The third voice: Do enhanced e-books enhance the benefits of shared story reading with preschoolers?

This study from which this paper draws examined the benefits of reading plain e-books (with parental instruction) compared to enhanced e-books (with limited parental direction) with 3- to 5-year-old children. Interaction was measured through parent-child verbal communication and eye contact. Engagement was measured through time spent visually focused on the story, and retention was measured through open-ended story event recall questions and multiple-choice story vocabulary questions. There were no differences between the enhanced and plain e-book conditions in children’s qualitative engagement with the story, or in the amounts of vocabulary or story events they retained. While enhanced e-books resulted in more time spent gazing at the device, parents and children were significantly more interactive when reading plain e-books. These findings suggest that while both plain and enhanced e-books are effective in aiding children’s retention of words and story events, plain e-books read by a caregiver are better at promoting meaningful conversation

Integration of Technology Into the Classroom: Effects on reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is critical to understanding written communication. Even when students are able to recognize words and fluently read text, they my not comprehend what is read. Learning to comprehend text is critical for students to be successful in school and future careers. As new technologies emerge, there is a push to integrate technology into the classroom to promote academic success among students. Furthermore, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates the use of technology in the classroom. This research review investigated peer-reviewed studies comparing the effects of computer technology as a supplemental tool to support and improve the reading comprehension of struggling and at-risk readers with equivalent non-technological or traditional print based treatments. Technology features investigated by the studies reviewed include various types of multi-featured electronic texts, computerized supplemental reading programs, a handheld text reader, virtual manipulatives, and using computers to create responses to reading printed texts. The various technologies were found to provide equal or greater benefit than traditional means for aiding struggling and at-risk readers with reading comprehension

How to teach digital reading?

This paper offers a discussion of the knowledge, skills, and awareness involved in digital reading. Reading, in this paper, is used in the broader sense to include deriving meaning from media on a digital screen. This paper synthesises key ideas from existing studies and presents a taxonomy for the teaching of digital reading. The taxonomy includes the development of: 1) the knowledge of linear and deep reading strategies; 2) basic and critical information skills; and 3) a multimodal semiotic awareness. The goal of this paper is to unpack the specific knowledge and skills for digital reading which will support educators, including classroom teachers and librarians, on the aspects to pay attention to as students engage in digital reading. This paper argues that, in addition to equipping students with the knowledge of reading strategies and information skills, an awareness of how the various semiotic modes make meaning is fundamental to effective digital reading

ChatGPT: Vision and Challenges

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have changed the nature of scientific inquiry in recent years. Of these, the development of virtual assistants has accelerated greatly in the past few years, with ChatGPT becoming a prominent AI language model. In this study, we examine the foundations, vision, research challenges of ChatGPT. This article investigates into the background and development of the technology behind it, as well as its popular applications. Moreover, we discuss the advantages of bringing everything together through ChatGPT and Internet of Things (IoT). Further, we speculate on the future of ChatGPT by considering various possibilities for study and development, such as energy-efficiency, cybersecurity, enhancing its applicability to additional technologies (Robotics and Computer Vision), strengthening human-AI communications, and bridging the technological gap. Finally, we discuss the important ethics and current trends of ChatGPT

The Effect of Mediated Glosses on Vocabulary Retention and Reading Comprehension with English Language Learners in Saudi Arabia

This study investigated the effectiveness of mediated glosses for understanding technical terms with foreign language learners. Previous research has found that online glosses improve information access, comprehension, vocabulary retention, and efficiency. Pavio's dual coding theory and Mayer's generative theory both posit that learning should improve when multiple coding systems are engaged through different media representations. An expert panel in petroleum engineering identified critical technical terms (e.g. compress, velocity, and permeable). The designers then used an iterative process to refine definitions, pictures, and animations in developing three gloss conditions. For condition 1 (audio and text), the term was written in English and Arabic, pronounced in English and defined in English. Condition 2 (audio, text and picture) had condition 1 features with a picture. Condition 3 (audio, text and animation) had condition 1 features with an animation. Participants were 222, 18-24 year-old male native Arabic speakers enrolled in petroleum engineering courses. Three groups under three gloss conditions read an online story in English with 50 glossed words, and completed a 22-item multiple-choice comprehension test. The three groups then reviewed 59 glossed terms without the story, and completed a vocabulary test immediately following and two weeks later. Demographic and attitude questionnaires were administered. Results found that, when controlling for language ability, those who received audio, text, and picture glosses (M=9.72) had higher comprehension scores than the text-based group (M=8.35), F (2,218) =3.07, p<.05. Those who received the audio, text, and picture gloss (M=3.88) agreed that "Online texts are better than paper-based texts," more than the audio and text group (M=3.41); F (2,216) =3.10, p<.05. There was a positive relationship between students' language-learning anxiety and reading comprehension (r=.203, p<.05), immediate vocabulary test (r=.229, p<.05), and delayed vocabulary test (r=.207, p<.05). Moderate anxiety levels facilitated language learning. Online glosses with dynamic pictures were found to be more effective in supporting comprehension and were rated higher than text-based glosses. The design process revealed that pictorial and animated representations should include negative and positive examples. Dynamic pictures may often be as effective as animations. Further mediated gloss research with more advanced language learners is warranted

ATTITUDES TO THE USE OF L1 AND TRANSLATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

This research addresses the controversial methodological issue of own-language use and particularly translation in second and foreign language teaching and learning.  In recent years, a re-evaluation of the assumption of a monolingual approach has begun, and this study focuses on the attitudes and opinions of experienced TESOL/TEFL practitioners in the UK and abroad.  A combined approach was adopted using both semi-structured questionnaires and personal interviews to explore many of the contentious issues raised in the literature and traditionally held objections to use of L1 and translation.  Any meaningful differences between views of UK and rest of world respondents were also sought.  The findings, whilst highlighting the wide diversity of individual opinions, nevertheless indicate perhaps surprisingly, a considerable degree of overall support for judicious use of the L1 and translation in appropriate circumstances.  Thus, 68% of respondents disagree that the Direct Method is the most appropriate technique and 86% do agree that carefully planned translation activity can play a useful role in the L2 communicative classroom, with 82% agreeing to the use of an eclectic approach. The overall findings firmly suggest the time is ripe to place use of L1 and translation back onto the language teaching agenda.  Recommendations for practical classroom applications and further research are also made

Writing for a Mind at Work: Appellate Advocacy and the Science of Digital Reading

Professor Beazley explores the future implications to appellate advocacy as we move into the digital age. Understanding how that digital world affects legal reading is vital to understanding the future of appellate advocacy. Lawyers need to understand some of the science of how people read and interact with the written word; unfortunately, we have been slow to grasp the importance of this science. She defines and explains the concepts of Active Readers and Knowledge Work. She then addresses some of the issues that arise as active readers transition from paper to digital platforms. Professor Beazley concludes by describing some of the anticipated changes in hardware and software and makes suggestions about changes to court rules and more

Using the organizational and narrative thread structures in an e-book to support comprehension.

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schanks Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis