a magic reading box - university of british columbia

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Most kids would find the ReadingTutor a pretty cool classroom buddy.The computer program listens patiently, never laughs at your mistakes, reads out loud with you and sounds out words you don’tknow or stumble over.

These are the kinds of four-starreviews that UBC education professorKen Reeder has been receiving fromVancouver’s Downtown Eastsidegrade schoolers and teachers as he testdrives a state-of-the-art electronictutor equipped with speech recogni-tion and artificial intelligence.

Since 2003, Reeder has been collaborating with the Reading Tutor’sinventor, Jack Mostow, at Pittsburgh’sCarnegie Mellon University (CMU),famed for pioneering computerizedspeech recognition.

UBC conducted the first trials of theinnovative software with English assecond language learners as opposedto native English speakers or bilingualstudents, explains Reeder.

An applied linguist, Reeder isimpassioned about helping studentsacquire knowledge and language. Headmits he gets some ribbing about thecoincidence of his last name. “Peopleusually expect Reeder to be spelledwith an ‘ea’,” he laughs.

His kind smile broadens as heproudly demonstrates the ReadingTutor software. “This is one of thereally promising uses of technology inpromoting literacy, especially with

ESL learners.” “This is pretty amazing stuff! This

is simply the most advanced speechrecognition available on the planet.The nice thing about this is that we’vegot it and Vancouver children are ben-efiting. Schools are clamoring to geton board.”

Mostow, a research professor atCMU’s Robotics Institute, says that hefirst conceived the idea of using com-puters to increase literacy in 1990.

“I started by asking myself, what ifthere were a magic box that could listen to children read aloud, whatactions would it take?”

It was from there that Mostow andan interdisciplinary CMU team developed the Reading Tutor. Thissoftware can be installed on any ordinary personal computer that hasat least Microsoft Windows 2000 andat least 128 megabytes of memory.

Reeder got wind of Mostow’simpressive study results: childrenwere able to gain a year’s worth ofreading improvement in three months.However, Reeder pressed Mostow toexpand the magic of his reading box.

“We challenged them to work witha more representative cross-section ofschoolchildren,” says Reeder. “Up tothis point, the Reading Tutor hadbeen piloted mostly in Pittsburgh withsuburban, native-English speakers.”

“The name of the game in schoolstoday is diverse populations and sothe one size fits all reading solution is

clearly going to miss many, many children,” he adds.

During spring 2004, Reader and hisresearch team conducted a 10-week trial of the Reading Tutor atfive Downtown Eastside elementaryschools. These classrooms, like mostelementary schools in large Canadiancities, have up to 50 per cent of thestudents learning English as a secondlanguage.

During a 20-minute session withthe Reading Tutor, the child donsheadphones and reads stories displayed on the computer screen. Thechild starts off by choosing a storyfrom the menu. The Reading Tutorthen gets to select the second story,and then they alternate as the sessionprogresses.

“That way the artificial intelligence in the program will adjustthe difficulty of the stories that it setsfor the young reader,” Reeder pointsout. “It’ll also gauge the performanceof the child to keep them movingalong just ahead at what they’re per-forming at.”

As the student reads aloud, the pro-gram’s speech recognition listens. TheReading Tutor analyzes the student’s oral reading and will offerhelp to pronounce a word, read alongwith the child or just signal with col-ored text the word, phrase or sentencethat it would like the child to readagain.

When the child asks for certain

A Magic Reading BoxNew literacy software delivers “amazing” results among Vancouver grade schoolers who speak English as a second language. B Y L O R R A I N E C H A N

words to be pronounced, a mini-video clip will pop up, superimposed over that word, andshow a child’s mouth pronouncingthe word.

“That’s the beauty of this tool,”enthuses Reeder. “It offers individu-alized and customized reading practice for young readers. It’s oneon one — the child has the exclusiveattention of the Reading Tutor.”

Reeder cites a 2003 B.C. education study which showed thatout of 42,000 Grade 4 students, 32per cent of ESL and 19 per cent ofnon-ESL students were reading atlevels “below expectations.”

“I know teachers would lovenothing more than to sit down andwork 20 minutes intensively with achild, but it’s not physically possible.This technology comes into their classroom and works alongsidethem and helps children who need aboost in the reading experience.”

Reeder says his research team hasalmost finished crunching the copi-ous data gathered from the 2004spring trials. He says the results lookgood: all four home-languagegroups and all three English-lan-guage groups made gains in theirreading abilities.

“We had wonderful results acrossthe board. All of the languagegroups benefited. We’ve seen amaz-ing improvements among schoolchildren whose home languages are

Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish.”“Our best result,” says Reeder,

“is the fact that the group of childrenwith the lowest level of English coming into the study benefited thegreatest. Their curve was very, verysteep over just a 10-week period.”

Starting this September, Reeder will install the Reading Tutor at threeEastside Vancouver schools for anentire school year.

“For the 2005 study, we’re includ-ing some Aboriginal learners, not thatthey’re learning English as a secondlanguage, but because we know thata large percentage of Aboriginallearners are at risk for success in liter-acy in school,” he explains.

Although Mostow didn’t design the software for ESL reading support,he says he greatly values UBC’s third-party, independent study.

“ESL students are like other kidsbut only more so; they need moresupport with vocabulary.”

As well, Vancouver teachers havegiven detailed recommendations,among them pre-reading vocabularyreviews and related activities for students.

“In general when you’re trying aneducation invention, it’s not enoughto test it in one place,” observesMostow. “If you get something thatstubbornly works under differentconditions and settings and differentpopulations, then you’ve really gotsomething.” ■■

Eight-year-old Dena Tabyanian and UBC Professor Ken Reeder marvel athow the electronic tutor provides one-on-one customized reading support.

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