Developing Technology-Enhanced Literacy Learning for LESLLA learners

Abstract

Among the reasons why LESLLA learners are less successful than children who learn to read and write in their mother tongue are fewer instructional hours and the lack of individualized instruction. The Digital Literacy Instructor is a European Union–funded Multilateral Lifelong Learning project that is developing software in Dutch, English, Finnish, and German for beginners to learn the grapheme–phoneme correspondences in these four languages. the aim of this software is to give these learners more intensive and extensive practice through clearer, more systematic, and more consistent feedback. What is most innovative is the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for providing feedback on words read aloud by the learner while taking into account the specific language background of the learner. This article also describes the pedagogical ideas that form the basis of the materials and how these ideas are realized in the software. The stepwise work plan of the project is sketched, and the first results are shown in the form of seven exercise types. The software presents 300 words with accompanying audio and photographs along with ASR-based feedback in one and the same exercise type. All stages in literacy learning (direct word recognition, visual and auditory analysis and synthesis) can be practiced with the 300 words.