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Two Fifth Grade Students with Learning Disabilities Find Writing Success Using Computer Technology
However, for some of my students, it appears that they have difficulty with
effectively using word processing. For some who have poor visual memory, keyboarding
is difficult. Even after completing structured and individualized typing drills,
they forget where to find the keys. When they do find the keys, they can't visualize
how to spell the words they want to write; or they type all the letters in a
word, but the letters are out of order. For those with visual discrimination
difficulties, when they use the spellchecker, they become confused. So many
of the words listed in the spellcheck box look the same. They often complain
and point to the words listed, "Which is it check or cheek? " Or, "Which do
I use: there, their, they're?"
Students with difficulties in auditory processing deficits often exhibit difficulties
hearing differences in letter sounds, making it difficult to apply letter-sound
associations when spelling. Their misspellings are so bizarre that the spellchecker
often does not have any words to suggest. They will complain, "NO
SUGGESTIONS? This computer
is dumb!" Finally, their poor auditory memory makes it difficult for them to
recall what they want to say and to organize and hold their thoughts in their
minds as they type. As a result, sentences may be incomplete, the text will
be disorganized, and important details will be missing.
I felt that my students who have problems with auditory processing and auditory
memory, as well as visual processing difficulties may be the very ones who were
not making the expected gains in writing. They were having problems even when
given the opportunity to use word processing and instructed through a structured
phonicsbased reading/writing program. So, during this past school year, I decided
to try to find ways that my students could learn to "hear," "feel," as well
as "see" how letter sound combinations form words. Since I was working with
a structured reading program (The Wilson Reading System) to teach my students
the phonetic structure of words, I wanted to see what would happen if I used
text-to-speech with this reading program to reinforce basic reading and writing
skills. This summary of my teacher inquiry illustrates the procedures that I
used with two of my students and highlights their progress and my impressions
of using text-to-speech and word predict programs with these learning disabled
students.
For this inquiry, I chose to study two students who have nearly identical learning
difficulty profiles. According to psychological and educational test assessments
, both students have auditory processing, auditory memory, visual processing
and visual-motor integration difficulties. The visual-motor integration difficulties
are particularly evident when they try to "visualize" how letters look and then
struggle with forming those letters on paper. As one of the students once explained,
"My hand just doesn't do what my brain sees!"
With one student (Abe), I used a text-to-speech program called Talking Text.
Writer (TTW) on an Apple II-e computer. This program used a speech synthesizer
with a robotic voice to say each word, sentence or phrase as the student typed.
Abe had to use his decoding skills to sound out words to type them, or he had
to rely on his visual memory of words in order to write. The TTW program pronounced
the words as they were spelled correctly or if the sequence of sounds were phonetically
written to approximate the correct pronunciation (i. e. lite=light). If a word
did not "sound" correct to Abe, he had to either sound out the word and make
corrections in the letter-sound associations until he heard what he intended,
or he had to use available resources such as a handheld spellcheck device (the
program did not have a spellcheck option), a dictionary, or a book. Abe could
also refer to his writing plan if he was composing a story.
The second student (Miles) used a different text-to-speech program, Intelli
along with a word predict program, Co-Writer. This program also used a robotic
voice. It would pronounce each word, sentence or phrase as Miles composed text.
The Co-Writer program occupied an area of the computer screen and operated in
conjunction with IntelliTalk to predict words that the student may be intending
to use in his text. The program predicted words based on subject-verb agreements,
word relationships, grammar rules and the frequency of the words that Miles
was using in his text. As the predicted words appeared in list form with a number
next to each word, the program scanned and said each listed word. In this way,
Miles could hear the words pronounced as he studied them. When Miles saw and
heard a word he wanted to use in his text, all he had to do was press the word's
number. Miles also had the other options to determine how to write words. He
could "sound out" words and type them as he heard them pronounced by IntelliTalk,
write words from memory, or use available text resources or a handheld spellchecker
to find the correct spelling of words.
In the Beginning
When I began the study in September, I gave the two students an informal spelling
test, the Morrison-McCall Spelling Inventory (List 1) test, to obtain a baseline
assessment of their sight word spelling abilities. Both boys spelled nine of
the fifty words correctly, indicating a 2.3 grade level in spelling. Using the
Wilson Reading Program Phonics assessment test of 38 phoneme sounds covering
levels one through four of the program, Abe correctly identified 25 items and
Miles identified 24 of the items. These items addressed all single consonants
and vowel sound combinations, blends and digraphs. When orally presented with
one syllable consonant-vowel-consonant (c-v-c) patterned words to write, Miles
generally identified the initial consonant sounds but not the middle vowel sounds
or final consonant sounds. Abe generally identified the correct initial and
final consonant sounds, but not the correct short vowel sounds. Both boys had
difficulty identifying digraphs and consonant blends.
The initial interventions that both boys received were daily Wilson Reading
lessons focusing on the consonant and short vowel sounds that make c-v-c words.
I would visually present letter cards on the chalkboard and say the individual
sounds the letters make and orally blend the sounds together to form the words
as I ran my fingers over the letter cards (auditory to visual pairing). To help
them recall the short vowel sounds, picture cues were given under the vowel
cards such as showing an & for the short "a" sound. The students engaged
in a variety of word building activities using these cards, arranging the letter
cards as they said the sounds and then blending sounds into words. We focused
on "hearing" the sounds as they "visualized" the letters and "feeling" how the
sounds are made with the position of the tongue and
mouth. Next, both boys were orally given words to "sound out" as they typed
(Abe using TTW and Miles using IntelliTalk). This gave them practice typing
each lettersound to hear how sounds blend together to form words which the robotic
voices of the word processors pronounced. When Abe made an error, he generally
detected the error and substituted letters until he heard the word spoken correctly.
I noticed that Miles often confused the "soft" sounding consonant sounds, such
as m with n, v with f. He was still "guessing" with the vowel sounds. At times
he would substitute the sounds and then be satisfied that the word was correctly
pronounced. When I had Miles look at me as I pronounced the word and he repeated
the word, I noticed that he was misarticulating. He wasn't hearing the subtle
differences in the sounds because he wasn't saying the words correctly. We spent
more time on "feeling" how the sounds are made (such as where to put the tongue
and how far to open the mouth).
By the end of October, both boys were generally able to identify initial and
final consonant sounds correctly when spelling c-v-c words. Abe exhibited some
difficulty with short o and short u sounds, and Miles was still unsure of short
vowels i, e, o and u, although he seemed to know the short a sound. However,
he was beginning to hear that the words he typed were not correct, and he also
determined that the vowels were probably incorrect. As he typed and heard the
sounds in the words, he substitute the vowel letters until he found the correct
vowels and the words sounded correct.
By the middle of November, the boys were using their text-to-speech programs
to practice writing two syllable c-v-c patterned words with consonant blends
and digraphs. Abe was obtaining 80% or greater accuracy when presented orally
with the words to type, and Miles was obtaining 60-80% accuracy when presented
with the same word patterns. The types of errors Abe generally made involved
soft digraphs such as confusing ch with sh. Miles was becoming more accurate
with the vowel sounds but he was also having difficulty with discriminating
between soft consonants (n for m, and d for t) and digraphs. I noticed this
usually occurred when the sounds were in the middle or at the end of words;
such as "little" might be written as "liddle," and
.1 rabbit" as "rabbid."
In addition to the Wilson exercises using the talking word processors, the boys
used the computers to type their stories during writer's workshops. Abe readily
used available resources such as a novel to type names of people and places
for his reading log responses. While writing a reading log response in November,
Abe appeared to "know" many basic sight words, such as was and they. He sounded
out several other words such as dig and started. He indicated that he knew the
word 11
now" was not the right word for what he was writing, but he couldn't find the
correct combination of letters to make it "new." He also did not appear to hear
or see that the s sound was omitted from the word Kings because when he read
it back to me after he heard the word processor read it, he read the word with
the -s sound. He also did not appear to "hear" or see that the word were was
not the word where which he had intended to use. (See Table 1).
TABLE 1
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The new place was the Valley of the Kings where they started to dig. They found some old stone huts.
In November Miles
appeared to rely heavily on IntelliTalk to "hear" sounds and rarely looked at
the word choices presented in the Co-Writer box as they were being scanned and
pronounced. Table 2 shows what he had written as a reading response using only
IntelliTalk. He was asked to finish the writing prompt, "Babysitting can be
a hard job ......
TABLE 2
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because you must know what to do in case of an emergency. You should know what to feed him or her.
The word "mrice"
was intended to be "emergency." When I asked Miles to say the word, he said,
"Mer-gin-see." Again, this was a good example of Miles writing words that way
he pronounces them.
When I reminded Miles that the. Co-Writer box was available to use as a resource
for finding words, Miles began to refer to it as he wrote the next sentence
for his response. (See Table 3).
TABLE 3
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You must know how hot the bottle is so it doesn't bum the baby's throat.
Miles appeared to use the Co-Writer box choices for the words bottle. doesn't,
baby (he added the -s) and throat. As he sounded out the words, he typed must,
and hol. Because he was saying an -1 sound at the end of the word "how," he
typed in the letter -1. He also appeared to have typed several other words from
sight memory.
By the middle of December, both boys were showing improved spelling accuracy
in the Wilson word exercises, even when presented with two short vowel syllable
words containing digraphs and three letter consonant blends. They were also
using more sophisticated words in their reading responses.
It also seemed that Miles was relying on the IntelliTalk, feature more than
the Co-Writer since he had to be prompted to give Co-Writer a try. This may
have been due to our using IntelliTalk with him during the Wilson exercises.
However, Miles seemed to notice that when he used the Co-Writer, his spelling
accuracy improved because the words sounded as he had intended them to sound.
Abe was also beginning to type text with perfect spelling. He appeared to use
words from reading prompts or other available resources. He also was sounding
out or using words from sight memory to write the rest of the text.
By mid-year I felt that what I was seeing in their daily writing was significant.
Both boys demonstrated willingness to attempt to use more sophisticated words
in their writings. Also, the length of their writings was increasing. This was
quite evident by the end of January when they drafted their first "story" with
little assistance from me. Abe seemed more aware of sound-symbol relationships.
I noted in my observation log, "He appears to be getting the short vowel patterns
and putting in long vowel sounds when he hears them. I noticed Abe repeating
the words he wants to spell over and over again. It is encouraging to see him
becoming an independent writer."
Miles's writing also appeared to be more detailed and he was attempting to use
more sophisticated words than before. This meant to me that he seemed more willing
to take chances on trying to spell more difficult words. Even though he was
still demonstrating short vowel confusions and having trouble with blends, the
positions of the single consonant sounds were generally correct.
During most of my observations of his writing, Miles appeared to continue to
rely heavily on IntelliTalk to write; although occasionally he did refer to
the Co-Writer. However, he was having some difficulty with word discrimination
because when he chose the word "Olympics," he thought the robotic voice had
said "Olympus."
In the Middle of the Year
After the winter
Christmas holiday I began to introduce long vowel sound patterns "ild", "old,"
and -e used at the end of a word. It was around this time that it appeared that
Miles was considering each letter when entering words into the computer.
He was sounding out the letters before he typed them. Could it be that Miles
was internalizing the sounds? Did he know what sounds he should be hearing and
he was using the computer to verify his letter choices?
Miles was also beginning to use more than one syllable words in his writing.
The problem was that IntelliTalk did not always pronounce the multi-syllable
words correctly. I found that when he "separated" the syllables, the words sounded
correct. The other problem was that the longer sounding words were confusing
to Miles because they didn't sound as "clearly spoken" as the shorter words.
I found this to be true with all three programs, Talking Text Writer, IntelliTalk
and Co- Writer. It seemed that he relied almost completely on the computer's
voice for the way he spelled words. If it didn't sound right, he would change
letters. Sometimes a word was pronounced correctly, but it was misspelled. For
example, he wrote shape liss. When I listened to the computer's pronunciation,
it sounded to me just like shapeless (no vowel sound difference). "
As a result of the unclear pronunciation of the longer words, both boys wrote
the words in syllables in order to check each syllable. Then they put the syllables
together to form the words. They may have been spelling the words in this manner
because in the Wilson lessons we "build" words by syllables with sound cards.
They seemed to sense that it was helpful to focus on the word parts in order
to get the whole word spellings correct.
I was beginning to be concerned that so much concentration was spent on spelling
words correctly that the boys' abilities to compose their thoughts might be
hampered. However, the writings of both boys showed complete, well-sequenced
thoughts. Both were beginning to show imagination, humor and a real sense of
adventure in their stories; so it did not appear that their ability to write
expressively was being hampered by trying to spell correctly.
At the End of
the Year
By the beginning of the last quarter of the year, Abe did not seem to be
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studying" each word the computer pronounced before typing in the next word.
He was composing at a steady rate with few common word misspellings. In several
cases he seemed to ignore what the computer was saying because he appeared to
be confident about how to spell the words. He did have trouble with the word
'heraldry." He wrote it as herl and he seemed puzzled about the long i sound
in the second syllable. When trying to write the word Charlemagne he used in
his text to find how it was spelled.
Miles was also composing more quickly without stopping to study each word that
he typed. His spelling improvement was not as evident as Abe's; however, he
was writing independently. I noted what appeared to be the types of choices
he was making to type his words: 1) looking at the Co-Writer box and listening
to the words as they were scanned and then choosing the number beside a word
that he wanted to insert into his text; 2) sounding out a word as he typed it;
and 3) using an available resource to located a correct spelling, such as words
found in his writing plan. While writing a 29 word, three sentence beginning
to a story, Miles appeared to use CoWriter to spell 21 of the words. He sounded
out three words and referred to his writing plan three times to find a word
that he wanted to spell. Two of the words he seemed to know by sight. It appeared
then that Miles's first choice of available spelling resources was Co-Writer,
followed by sounding out words on his own and then checking his spelling accuracy
by listening to the way IntelliTalk pronounced the words.
At times, however, I found that when using Co-Writer, Miles chose two words
that were similarly configured to the word choices that he intended to use.
He didn't realize that the words he had chosen were incorrect, even when he
heard the words spoken by the Co-Writer during scanning and when IntelliTalk
read the text back to
him. The words that he had confused were "than" and "then" and "had" and "head."
After this particular writing session, I typed the four words and listened to
them pronounced by the robotic Co-Writer and IntelliTalk voices. I detected
subtle differences between the words. I concluded that Miles may have had difficulty
hearing those subtle differences, and coupled with his visual discrimination
and visual memory problems, choosing the correct word from a list of words that
all look similar and sound similar may be confusing for Miles.
It was also at
this time that we had completed level four of the Wilson word patterns. This
level focused on learning to read and spell two and three syllable short vowel
words, and long vowels made by open syllables and -e at the end of syllables.
Abe was demonstrating 90 to 100% accuracy on the weekly Wilson word assessments,
and Miles was making between 70 to 80% accuracy. These weekly assessments were
spelling pretests and posttests of word patterns presented during the Wilson
lessons. However, only Abe was fairly consistent with applying those patterns
in his daily writing. Miles continued to demonstrate difficulty with misarticulations
(repeating the sounds and words incorrectly) and these mispronunciations were
reflected in the way he spelled words, especially soft consonant sounds such
as confusing m for n, d for t. He also continued to demonstrate vowel confusions.
At times, when he tried to write short vowel patterns but he couldn't identify
the correct vowel, he would leave out the vowel from the word.
The Morrison-McCall spelling inventories given every two months also showed
spelling gains throughout the year, although it appears the most dramatic gains
were made from February to April.
TABLE 4 Morrison-McCall
Spelling Lists
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I also administered
the informal Wilson sounds posttest to determine any improvements in the boys'
abilities to identify phonetic patterns when they were visually presented with
sound cards. Both boys showed improvements. I considered 80% accuracy to be
a mastery level score. Abe reached mastery with his score at 82%, and Miles
was close to mastery with a score of 76%.
1 had also noticed that their oral reading skills were improving. They were
using both context clues as well as sounding out multi-syllable words when they
did not know a word. In addition, after reading a story selection, both boys
appeared eager to use their computers to make reading responses instead of making
hand written entries -in their reading logs. They also began "checking on" each
other, sharing their written responses and offering comments and suggestions
or explanations about events related to what they had written.
Concluding Thoughts
When I chose the text-to-speech processors (Talking Text Writer with Abe and
IntelliTalk with Miles) I had three assumptions: 1) text-to-speech will provide
auditory feedback which will either confirm or invalidate the correct sounds
the children think occur
in words; 2) seeing and hearing the sounds that text-to-speech programs produce
will provide the students with multi-sensory practice in learning how to write
words; and 3) as the students learn to distinguish sounds and think about soundsequence
through text-to-speech programs, they will begin to internalize how words are
formed each time and will be better able to recall words from memory instead
of 99
sounding out" words and relying on hearing the words spoken back to them as
they write.
I had two assumptions when I chose the word predict program Co-Writer to use
with IntelliTalk.: 1) Co-Writer would be useful in the sense that based on the
context of the writing, the program would provide Miles with a list of correctly
spelled words that he could easily insert into his text; and 2) that by setting
the program to scan and saying each word in the list, he would be able to see
as well as hear each word (a multi-sensory presentation) which would enable
Miles to choose a correctly spelled word.
For the most part, both the text-to-speech programs, Talking Text Writer and
IntelliTalk , provided the students with the opportunity to see and hear the
sounds that make up the spelling of the words they were writing, and therefore
helped the students think about correct sound sequence. When the students typed
one syllable c-v-c patterned words, they were generally able to determine if
they had spelled the words correctly, and when they made a spelling error, they
were generally able to "hear" the error and make a correction. However, when
typing two or more -syllable words, the pronunciations of the robotic speech
voice were sometimes unclear, making it hard to clearly hear all parts of multisyllable
words.
It also appeared that as the children learned to distinguish sounds and think
about sound-sequence through text-to-speech programs, they began to internalize
how words are formed and were better able to recall words from memory. It appeared
that both boys demonstrated
less "sounding out" behaviors of the words that they typed. It seemed that by
April they were becoming more confident with their spelling and they were using
words from memory. They still used the "read back" features of the programs,
however. It seemed that they enjoyed hearing what they had written.
The predictability feature of Co-Writer was also fairly impressive in the sense
that it usually produced a list of words that Miles needed in his text. The
scanning feature was also useful in the sense that it highlighted and pronounced
each word in the predicted list. I was able to control the speed of the scan
and the rate of speech which I also found to be a useful feature. Most often
Miles was able to correctly identify a word that he needed. However, there were
times when Miles had difficulty identifying a correct word because of his visual
discrimination and auditory discrimination difficulties. Similarly configured
words and unclear pronunciations made it difficult for him to correctly choose
multisyllable words, even when the different robotic choices of IntelliTalk
were used. Words such as "Olympus" and "Olympics" looked and sounded alike to
him.
Suggestions for Future Program Development
The development of text-to-speech programs and word predict programs should
be made with the considerations of the learning strengths and weaknesses of
the users. My students with their auditory discrimination problems found the
different robotic voices hard to understand at times; particularly long words.
Perhaps as technology advances and text-to-speech programs move from using robotic
voices to using more natural speech pronunciations text will be better understood.
It would also be more effective if similarly configured words were not listed
one on top of another, but were listed separately. Words with the same consonant
letter sequences but different vowels seemed confusing to Miles who has visual
discrimination problems. When presenting the predicted word lists, perhaps the
words should be shown in
large print and placed
across the bottom of the page, separated by boxes. In this way, the program
can highlight each box from left to right as it reads the words and the words
will be easier to recognize.
In conclusion, I think developing technology, such as word processing programs
that are multi-sensory and easy to use, should remain a focus of both hardware
and software development. As newer and better technologies are developed with
differences in learning styles and functional needs in mind, the greater the
chance that special needs populations will gain independence as writers and
learners and demonstrate success in mainstream environments.
Materials
Co-Writer. Don Johnston Developmental Equipment, Inc. P.O. Box 639,
1000 N. Rand Rd. Wauconda, IL 60084 Tel: 1-800-999-4660.
IntelliTalk. IntelliTools. 5221 Central Ave. Richmond, CA 94804
Tel: 1-800-899-6687.
Morrison-McCall Spelling Inventory. Spaulding Education Foundation
2301 West Dunlap Ave., Suite 105
Phoenix, AZ 85021 Tel: 602-266-9158
Wilson Language Training. 162 West Main St. Millbury, Mass. 01527
Tel: 508-865-5699