reading, writing, and assistive technology: an integrated developmental curriculum for college...

© 2005 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 30–39) doi:10.1598/JAAL.49.1.4

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 9 : 1 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 530

Ellen Urquhart Engstrom

Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum

for college students

Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum

for college students

A developmental skills program uses an

integrated reading and writing curriculum

for college students with low

reading scores. Two case studies

illustrate the efficacy of this

approach in preparing such

students for postsecondary

education.

In the United States, educators are increasinglyconcerned about the numbers of students in sec-ondary schools who do not read well. The find-ings of the National Reading Panel (NationalInstitute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment, 2000) encouraged educators andlegislators to address the gaps in school curriculaand teacher training in order to effect substantialchange in reading outcomes for elementaryschool-age children. While educators and law-makers debate the merits of code-based versusmeaning-based instruction for beginning readers,vast numbers of children continue to movethrough the schools and are often placed in reme-dial reading classes that teach skills in isolation. Asimportant as it is to address the needs of youngchildren entering the schools, their older counter-parts leave secondary school without the skills

necessary for stable and satisfying employmentand often encounter failure. Ideally, these studentsshould make the leap from learning to read to

reading to learn and should be capableof reading to solve complex and specificproblems. In fact, numbers of studentsarrive at middle school, high school,or even college unable to access thecomplex texts they encounter. RecentNational Assessment of Educational

Progress (NAEP) test results indicated that fewAmerican students gain the literacy knowledgeand skills that would allow them to successfullyengage in higher level problem solving required in an information age economy (Donahue, Voekl,Campbell, & Mazzeo, 1999).

Failure to acquire academic literacy hasmany causes. The following are some of them:

• Reading instruction stops once studentsmove into middle school, even if studentshad elementary school instruction thatincluded phonics, fluency training, andcomprehension strategies. Instead, middleschool teachers are focused on teachingsubject area content (Greenleaf,Schoenbach, Cziko, & Mueller, 2001).

• Some reading difficulties are characterizedby slow and halting processing of text, butthey are not captured on tests of single-word decoding. As a result, these students

Engstrom teaches atLandmark College. She may

be contacted there, at 1 River Road South, Putney,

VT 05346, USA. E-mail [email protected].

go undiagnosed and receive no remedia-

tion (Berninger, Abbott, Billingsley, &

Nagy, 2001).

• Students with poor single-word decoding

skills or poor fluency read far less than

their reading-enabled peers, which results

in a deprivation of background knowledge.

Comprehension research has shown that

background knowledge provides a scaffold

for the acquisition of new knowledge

(Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997). Poverty of

background knowledge limits future

learning.

• A lack of prior reading experience affects a

student’s ability to learn academic writing.

Expressing concepts in writing requires the

coordination of multiple language systems.

Poor decoding leads to poor spelling,

which becomes a barrier to fluent writing.

Lack of experience with texts deprives stu-

dents of the models they need to organize

and structure their writing.

The recent emergence of assistive technology

encourages researchers and educators to explore

its possible benefits for students who lack the

reading and writing skills necessary for success in

higher education (Anderson-Inman & Szymanski,

1999; Higgins & Raskind, 1997). Two major re-

views of the research in assistive technology

(MacArthur, Ferretti, Okolo, & Cavalier, 2001;

Okolo, Cavalier, Ferretti, & MacArthur, 2000) con-

firmed the utility of computer-assisted instruction

and synthesized speech feedback to improve stu-

dents’ phonemic awareness and decoding skills, as

well as the benefits of electronic texts to enhance

comprehension by compensating for reading diffi-

culties. Assistive technologies include text-to-

speech software, word-processing programs,

voice-recognition software, and software for or-

ganizing ideas. While these technologies are rela-

tively new, they hold the promise of bridging the

gap between a student’s needs and abilities. They

may let a student with relatively low decoding

skills access course texts through a text reader. Astudent with very low writing output but goodoral language can use voice recognition software.Technology offers students the opportunity to ac-cess higher education that their previous schoolexperience had denied them.

Research on the outcomes of developmentaleducation in community colleges has indicatedthat developmental reading and writing coursesimprove student achievement in postsecondarycourses (Napoli & Hiltner, 1993). A study of a col-laborative effort between English and readingcourses at a California community college sug-gested that integrating these two developmentalcourses had a positive effect on student academicoutcomes in subsequent semesters (Office ofInstitutional Research and Planning, 1995). Intheir comprehensive review of the literature onteaching comprehension strategies, Mastropieriand Scruggs (1997) documented the positive ben-efits of multipass reading strategies on students’reading comprehension.

This article explains how a combination ofsound instructional strategies for improving read-ing comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and writingwith assistive technology helped students makegains beyond what they had achieved previously.

The contextAt Landmark College, a college designed exclu-sively for students with learning disabilities andattentional disorders, many students are able andmotivated to get a college education, but they lackthe fundamental reading and writing skills neces-sary for success. Thus, the education programthat they receive at Landmark College includes aprecredit developmental skills program, wherestudents learn academic skills in small classes thatteach specific strategies for active reading, notetaking, and writing. The developmental skills cur-riculum is designed to develop a broad range ofskills in students whose learning profiles vary.Some students have weaknesses in comprehen-

Reading, writing, and assistive technology: An integrated developmental curriculum for college students

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 9 : 1 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 31

sion or decoding. Students with attention-deficitdisorder may have gaps in their decoding, encod-ing, and comprehension performance due toinconsistent focus or poor executive coordinationof multiple language processes (Berninger et al.,2001). Some students in the precredit curriculumare limited by inaccurate or slow reading.Students entering the developmental skills pro-gram frequently have reading scores betweengrade levels 5.0 and 8.0, as measured by the GrayOral Reading Test (GORT–3). In addition, thereading rate of these students frequently fallsbelow grade level 5.0. It is common for studentsto express frustration about their problems withreading, and how these problems have limitedtheir prior academic progress. Although studentsreceive intensive instruction in reading and studyskills strategies as well as the writing process,direct instruction in word-level skills (decoding)and selective use of assistive technology could beexpected to help students increase their readingaccuracy, speed, and comprehension of the coursematerial.

The curriculumThe purpose of the integrated curriculum was toaddress the multifaceted task of building languageskills through three strands of instruction.Students needed access and experience with a va-riety of texts in order to build background knowl-edge and improve their comprehension skills.Also, they needed to develop further their under-standing of text structures through writing.Students with poor decoding or fluency skillsneeded the opportunity to use text-to-speech soft-ware to assist their reading. Learning technologyto support their study skills could remove the typ-ical barriers to writing and organization thatplague students with language-based learning dis-abilities. Students whose test results indicated spe-cific deficits in phonological awareness, decoding,and fluency needed direct instruction to addressthese difficulties. The precredit curriculum con-sisted of a developmental reading course, a devel-

opmental writing course, and skills support ses-

sions (tutorials).

The reading courseA primary objective of the reading course was

teaching the strategy of active reading (Arieta,

2001). Active reading combines a series of strate-

gies into a process for comprehending and retain-

ing information in written text. The active reading

process mirrors the brain’s memory process, offer-

ing the reader an effective system for compre-

hending and remembering text. Active reading

steps include prereading, reading, highlighting,

margin noting, chunking sections of text, and

summarizing the text. By strategically combining

a text reader with a visual organizer and a word

processor, the software helps a student to accom-

plish active reading by eliminating the need for

word-by-word decoding, freeing active working

memory for comprehension. Students have the

benefit of (a) hearing and seeing their texts, (b)

visually organizing the concepts within the read-

ing in a concept map, and (c) transferring those

concepts into essay form.

Students were able to use Kurzweil 3000, a

text-to-speech software program, for prereading,

reading, highlighting, and margin noting. They

used Inspiration software for mapping or outlining

key elements of the text. Exporting these elements

into a word processor facilitated drafting of a sum-

mary, while the word processor, combined with

Kurzweil 3000, assisted in editing and proofreading

the summary. The reading course taught the read-

ing and study skills described in Table 1.

The writing courseThe purpose of the developmental writing course

was to teach explicitly the writing skills and strate-

gies that students need to know in order to read

and write more effectively in academic settings (see

Table 2). The course was designed to incorporate

thematic connections from one unit to another, as



well as to include the forms, structures, andprocess strategies introduced in the reading course.

The integration of the reading andwriting coursesThe reading and writing courses were organizedso that students would learn text patterns simulta-neously. Therefore, while students learned how towrite a narrative essay, they also learned how toread narrative essays for content and structure.The timeline of the two courses were coordinatedas shown in Table 3.

The skills support systemsFinally, the skills support sessions provided a menuof practices individualized to fit student profilesand skills needs. This menu included word recogni-tion; fluency; spelling; and activities to reinforcesentence, paragraph, and essay writing. The Wilson

Reading System (Wilson, 1988) provided the mate-rials for instruction in word recognition, spelling,and fluency. In addition, Great Leaps Reading(Campbell, 1998) was used for students whoneeded to increase their reading rate.

The lessonsLessons to improve reading skills were designed tobe multifaceted. Because the active reading strate-gy was taught at the beginning of the course, itsuse was reinforced with every reading that was as-signed. In addition, the characteristics of each textpattern needed to be emphasized. All of the read-ings were available in both hard copy and digi-tized form so that students could access themthrough either means. In order for a screen readerto read text, the text must be scanned and saved asa graphic. The great advantage of offering texts inboth hard copy and digitized form is that studentswho have difficulty reading accurately and fluently



Ta b l e 1R e a d i n g c o u r s e e l e m e n t s

Active reading Assistive technology

Paragraphs

• Paragraph unity

• Topic sentences

• Supporting details

Textbooks

• Previewing a textbook chapter

• Setting up a note-taking system

• Reading for content

Multiparagraph articles

• Extracting main ideas and supporting details

• Extractions (using Kurzweil 3000) to create

an outline

• Recognizing essay patterns

Longer articles

• Recognizing topic shifts within the article

• Chunking

• Creating a summary

Kurzweil 3000

• Highlighting

• Extracting highlights

• Adding notes

• Extracting notes

• Reading the web

• Spelling prediction

• Write/speak feature

Inspiration

• Brainstorming

• Concept mapping

• Sorting and organizing ideas

• Note taking

• Exporting outlines to a word-processing

program

have the opportunity to read the same text thatstudents with more fluent reading skills have. Theavailability of digitized text and screen readersmakes it possible for students with reading diffi-culties to keep up with and work together withstudents without those difficulties.

One example of a text used in the curricu-lum is the narrative essay, “The Dyslexic CEO”(Mathewson, 2001). In this short narrative, theauthor tells the story of how he became a writerdespite his dyslexia. The author’s message is thatthe use of technology was crucial to his success.Before students read this essay, they learn that anauthor of a narrative has a purpose, a message (orcentral idea), and a story to support the message.While reading personal narratives in their readingclass, students were composing their own personalnarratives in their writing class, taking care to in-clude their purpose, their central idea, and theirstory to bear out their purpose and message.While highlighting and annotating the text of“The Dyslexic CEO” helped students to see wherein the essay the author states his central idea and

how he organizes his story, the use of an accompa-nying graphic organizer made those connectionseven clearer. As an aid to understanding and sum-marizing, students completed the graphic shownin Figure 1.

An important feature of Inspiration softwareis that as the user completes a graphic organizersuch as that in Figure 1, he or she simultaneouslycreates an outline, which can be viewed by tog-gling to the outline side of the program.Therefore, once students completed the organizerthey had also created an outline of the summary.Working in a visual mode enables many studentsto identify and understand the concepts andstructure of their reading. Toggling between thediagram and outline views helps students learnand understand outlining, and it also preparesthem for drafting a written summary. Table 4 is asample outline of the graphic in Figure 1 thatshows how ideas can be expanded and organized.By expanding and exporting this outline to a wordprocessor, each student had a draft of a succinctparagraph summary of the narrative essay, “The



Ta b l e 2W r i t i n g c o u r s e e l e m e n t s

Writing Assistive technology

Sentence structure Word-processing program

• Basic parts of speech • Spell checker

• Sentence expanders • Reduce the need for handwriting

Paragraph structure • Use of revision toolbar to assist revisions and proofreading

• Paragraph unity Inspiration

• Topic sentences • Brainstorming

• Supporting details • Sorting and organizing ideas

Writing process • Export feature to aid in drafting

• Generating ideas

• Sorting ideas

• Drafting

• Revising

• Proofreading

Rhetorical patterns

Dyslexic CEO.” The features of the word-processingprogram, including spell check, grammar check,and the use of the revision toolbar to aid in edit-ing, completed the active reading process.

Tracking the studentsEight students enrolled in this integrated curricu-

lum. In order to track their progress, all students



Ta b l e 3I n t e g r a t e d w r i t i n g a n d r e a d i n g c u r r i c u l u m

Writing Reading

Weeks 1–3

Weeks 4–5

Weeks 6–7

Weeks 8–10

Weeks 9–11

Weeks 12–15

Decoding

• Establish procedures

Comprehension

• Paragraph unity

Kurzweil 3000 basics

Paragraph structure

• Main ideas

• Supporting details

Reading

• Personal narratives

• Finding the central idea of a passage

Paragraph structure

• Major and minor details

• Transition words

Reading

• Process articles

• Textbooks: previewing and setting up a

note-taking system

Technology

• Inspiration software

Reading

• What is terrorism?

• Active reading

• Margin noting

• Summarizing

Study skills

• Test preparation

Introduction to critical reading

• The elements of reason

Reading

• Persuasive essay

Shared topic: Stem cell research

• PowerPoint presentation

Final exam

Syllabus terms

• Parts of speech

• Sentence structure—isolated and

short paragraphs

Description and narration

• Writing descriptive paragraphs

• Writing personal narratives

Process

• Writing: “How to”

Definition

• Writing: “What is…?”

• Summary writing

Argument

Shared topic: Stem cell research

• Final essay

Portfolio revision



were given the following battery of reading tests atthe beginning of their first semester and again atthe end of their participation in the curriculum:the GORT–3, the Comprehensive Test ofPhonological Processing (C-TOPP), the WilsonAssessment of Decoding and Encoding (WADE;Wilson, 1998), and the word-attack subtest of theWoodcock–Johnson Psycho-EducationalBattery–Revised (WJ–R). In addition, studentsparticipated in a structured interview to track theconfidence they had in their comprehension overtime (Stone, 1994). While the size of the studentcohort that piloted this curriculum was too smallto draw definitive conclusions about the efficacyof integrated instruction, the positive outcomesfor these students suggest the importance of com-bining reading and writing strategy instructionwith assistive technology support and word-levelinstruction in a way that scaffolds the students’total written language development.

The studentsThe eight students enrolled in this project were allnew students to Landmark College. Of the eightstudents, four enrolled in Landmark College in the

fall following their high school graduations; theother four students had attended other post-secondary institutions before coming to LandmarkCollege. All of the students identified some area ofreading as being problematic for them. All hadcompleted the fall semester, while seven of theeight returned for the spring semester. One studentleft Landmark College for financial reasons. Theother seven students continued in the precreditcurriculum for another semester. Following thatsemester, one student chose not to pursue collegeand left. Therefore, six of the original eight stu-dents entered the credit program at LandmarkCollege. One of the six transferred to another col-lege after four semesters at Landmark College,while five remained at Landmark College. Three ofthese students have graduated from LandmarkCollege, while two others are near graduation atthis writing. What follows are accounts of two ofthe students’ experiences in the curriculum.

Case study 1: MarkMark (pseudonym) was extremely motivated, buthe had a history of struggling in school. He hadattended a public high school, where he had re-

F i g u r e 1G r a p h i c o r g a n i z e r u s e d i n w r i t i n g c l a s s

The purpose The central idea The introduction

The story organization

ChildhoodCollege

experiencesWork life today

“The Dyslexic CEO”

ceived special education services that consisted ofspending time each day in a resource room. Henever received any extra help or tutoring in de-coding or encoding. On his application for admis-sion, Mark stated that he had difficulty withreading comprehension and that his goal was toimprove his reading. Mark’s testing showed thathe had difficulty with decoding and his readingrate was slow. On the GORT–3, Mark tested belowthe first percentile in rate and at the second per-centile in accuracy. Mark’s rapid-naming score onthe C-TOPP fell in the low range, but his phono-logical awareness and phonological memory fellwithin the average range. His WADE scores indi-cated that he had an inconsistent pattern of wordattack as well as much hesitation before readingthe words. Mark’s grade-level score on the word-attack subtest of the WJ–R was 4.4. On his initialcomprehension confidence interview, Markranked his comprehension as “fair,” and he statedthat his primary comprehension strategy was toread the passage multiple times.

Mark was an enthusiastic, motivated studentthroughout his participation in the curriculum.

He embraced highlighting for main ideas, para-phrasing to make margin notes, and using visualorganizers to help him see patterns in varioustexts, including his own writing. Once he beganinstruction in the Wilson Reading System, he real-ized that he had gaps in his decoding ability. Thescaffolded approach to learning word, text, andwriting patterns seemed to allow Mark to makethe functional connections between these areas oflanguage instruction. He also found that the useof a text reader was extremely helpful for longerreading assignments, because it saved him timeand it gave him confidence that he was able toread every word. In his final comprehension con-fidence interview, Mark listed his confidence inunderstanding the passage he read as a 10 (highestrank). He said he always uses a pen or highlighterwhen he reads in order to highlight keywords orphrases, make margin notes, or break up longerwords into syllables for decoding. When askedhow he knew if he understood the passage, Marksaid, “My brain absorbs the information. I can re-late to each concept. If I can get an overall sense ofthe reading, I feel I understand.” Despite the well-



Ta b l e 4O u t l i n e o f “ T h e D y s l e x i c C E O ”

“The Dyslexic CEO”

I. The purpose

To educate others about dyslexia and how to overcome it with technology.

II. The central idea

If you work very hard on your weakness and use technology, you can be successful.

III. The introduction

The article starts by telling about John Chambers, the CEO of CISCO.

IV. The story organization

A. Childhood

The author worked with his mom on spelling for five years. He didn’t get better. He spent hours on

spelling with no improvement.

B. College experiences

He didn’t have enough technology, but he had some. He had to use a dictionary.

C. Work life today

Now James Mathewson uses lots of technology strategies to help him in his work as a writer and editor.

known difficulty of improving fluency in olderstudents, Mark’s rate of reading improved by theend of the yearlong curriculum. His GORT–3 raterose from <1% to 5% from September to May.His accuracy and comprehension scores improvedas well: accuracy rose from 2% to 5%, while com-prehension rose from 5% to 37%. Mark chose tocontinue his Wilson Reading instruction for an ad-ditional year while he pursued his associate’s de-gree. Mark achieved honors grades, and he plansto finish his BA at a four-year college.

Case study 2: BobBob (pseudonym) was admitted to LandmarkCollege directly after graduating from high school.Like Mark, Bob had experienced difficulty withacademic tasks in high school, notably reading.However, Bob’s profile differed substantially fromMark’s. Bob was diagnosed with attention-deficithyperactivity disorder, and his hyperactivity, com-bined with his inattention, resulted in a learningprofile that was not characterized by the systemat-ic errors typical of students with language-basedlearning disabilities. Bob exhibited a more ran-dom pattern of errors likely brought about byinattention and distractibility. Nonetheless, Bob’sinitial testing reflected the academic difficulties hedescribed on his application for admission. Onthe GORT–3, Bob’s rate was 25%, while his accu-racy was 9%. His comprehension score was 2%.On the word-attack subtest of the WJ–R, Bobscored at grade level 5.5. Bob’s C-TOPP scoresplaced him above 50% on phonological aware-ness, phonological memory, and rapid naming.When asked, “How well do you think you under-stood this passage?” Bob replied, “Good.” Whenasked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are you thatyou understand this passage?” Bob rated his un-derstanding at 7. Asked, “How can you tell youunderstood the passage that well?” Bob replied, “Ihave to be tested to be sure. I find I think I didwell, then I can’t do the test.”

Like Mark, Bob was a highly motivated stu-dent who came to Landmark College to find waysto ensure his academic success. Like Mark, Bob at-

tended his classes and his skills support sessionsregularly. Though less enthusiastic than Mark, Bobagreed to use the study skills and writing strategieshe learned in his developmental reading and writ-ing classes. He made rapid progress in both readingand spelling using the Wilson Reading System. Bobidentified himself as a visual learner, and he re-sponded well to using concept maps as a way tomake sense out of text patterns. He also identifiedvisualization as a powerful comprehension tool.Bob’s fluency work was highly successful, but hissuccess was the direct opposite of Mark’s. Bob be-gan the year with a rapid reading rate but a highnumber of errors on the Great Leaps Reading fluen-cy passages. As the academic year wore on, Bob’srate remained high while his errors decreased dra-matically. At the year’s end, Bob showed improve-ment in his ability to read and spell real andnonsense words on the WADE, his word-attackscore on the WJ–R jumped to grade level 11.9, andhis GORT–3 scores improved in accuracy (from9% to 25%) and in comprehension (from 2% to50%). His GORT–3 rate score dropped from 25%to 16%, which may reflect his efforts to slow downand be more accurate. In his final comprehensionconfidence interview, Bob explained that he feltconfident that he could get the broad concepts inhis reading without highlighting and margin not-ing, but to grasp the more technical details, heneeded to use the active reading and note-takingstrategies.

Assistive technology aidscomprehensionIntroducing assistive technology support into anintegrated reading and writing skills curriculumwas an attempt to address a broad range of diffi-culties that young adults face in their effort to be-come skillful readers and students. Mark and Bobentered the program with low reading levels thatarose from their distinct learning profiles. While itis possible to individualize a curriculum in a small,structured class of eight, the purpose of the studywas to explore how to build reading proficiency in



a diverse group of students while engaging them inacademically challenging work that makes thestructure of language more transparent. By intro-ducing students to a variety of text structuresthrough reading and writing, we can scaffold thelearning experience so that students gain a deeperunderstanding of the conceptual base of writtenlanguage. By supporting text structure instructionwith a text reader and the software to visually rep-resent the concepts and patterns in the text, we ex-pand the ways in which students can understandand process text. By giving students of diverselearning profiles the opportunity to learn wordstructure through exposure to sounds, syllable pat-terns, and word analysis, we give them the tools toautomatize their word recognition and to freethem to focus on understanding written language.

Students’ reading skills and capabilities sig-nificantly affect what they can accomplish whenfaced with the complex demands of academicreading. Successful comprehension of various textsrequires mastery of a complex set of interpretivemental activities as well as a solid foundation forrapid and accurate single-word recognition. Tomake progress toward this end, we must give ourstudents opportunities to participate in a variety ofreading and writing experiences, understand themultifaceted process of reading, and be active ob-servers of their own reading styles so that they candevelop the skills, strategies, and confidence to besuccessful students.

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