Children who enter school with limited vocabulary knowledge are at risk for reading failure. This study investigated the efficacy of an interactive e-book, implemented as a mobile application, to facilitate vocabulary learning in Grade 1 isiXhosa-speaking children (
The purpose was to measure if an e-book intervention, specifically developed for use in the South African context, could facilitate the acquisition and retention of new words at different levels of lexical representation.
A randomised pre-test and/or post-test between-subject design was used where an experimental group that received the e-book intervention was compared to a control group before the control group received a delayed intervention. Follow-up testing was performed to measure retention of the new vocabulary after eight weeks. Mixed-model repeated-measure Analysis of Variance (ANOVAs) were used to determine differences between the participants in the experimental and control groups.
The short-term e-book intervention not only facilitated fast-mapping of new words but enabled participants to develop more robust lexical representations of the newly acquired words. Follow-up assessment showed that they retained their newly acquired word knowledge.
Multimedia technology can be used to provide explicit and embedded vocabulary training to young children at risk for academic failure. These findings are particularly relevant for South African environments where there is limited parental support and lack of educational resources to promote vocabulary learning in young children.
South Africa is faced with an ongoing crisis in literacy and reading, as our children perform poorly when compared to international standards. Many South African children are at risk for scholastic failure because of the pervasive and persistent inequalities in educational resources, risk factors associated with poverty and limited parental support, and inadequate instruction in overcrowded classrooms.
The 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) showed that of the 12 810 Grade 4 children who were assessed in 293 schools across South Africa, 78% did not reach the low international benchmark for reading. They could not perform basic reading skills such as reading for meaning, locating and retrieving explicitly stated information or make inferences about events or provide reasons for actions (Howie et al.,
Vocabulary, the knowledge of word meanings, is a powerful predictor of reading comprehension. Children with a limited vocabulary struggle with reading comprehension because they lack sufficient depth of word knowledge to process the meaning of more complex words or words in different morphosyntactic forms. They have less efficient lexical processing skills, are less likely to learn new words from incidental or embedded exposure to words and need repeated and explicit instruction to acquire deeper word knowledge (Coyne et al.,
In South Africa, Wilsenach (
Research has shown that children at risk for literacy failure need not only code-based reading instruction but also interventions to improve language and vocabulary skills (Biemiller & Boote,
There is therefore a growing focus on the development of programmes and procedures to improve and even accelerate vocabulary growth in children at risk for literacy failure. One such option is the development of multimedia interventions to support the language and literacy learning skills of children growing up in lower socio-economic status (SES) home and school environments. In this article we report the results of using an interactive electronic book (e-book) to facilitate vocabulary learning in children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The use of technology is a promising solution to support the development of literacy and to compensate for the language gap between linguistically advantaged and disadvantaged children (Bus & Neuman,
The purpose of our study was to measure the efficacy of an e-book, specifically developed for use in the South African context, to facilitate the learning of new words in children at risk for scholastic failure. The results of an earlier study reported in De Wet, Pretorius and Klop (
The study was guided by the following research question: what is the effect of an interactive e-book intervention on vocabulary learning of a group of isiXhosa-speaking mainstream Grade 1 children?
The specific research questions were as follows:
What are the differences between the participants’ knowledge of 15 target words before and after the intervention in terms of the following levels of word learning:
Receptive or partial knowledge? Contextual or deeper knowledge? In-depth or full knowledge?
Will they retain their knowledge of new words at the different levels of learning?
The hypothesis, based on the results of De Wet et al. (
A randomised pre-test and/or post-test between-subject design was used, where an experimental group that received the intervention was compared to a control group before the control group received a delayed intervention.
Participants were recruited from Grade 1 classes in two isiXhosa-medium schools in the district of Ntsika Yethu-Cofimvaba, in the Eastern Cape. The community comprise mainly subsistence farmers, and many children are cared for by grandparents while their parents are migrant workers in urban areas. Both schools had only one Grade 1 class. As a result, the classrooms were overcrowded, with 51 children in one class and 91 children in the other class. The quality of teaching and learning in both schools was further compromised by a lack of learning resources available in the classrooms and children’s poor school attendance.
For inclusion in the study, children had to pass otoscopic examinations, pure tone hearing and optometric screening tests to ensure that all participants had normal hearing and vision. Children were assessed individually by two researchers who were fluent isiXhosa speakers, in a quiet room in the school. Their non-verbal skills were assessed by means of the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Fourth Edition (TONI-4) (Brown, Sherbenou & Johnsen,
After matching for gender, participants who complied with the selection criteria were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Because of poor school attendance in general, many children were absent during the assessment and intervention period. Only 65 of the 140 children who consented to participation fulfilled all the selection criteria and completed all the phases of the study. The experimental group (
An original story with learning activities was created by the first author for the study reported in De Wet et al. (
Screenshot of story on tablet.
The e-book contained 15 target words (5 nouns, 4 verbs, 1 adverb and 5 adjectives) that were embedded in the story context (see
Fifteen target words
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Example of an interactive activity.
The application included three subcomponents, namely the home page with activity choices, such as activities of interaction with the e-book content and thirdly multichoice-style quizzes with questions that were answered by clicking on or dragging an object to the correct answer. The home page of the application provided buttons for accessing six different activities. The activities included reading through the e-book content and interacting with it, as well as multichoice-style activities for answering questions about the e-book content.
The e-book was implemented as a mobile application, specifically for Android tablets. It used a text-to-speech (TTS) engine to generate the audio version of the text displayed on the screen. The application used the Qfrency
Children first listened to the story read by a voice while observing the pictures on the tablet. The interactive activities, based on the story content, were added to facilitate participants’ active engagement with the target words through manipulation and discrimination tasks. The aim was to provide more opportunities to interact with the target words to consolidate and reinforce comprehension and to enable deeper word learning. The frequency of the target words was controlled for the number of times each word occurred in the story text and the learning activities to make comparisons between words possible.
Measurement tasks were developed by the researchers to test participants’ knowledge of the 15 target words at three task levels prior to the e-book intervention. The assessments were based on the protocol that was piloted in the De Wet et al. (
Assessment and intervention schedule.
This task entailed matching a word with its pictorial referent out of three distractors, for example, ‘show me woven (
This measure assessed expressive knowledge of the target words within the context of a sentence, for example, ‘the rabbit’s tail is … ? (fluffy)’. The cue sentences were novel sentences and not taken verbatim from the story or interactive activities to prevent responses that were just repetition from memory. Each correct answer received one point.
This measure assessed how well children understood the target words and whether they were able to express their understanding in a meaningful explanation, for example, ‘what do you think
The experimental group (
The intervention sessions were supervised and directed by one of the researchers, who helped the children to become familiar with the tablet and to access the interactive e-book. Children listened to the e-book through headphones to maximise the sound quality of the application and to avoid distractions. They engaged independently with the story and activities, following the verbal instructions that were part of the e-book. All the children had previous exposure to tablets and were familiar with interacting with educational material on tablets.
To minimise memory effects, post-tests to assess and compare both groups’ knowledge of the target words took place two weeks after the experimental group completed the intervention. After a period of 8 weeks, the assessments were repeated on the experimental group to determine their retention of the newly acquired words. The control group’s post-tests took place 2 weeks after they completed the intervention to assess their word learning. The control group was not assessed again for retention, as it was felt that a fourth assessment with the same battery could have elicited training effects. To minimise training effects between the tasks, participants were always tested first with the definition task, then with the sentence completion task and lastly with the receptive task.
The results of the screening and the pre- and post-intervention assessments were manually coded and analysed by the third author. To ensure inter-rater scoring reliability, the word definition task was scored independently by another person who was an isiXhosa first-language speaker and unaware of participants’ group assignment. Point-by-point agreement, calculated by comparing the total number of agreements with the agreements plus disagreements, was 98%. A software package, Statistica 12, was used for the statistical analyses. To examine the differences between the participants in the experimental and control groups, mixed-model repeated-measure ANOVAs were used. A 5% significance level (
The study formed part of a project approved by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Ethics Committee (62/2013). Formal written consent was obtained from the school principals, parents or caregivers and verbal assent from the participants prior to the study.
The main aim of the study was to determine the efficacy of an interactive e-book to facilitate vocabulary learning. As shown in
Means (and standard deviation) for receptive vocabulary, sentence completion and word definition scores for participants in the experimental (
Assessment task | Pre-test |
Post-test |
Follow-up |
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Variables | Exp. group |
Control group |
Exp. group |
Control group |
Exp. group |
Control group |
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SD | SD | SD | SD | SD | SD | ||||||||||
Receptive vocabulary (max score 15) | 6.6 | 2.5 | 6.4 | 2.1 | 12.2 | 2.4 | 7.2 | 2.3 | 12.1 | 2.5 | 11.7 | 3.3 | |||
Sentence completion (max score 15) | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 4.4 | 2.1 | 1.2 | 1 | 4.7 | 2.5 | 4.2 | 2.3 | |||
Word definitions (max score 45) | 9.1 | 3.1 | 9 | 4.8 | 17 | 5.2 | 10.7 | 4.6 | 21 | 5.3 | 21.8 | 7.7 |
Exp, experimental; SD, standard deviation.
A significant interaction between group and time was found,
Receptive vocabulary: Mean scores of participant groups for pre-, post- and follow-up assessment.
A significant interaction between group and time was found,
Expressive vocabulary: Mean scores of participant groups for pre-, post- and follow-up assessment of the sentence completion task.
This subtest assessed the children’s ability to provide definitions of the 15 target words and to assess the depth of their word learning. As shown in
Mean scores of participant groups for pre-, post- and follow-up assessment of the word definition task.
Our intervention aimed not only to facilitate fast-mapping of new words but to enable participants to develop more robust lexical representations of the newly acquired words. The results showed that all the participants acquired new Tier 2 level words at different levels of semantic representation. Moreover, in contrast with the findings of other studies (e.g. Coyne et al.,
This study only used one e-book that was created specifically for the project. It can, therefore, not be inferred that similar learning effects would be observed for all e-books. Most commercially available e-books are created for entertainment purposes and may be less effective in facilitating word learning than an e-book that was created with vocabulary intervention goals in mind. Further research to investigate differences in learning effects for e-books, with and without additional training activities, could inform developers and consumers about the most effective ways to use e-books for word learning.
One of the main benefits of e-book interventions is that children can engage with the content and activities independently with limited adult mediation. In an environment where there is little parental support at home and too many children in school classrooms, opportunities for shared storybook reading are often inadequate. E-books can, therefore, fill an important gap by enabling children from these environments to direct their own learning experiences and benefit from regular exposure to stories. E-books, in contrast with conventional shared reading, can also offer additional learning opportunities through interactive activities to reinforce and consolidate learning of new words.
The short-term e-book intervention facilitated the acquisition of new words in a group of isiXhosa-speaking Grade 1 children at risk for scholastic failure. The results confirmed the findings of the earlier study in an Afrikaans-speaking population (De Wet et al.,
We are grateful to the children, teachers, schools and the Eastern Cape Education Department, who with their participation and assistance made this project possible. This collaborative project between Meraka Institute and Stellenbosch University was funded by the CSIR.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and not an official position of their institutions.
D.K. was responsible for conceptualising the project, the literacy content and the experimental and project design. L.M. made conceptual contributions and was responsible for development of the application. A.M. translated and adjusted the content and performed data collection and analysis. F.d.W. was involved in conceptualising the project and acted as project leader.
Isigama esichazwayo
Inkcazo yamagama - Isivakalasi esitshiwo kuqala: Uthetha/Ithetha ntoni … ?
Uvavanyo | Impendulo yomntwana | Isikali samanqaku |
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1. ukungcamla | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
2. emtybilizi | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
3. emngxunyeni | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
4. ephothiweyo | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
5. ekhuselekile | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
6. intupha | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
7. ithi khatha | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
8. obufukufuku | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
9. ichibi | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
10. ihlathi | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
11. ukuzimela | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
12. acwengileyo | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
13. ulwamvila | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
14. ngcileza | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
15. ukukrekretha | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Izivakalisi ezingaphelelanga
Uvavanyo | Impendulo | Elungileyo/Engalunganga |
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1. Umvundla uxakekile negqabi uyali ……… (ngcamla) | ||
2. Isikhumba sesele si ………. (mtyibilizi) | ||
3. Impuku ihlala kumthi phakathi ……… (emngxunyeni) | ||
4. Indlwana yakhiwe ngengca ……… (ephothiweyo) | ||
5. Isele aloyiki kuba …….. (likhuselekile) | ||
6. uBobby udlala ngee …. (ntupha) | ||
7. Impuku ingena emngxunyeni ithi ….. (khatha) | ||
8. Umsila womvundla ……….. (ubufukufuku) | ||
9. Amanzi afumaneka ………. (echibini) | ||
10. Imithi ikhula …….. (ehlathini) | ||
11. Ihobohobo lingene kwindlwana yalo ……. (lazimela) | ||
12. Amanzi edamini …….. (acwengile) | ||
13. Inyosi ihlaba ngo ……. (lwamvila) | ||
14. Umvundla uyewaya apha naphaya …… (engcileza) | ||
15. Impuku ixakekile nentongomane iyali …… (krekretha) | ||
Isivakalasi esitshiwo kuqala: Khomba (yolatha) ngomnwe wakho…
Isigama esiqondwayo - Isivakalasi esitshiwo kuqala:
Uvavanyo | Impendulo efunekayo | Elungileyo/Engalunganga |
---|---|---|
1. ngcamla | 1 | |
2. mtyibilizi | 3 | |
3. umngxumo | 1 | |
4. ephothiweyo | 4 | |
5. khuselekile | 1 | |
6. ntupha | 1 | |
7. khatha | 2 | |
8. fukufuku | 1 | |
9. ichibi | 1 | |
10. ihlathi | 1 | |
11. zimela | 3 | |
12. acwengileyo | 2 | |
13. ulwamvila | 2 | |
14. ngcileza | 2 | |
15. krekretha | 2 | |