-98-
2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
ABRA
is a website designed by
The Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance
(CSLP) in Canada, and it is a free and interactive literacy program designed originally for
L2 early elementary school-
aged children’s
English learning in Montreal.
The story component of the website, designed to enable students to read for a variety of
purposes, involves five different genres of folk and fairy tales, poetry, fiction, non-fiction,
and multicultural. Each genre includes four to six stories, and each text has a reading
model that allows students to follow and hear its pronunciation. Moreover, the activities
include four different reading skills, ranging from word-level practice (e.g., letter-sound
recognition, matching, blending, segmenting and word changing) to reading fluency
development, comprehension development, and writing skills. Each item can be learned
with different reading genres. This study focuses on decoding training in word-level
practice, i.e., the auditory blending activity and auditory segmenting activity.
ABRA
offers
students a variety of reading materials and activities, provides teachers forms of video
clips and animated demonstrations, and gives parents chances to engage in their
children’s learning process.
Researchers in Canada have conducted several randomized controlled trials to measure
the
ABRA
’s impact on students’ reading and decoding performance. It has been shown to
enhance students’ literacy skills.
Abrami, Cerna, Hipps, Jorgensen, and Savage (2005)
conducted a pilot study with the
ABRA
website in two Quebec schools. At pre-test and
posttest, 72 participants were assessed on four skills: decoding, processing speed, word
reading and comprehension. Group A focused on a progression from sentences to words
to rhymes, group B focused on blending and segmenting activities, and group C (the
control group) received the traditional classroom instruction. The results revealed that all
three groups improved in decoding skills, and there were signs of moderate additional
advantages for children in Intervention A. Likewise, all three groups improved both in
processing speed and word reading. The modest differences were in reading
comprehension at the posttest. Overall the results indicated that
ABRA
had positive
effects on students’ phonics learning, and could be incorporated into English teachers’
instruction.
Since
ABRA
had significant effects on children’s sight word reading and phonological
awareness, Abrami, et al. (2005) investigated the effects with 10
ABRA
intervention and
10 control classrooms across Canada. One hundred and fifty-two kindergartners, 229 1st
graders, and 52 2nd graders came from suburban schools in Quebec, Ontario, and
Alberta participated in the study. The control group received regular English Language
Arts lessons while the experimental group received
ABRA
instruction. The posttests took
place after 10-12 weeks, and the results showed that children in the intervention
condition outperformed those not using
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: