Adaptive reading?

There is a lot that technology can do to help English language learners develop their reading skills. The internet makes it possible for learners to read an almost limitless number of texts that will interest them, and these texts can evaluated for readability and, therefore, suitability for level (see here for a useful article). RSS opens up exciting possibilities for narrow reading and the positive impact of multimedia-enhanced texts was researched many years ago. There are good online bilingual dictionaries and other translation tools. There are apps that go with graded readers (see this review in the Guardian) and there are apps that can force you to read at a certain speed. And there is more. All of this could very effectively be managed on a good learning platform.

Could adaptive software add another valuable element to reading skills development?

Adaptive reading programs are spreading in the US in primary education, and, with some modifications, could be used in ELT courses for younger learners and for those who do not have the Roman alphabet. One of the most well-known has been developed by Lexia Learning®, a company that won a $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation last year. Lexia Learning® was bought by Rosetta Stone® for $22.5 million in June 2013.

One of their products, Lexia Reading Core5, ‘provides explicit, systematic, personalized learning in the six areas of reading instruction, and delivers norm-referenced performance data and analysis without interrupting the flow of instruction to administer a test. Designed specifically to meet the Common Core and the most rigorous state standards, this research-proven, technology-based approach accelerates reading skills development, predicts students’ year-end performance and provides teachers data-driven action plans to help differentiate instruction’.

The predictable claim that it is ‘research-proven’ has not convinced everyone. Richard Allington, a professor of literacy studies at the University of Tennessee and a past president of both the International Reading Association and the National Reading Association, has said that all the companies that have developed this kind of software ‘come up with evidence – albeit potential evidence — that kids could improve their abilities to read by using their product. It’s all marketing. They’re selling a product. Lexia is one of these programs. But there virtually are no commercial programs that have any solid, reliable evidence that they improve reading achievement.’[1] He has argued that the $12 million that has been spent on the Lexia programs would have been better spent on a national program, developed at Ohio State University, that matches specially trained reading instructors with students known to have trouble learning to read.

But what about ELT? For an adaptive program like Lexia’s to work, reading skills need to be broken down in a similar way to the diagram shown above. Let’s get some folk linguistics out of the way first. The sub-skills of reading are not skimming, scanning, inferring meaning from context, etc. These are strategies that readers adopt voluntarily in order to understand a text better. If a reader uses these strategies in their own language, they are likely to transfer these strategies to their English reading. It seems that ELT instruction in strategy use has only limited impact, although this kind of training may be relevant to preparation for exams. This insight is taking a long time to filter down to course and coursebook design, but there really isn’t much debate[2]. Any adaptive ELT reading program that confuses reading strategies with reading sub-skills is going to have big problems.

What, then, are the sub-skills of reading? In what ways could reading be broken down into a skill tree so that it is amenable to adaptive learning? Researchers have provided different answers. Munby (1978), for example, listed 19 reading microskills, Heaton (1988) listed 14. However, a bigger problem is that other researchers (e.g. Lunzer 1979, Rost 1993) have failed to find evidence that distinct sub-skills actually exist. While it is easier to identify sub-skills for very low level readers (especially for those whose own language is very different from English), it is simply not possible to do so for higher levels.

Reading in another language is a complex process which involves both top-down and bottom-up strategies, is intimately linked to vocabulary knowledge and requires the activation of background, cultural knowledge. Reading ability, in the eyes of some researchers, is unitary or holistic. Others prefer to separate things into two components: word recognition and comprehension[3]. Either way, a consensus is beginning to emerge that teachers and learners might do better to focus on vocabulary extension (and this would include extensive reading) than to attempt to develop reading programs that assume the multidivisible nature of reading.

All of which means that adaptive learning software and reading skills in ELT are unlikely bedfellows. To be sure, an increased use of technology (as described in the first paragraph of this post) in reading work will generate a lot of data about learner behaviours. Analysis of this data may lead to actionable insights, and it may not! It will be interesting to find out.

 

[1] http://www.khi.org/news/2013/jun/17/budget-proviso-reading-program-raises-questions/

[2] See, for example, Walter, C. & M. Swan. 2008. ‘Teaching reading skills: mostly a waste of time?’ in Beaven, B. (ed.) IATEFL 2008 Exeter Conference Selections. (Canterbury: IATEFL). Or go back further to Alderson, J. C. 1984 ‘Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem?’ in J.C. Alderson & A. H. Urquhart (eds.) Reading in a Foreign Language (London: Longman)

[3] For a useful summary of these issues, see ‘Reading abilities and strategies: a short introduction’ by Feng Liu (International Education Studies 3 / 3 August 2010) www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/viewFile/6790/5321

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