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Does Learning to Type Words from Dictation Automatically Impart the Skill of Reading Those Words?

Erin E. Holland, Dr. Matthew Israel, Dr. Robert W. Worsham, Timothy J. Paisey, Michelle O’Neall Harrington, and Edward G. Langford, Jr.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (www.judgerc.org) operates day and residential programs for children and adults with behavior problems, including conduct disorders, emotional problems, brain injury or psychosis, autism, and developmental disabilities.  The basic approach taken at JRC is the use of behavioral psychology and its various technological applications, such as behavioral education, programmed instruction, precision teaching, behavior modification, behavior therapy, behavioral counseling, self-management of behavior, and chart-sharing.

The majority of students referred to JRC display complex profiles of surplus and deficit behaviors that include significant delays in basic academic skills.  Instruction in academic behaviors at JRC employs principles of Precision teaching (PT) (Potts, Eshleman & Cooper, 1993) emphasizing fluency building or “overlearning” (Binder, 1987) to promote retention and automatic, error-free application.  The current study reports on 10 adolescents who had significant delays in reading and who received PT instruction to improve their phonics skills.  The 10 adolescents were randomly assigned to one of two study groups, comprised of 5 students each.  One group practiced typing from dictation, while the other group practiced reading aloud using the same word list.  Typing (“Hear/Type”) and Reading (“See/Say”) rates were assessed before and following practice.

METHODS

Participants and Setting

The sample of 10 students enrolled at JRC was selected based on consistently identified need for improvement in Reading identified in their Individual Educational Programs (IEP’s). The eight male and two female participants had a median age of 16 yr, 11 mo (range 9 yr, 1 mo – 21 yr 3 mo).  Students had diagnostic labels that included learning disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, and mental retardation.  All individuals lived in JRC’s community residences and attended educational classes at JRC’s school building.

Measures and Instruction

All 10 participants were pre-tested on two lessons from JRC’s Phonics Curriculum.  Each lesson contained the same words (See Figure 2); however, the first lesson required the student to use the See/Say channel, while the second lesson required Hear/Type.  Upon completion of the pre-tests, the participants were split into two groups, each comprised of 5 students.  These groups practiced either the See/Say or Hear/Type lessons for a period of approximately two hours.  Finally, all 10 students were post-tested on both lessons (see Figure 1, “Procedure”).

Those students who practiced the See/Say lesson received feedback by checking their response with an audio file, by clicking on a selected word.  In addition, these participants received feedback during the teacher timings which were taken during the two-hour practice session.  The group of students practicing the Hear/Type lesson also received feedback for correct and incorrect responses.  Correct responses were met with a bell sound and a green check mark, while incorrect responses were met with a buzz and the correctly spelled word presented on the screen.

RESULTS

Participants in the study were referred for behaviorally-engineered education following an extensive history of low academic achievement.  All students showed an improvement from pre to post-test within the channel that he/she practiced.   For those students practicing the See/Say lessons, there was no improvement noted from one channel to the other in four of five students.  Conversely, five of five students who practiced the lesson utilizing Hear/Type showed improvements across both channels (see Figures 3 and 4)

The median change across learning channels for students practicing the Hear/Type channel was x1.25 (25% improvement), while the change for the See/Say practice group was x1.0 (no improvement). (See Figure 1, “Results”) 

DISCUSSION

Hear/Type practice resulted in generalized improvement across both channels, while See/Say generalized only to its own channel.  JRC’s Phonics Curriculum is currently arranged to have student’s complete lessons utilizing See/Say, before moving on to lessons involving Hear/Type.  The results included in this study have indicated a need to rearrange the lessons to incorporate Hear/Type prior to See/Say to improve phonics skills.

REFERENCES

Binder, C. V., (1987).  Fluency-building.  Precision Teaching and Management Systems, Inc.  

Potts, L., Eshleman, J. W., & Cooper, J. O., (1993).  Ogden R. Lindsley and the historical development of Precision Teaching, The Behavior Analyst, 16, 177-189.