The purpose of this study was to measure the efficacy of an eBook to improve the vocabulary and word recognition skills in an Afrikaans speaking group of lower socio-economic status of 6- to 7-year old children with poor vocabulary. The main goals were to investigate if exposure to an interactive eBook would result in the acquisition of new vocabulary and sight word reading in the study participants. A randomised pre-test/post-test between-subjects design was used. An experimental group that received an intervention was compared to a control group before the control group received a delayed intervention. Both groups were reassessed, eight weeks after the interventions to assess the retention of their newly acquired skills. Results show a significant improvement in recognition and vocabulary skills in the experimental group compared to their initial assessments, as well as compared to the control group.
Reference:
de Wet, F, Marais, L and Klop D. 2015. Text-to-speech enhanced eBooks for emerging literacy development. In: Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE 2015), Leipzig, Germany, 4-5 September 2015
De Wet, F., Marais, L., & Klop, D. (2015). Text-to-speech enhanced eBooks for emerging literacy development. ISCA Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8633
De Wet, Febe, L Marais, and D Klop. "Text-to-speech enhanced eBooks for emerging literacy development." (2015): http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8633
De Wet F, Marais L, Klop D, Text-to-speech enhanced eBooks for emerging literacy development; ISCA Archive; 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/8633 .