Journal Review part 3: Improving literacy skills through learning reading by writing: The iWTR method presented and tested

Authors:

Annika Agélii Genlott

Åke Grönlund

Learning to read and write is a basic skill that unfortunately not everybody acquires sufficiently. Lack of teachers and time in school are some of the reasons, but in addition the enormous rise in informational activities due to the Internet and other information technology-enabled opportunities has made literacy skills increasingly important to ever more people. This means literacy education must be improved so more children in the world get better chances. 

In 1984 a computer-assisted “Write To Read” (WTR) program was designed and tested in a number of US schools over the following decade. Results were mixed; some schools achieved good results, others not. One reason for the limited success was that WTR programs were not completely implemented in all schools so the evaluation rests on incomplete data (Slavin, 1991). Early test used computer labs, which meant children were taken out of their everyday work practices in the classroom. This limited the amount of time available for the program. It also made it difficult to see effects of the computer use as the children also learned reading and writing in traditional ways in the classroom.

Partly for practical reasons, the early WTR trials emphasized individual training at the expense of the social aspects of learning – students were working alone at the computer separated from the social activities in the classroom, like discussing letters, words, and texts with teacher and peers, which are considered crucial in socio-cultural perspective on learning. Today’s trials use portable computers or tablets (for example, iPads) and web sites integrated in everyday classroom activities. Contemporary WTR trials report positive long-term effects – improved results during later school years (Trageton, 2003) – but studies often suffer from lack of research rigor.

A factor that is underresearched in WTR research, and indeed in many studies of ICT use, is the importance of social interaction. Recent research on social interaction in combination with ICT use finds that the effect of ICT tools is mediated through the ”right use”, i.e. the setup of the social interaction in which the tool is used. Drawing on a critical social practice view of literacy this project has developed the method further to include a social view of learning.

In order to contribute to developing better methods for learning to read and write in early years this study tests a new method developed to improve reading and writing learning in early ages. The ICT (Information and communication technologies) supported “Integrated Write to Learn” (iWTR) method lets children in 1st grade use computers and other ICT tools to write texts and subsequently discuss and refine them together with class mates and teachers. Handwriting is postponed to 2nd grade. While the traditional method requires students to go through two development processes in parallel, a cognitive (learning to read) and a motor (learning to write with a pencil), iWTR works with one process at a time, first cognitive development, then (from grade 2) motor skills training. iWTR extends previous WTR methods by more social work methods using a web site and peer comment for providing social meaning and feedback.

“Integrated” means that reading and writing are integrated within the classroom, within a social learning process, and across school subjects. Children cooperate pairwise producing texts, using keyboard, which are then published on a class web site and subjected to discussion among students, teachers, and parents, and subsequently refined in joint efforts. This means all writing has a purpose and an audience, and texts are not static but further developed based on discussions. Speech technology is used to check that the writing produces the desired sound, thus providing direct response to the children’s spelling.

The method was tested using two test groups and two control groups by systematically measuring performance in reading and writing using standard tests in combination with observations and student evaluation to assess social and individual effects of work methods. The results show that while reading skills were improved considerably the biggest improvement concerned writing skills. Students in the test group wrote longer texts with better structure, clearer content, and a more elaborate language.

This journal have some disadvantage, like there are some sentences that not completely done, there are some repetitions of sentences that have the same meaning, and also the wrong use of punctuation.