to work alone with the programs. Olson and Wise (1992) found that the children’s phonological skills at the start of training were positively correlated with their rate of word-reading improvement during training, thus suggesting that the direct remediation of such children’s phonological-processing deficits might make a useful contribution to their reading development.

The benefits of different kinds of speech segmentation (whole word, syllables, onset-rimes and phoneme segmentation) were compared. Subsequently, Olson, Wise, Ring, and Johnson (1997) used a different program and training environment to conduct a longitudinal study. They trained children with reading problems attending 2nd to 5th grade in small groups of 3 or 4 children, each with their own computer and with a teacher always present. The programs included reading stories on the computer with help for difficult words, as in the authors’ previous studies. In addition, half of the children spent part of their training time working with programs designed to improve their deficient phoneme awareness and phonological recoding skills. The other children spent all their time accurately reading stories and applying strategies for understanding and remembering the stories. Children in both conditions averaged 18 hours in individualized computer time. The phonological training programs were very effective in improving children’s phonological skills, and this improvement was associated with significantly greater gains in several word-reading tests performed by the youngest and less skilled readers. However, the older and more skilled poor readers in the 4th and 5th grades seemed to gain as much or more in terms of word reading measures if they spent all their time accurately reading the stories on the computer and practicing their comprehension strategies (Wise et al., 1999, Wise et al., 2000).

More recently, Macaruso, Hook, and McCabe (2006) have discussed the findings of an intervention study designed to facilitate the acquisition of word recognition skills in young readers. The computer-assisted instruction contained numerous activities that support the learning and application of phonic word-attack strategies at the letter, word, sentence and paragraph levels in order to enhance automaticity in word recognition. The mean number of sessions (20–30 min each) completed was 64 (range: 37–91); consequently children in the treatment group received about 27 h of CAL. The findings indicate that the very low performing students eligible for Title I services (e.g. they receive additional academic support provided to low-achieving children) who received training made significant reading gains over the school year.

Another question concerns the type of linguistic unit that might be most suitable for promoting the phonological recoding process in French-speaking children. Psycholinguistic and experimental evidence does indeed exist to account for the fact that the size of the sub-lexical units used during learning to read varies across languages as a function of orthographic transparency (for a review, see Ziegler and Goswami (2005)). In French, two main studies have provided evidence of the importance of the syllable as a linguistic unit in beginning readers (Colé et al., 1999, Doignon and Zagar, 2006). Using two different paradigms, it has been shown that children use phonological grapho-syllabic processing.

Colé et al. (1999) provided evidence that good readers at the end of the first grade used a syllabic code to complete a visual word recognition task. This syllabic coding does not seem to become evident until the child has understood and mastered the alphabetic principle which is in turn associated with a certain degree of phonemic awareness. To be precise, syllabic coding will only feature in the reading acquisition of French-speaking children after a certain level of grapho-phonemic mastery has been achieved. In fact, the explicit teaching of GPC allows children to develop connections between letters and sounds. As soon as children apply grapho-phonemic processing automatically, they try to extract units larger than phonemes (e.g., grapho-syllabic processing) on the basis of the early implicit syllable awareness developed during their contact with spoken language (Duncan et al., 2006, Ecalle and Magnan, 2007, Goslin and Floccia, 2007). The use of syllabic units is not generally possible before the second half of the first year of reading acquisition. Arguably, therefore, it may be better to teach children to focus on links between their explicit awareness of syllables and print, rather than to emphasize the linkage between phonemes and letters (or letter strings), because at this level it will be easier to segment, for example mardi (tuesday) into two syllables (mar/di) than into five phonemes (m/a/r/d/i). Doignon and Zagar (2006) tested whether apprentice readers (6–7 to 7–8 years old) and beginner readers (8–9 to 10–11 years old) perceive syllabic units in written words. They used the paradigm of illusory conjunctions because this is able to determine the infra-lexical units identified during the first stages of the written stimuli process. Two experiments were conducted on children during the initial (6–7 years old) through to the final years (10–11 years old) of the process of learning to read. The results indicate that children perceive syllables in letter sequences as early as the end of the first year of learning to read. The authors suggest that the perception of these units is the result of two information sources, syllabic phonology and orthographic redundancy. Consequently, the syllable could be a pertinent unit in the process of learning to read.

One final question needs to be answered: what is the best format in which to present the syllabic unit? Meta-analyses of experimental training studies (Bus and van IJzendoorn, 1999, Ehri et al., 2001) have demonstrated a causal impact of phonemic training on reading skills which is more consistent and robust when letter knowledge training is also included. Moreover, when phonological units are presented with their orthographic counterparts, success in reading acquisition seems to be facilitated. For example, Harm, McCandliss, and Seidenberg (2003) used the connectionist model of reading development, which is intended to simulate detailed aspects of developmental dyslexia (Harm & Seidenberg, 1999), to examine why certain types of interventions designed to overcome reading impairments are more effective than others. Their simulations replicate the patterns of success and failure found in the developmental literature, and provide explicit computational insights into exactly why the interventions that include training on spelling-sound regularities are more effective than those focusing on phonological development alone. More, such methods which emphasize orthographic-to-phonological mappings have also been shown to benefit dyslexic children trained over a short period. With only 10 h of training, young dyslexic children aged between 9 and 11 years improved their performance in a word reading task (Magnan, Ecalle, Veuillet, & Collet, 2004). These results have been replicated in older dyslexic children aged between 11 and 14 years (Ecalle, Magnan, Bouchafa, & Gombert, 2008).

This study presents the effects of audio-visual training based on the matching of phonological syllabic units and orthographic syllabic units on literacy skills in poor readers at the beginning of learning to read. We tested the effect of a CAL program in which syllabic units were highlighted inside words (experimental group) compared to a CAL program without any segmentation of the words, i.e. one which focused on whole word recognition (control group). Our hypothesis was that training with syllabic units would be more efficient than whole word training. More specifically, whatever the kind of word (regular or irregular) and whatever the task involved (word reading or word spelling), the experimental group should outperform the control group because we expected the word segmentation condition to boost the phonological recoding process and consequently facilitate the storage of well-specified orthographic representations.