Chomba J. Nshimbi1 & Heikki Lyytinen2
1Centre for Advancement of Literacy and Skill in School (CALSS), Lusaka, Zambia
2University of Jyväskylä, Finland & Haskins Laboratories, Yale, USA
Introduction
Learning knowledge efficiently by reading requires a skill which we can call full literacy (FL) reflected in PISA results. It can be acquired in two ways. One has first to learn the basic reading skill (BRS), which means readiness to decode or sound out text accurately and fluently. Because BRS is not enough for FL one had to take a second step. It can be made in two ways: by reading a lot of leisure material which is interesting enough to motivate following the red line, ie. to comprehend what is happening in the story. Thus, reading for enjoyment outside school leads to FL relatively fast. The other way is to get training which helps the reader acquire effective reading strategy which means finding the most informative sentences which carry the red line. It helps in learning because working memory has a limited capacity. One has to be able to keep 3-6 sentences in mind before these can be stored in permanent memory for storing the main points of the story or lesson. Since many children (especially boys) are no longer reading leisure books many of them fail to reach FL. In Sub-Saharan Africa owning such materials may be a problem to many compromising their opportunity to reach FL naturally, ie. by reading.
Millions of children do not have any access to such interesting materials which they would be happy to read. Thus, both those who are not motivated to read and those who do not have texts which are interesting enough for reading, need other ways to go. Such ways can be collected for use from two starting points. One is for young children before they start their steps towards FL in school where learning from the schoolbooks requires FL. These younger children can be guided to focus on the goal of reading, not on sounding of the text only. Children, who have no opportunity to read leisure books, can get help from our TaleReader (TR) application. TR guides young learners to follow exciting stories which the application is reading to them by showing where the reader is moving in the text. It naturally keeps the listening child interested in following the red line as s/he follows speaking but seeing both spoken and written words together in close time relation tends to help also in learning the basic reading skill. The last is supported also via special stories which are showing explicitly how e.g. an animal mother is instructing her children by first connecting the initial sound of e.g. names of animals which the learner knows and then moving to other units such as syllables and whole words. This happens by having the animal pictures on the left side of the display and the letters on the right and asking the child to make connections between these two sets of items.
During the ages (3-7y) before school, most children are interested in listening to stories via TaleReader. Children who have learned the basic reading skills can also receive training via our Comprehension Game (CG, see www.comprehensiongame.com). It provides needed support for learning FL. But it can help only after one has learned not only accurate but also fluent basic reading skills. Furthermore, it requires the teachers to write the key content of the lessons which is the most natural context of using the CG.
Because especially boys tend to be more interested in playing digital games than reading, they can save time by motivating their teachers or parents to start providing them an opportunity to use Comprehension Game for learning to read via games to save time for playing their games. The mentioned CG pages inform about reading skills and how these can be acquired using the CG. The results of the use of the CG will be shortly illustrated below.
We can say that some kind of reading crisis is affecting especially boys in many countries. This concerns FL in rich countries and both steps are needed for FL in poor countries. This is why children help reduce their reading-related related problems. Basic reading skills are not learned always in many poor countries where reading instruction is often not sufficient. And even if the basic reading skills (BRS) can be successfully instructed it is not enough for learning from the schoolbooks which require full literacy (FL). This is illustrated via reading about the results of our studying rural Zambia among illiterate families. Our results will show how the combination of training first the basic reading skills and then the use of CG can lead to good results helping in school learning which only the combination makes possible, not the use of the first only. Thus, we trained the BRS using our earlier method which is called GraphoLearn technology (GL). It runs GraphoGame which the University of Jyväskylä and Niilo Mäki Institute had to sell to be distributed commercially. GraphoGame trains the basic reading skill efficiently and is now used by millions of children around the world. GL was the research version of the GG, which now is being replaced by TaleReader which can support the acquisition of both steps, BRS and FL.
Here we ask how the combined use affects their school marks. One group receives an opportunity to be trained using only GL, and the second using GL, followed by Comprehension Game (CG, comprehensiongame.info). The CG training was given only shortly, with content (climate change) that has nothing to do with the content they learn during their early years at school. The question of interest is how well their school learning of other contents proceeded then. These findings reveal the meaning of short training towards FL in elevating school learning.
The BRS can be instructed simply in languages whose writing is transparent at the grapheme-phoneme level by training children to learn the connections of the phonemes and the letters representing these. Next learners have to apply what they learned by pronouncing the sounds in the order of letters. In such languages (such as those of African local languages) all pronounceable sequences of letters (or more than one letter graphemes) can be sounded=read without any need to know the meaning of the results. This is why children are not conditioned to focus on meaning from the beginning which is why they have to be helped separately to reach the goal of reading (mediation of the meaning of the text literacy) during the second step of their learning.
If children have leisure books and they are interested in reading these, they learn fast to comprehend text (and thus FL) because this is the only way to enjoy reading. Starting to read as soon as one has learned the BRS is a natural way to reach FL.
If leisure reading is not of interest which is more and more happening especially among boys also when such materials are easily available, they have no natural way to learn to understand their schoolbooks. Lessons are read by giving all words an equal value which exposes their school work to heavy stress. This fate of the nonreaders has been seen in the falling results of the PISA practically in all countries where PISA is in use. The fall is the larger the large is portion of children who are not interested in applying their BRS to reading even materials which could be of interest to them.
It is difficult to push boys to read after they have the opportunity to use their time for more interesting things such as playing digital games. Failure to motivate them to read ends up in a situation where they can sound out text, but comprehension is compromised. This is why providing an appropriate opportunity to learn to read before they become addicted to digital games may be a solution to this problem. Therefore, we now have such an opportunity ready for trying already before school age. Or in fact, it could work from the age child starts becoming interested in listening to exciting stories. It is implemented in such a way that it also trains them to learn basic reading skills because it is naturally an unavoidable starting point for learning to comprehend what they read.
Learning requires one to be engaged in training long enough to experience a sufficient repetition making the skill to develop. Both of these can be organized by using an application that is based on listening to exciting, i.e. engaging stories and seeing at the same time the word or sentence which is just under reading. This trains them first the basic reading skills via the continuing connection building between spoken and written language. Listening to such stories they are eager to follow the line of the story which is read to them. Making the listening happen at the same time they see how the reader’s eyes are moving from word to next in reading provides an opportunity for “connection building” which is comparable to what is happening when GraphoLearn(GL) technology is used for training the basic reading skills. The exact way how this is made will be illustrated in a separate paper later after empirical evidence has been analyzed from the ComprehensionGame-based data. From that, we have promising preliminary results.
Equipping children in primary school with effective reading skills is crucial as it forms the foundation for learning in all subjects which Zambian children are guided to do according to the National Literacy Framework NLF (2013). Full literacy plays a crucial role in enhancing learning in all subjects for primary school children this is because literacy is a core set of skills that can help pupils overcome social and economic barriers and provide a basis for their success in everyday life. Full literacy also provides for effective communication between teachers and learners, teachers can effectively communicate lesson concepts, learning objectives, and assessment requirements to learners. Full literacy builds a strong foundation for primary school children to develop lifelong learning skills. During school time it makes learning stressless after readiness to read with comprehension has reached an automatized level. ComprehensionGame can make it if applied in the context of learning lessons by XX by always moving the child’s attention to the most informative sentences of the lesson. Thus, the spontaneous habit of seeing all words/sentences as equal is soon forgotten, and the focus of attention is strategically identifying the key contents.
We have shown over the past decade that technology plays a significant role in improving the acquisition of basic literacy in most commonly spoken language environments (Lyytinen et al., 2021; Lyytinen et al., submitted) and we believe that digital technology can provide the same help in the acquisition of full literacy in primary school children in Zambia speaking their local language (Nyanja).
Our new digital learning games provide learners with a wide range of learning resources that can enhance their literacy skills to full literacy and broaden their opportunity thus to learn knowledge. Secondly, it provides personalized learning by adapting to each learner’s pace, which helps them to understand better and retain what they learn. Educational technology is also suitable for teachers, providing them with training and resources to effectively teach literacy skills. Lastly, it can help to facilitate and involve parents in children’s learning because it can be used even in children’s homes.
In this paper, we describe one such digital education tool that has the potential to help children acquire full literacy, ie. also comprehend what they read after they have learned the basic literacy skills of sounding text accurately and fluently. Comprehension Game (CG) which we referred to in the preceding paragraphs is illustrated in detail in the article by Lyytinen and Louleli (2023). They describe it as a digital game-like learning tool that amplifies reading comprehension and critical thinking skills for pupils and guides teachers to effectively implement content and manage it for opening the game to be used in whatever language. The game tracks the players’ progress.
In the Comprehension Game, players respond to claims picked from the to be learned content by choosing whether it is true or false. The true claims express essential features of the core knowledge of the subject matter (e.g. a school lesson). The typical not true sentences (claims) represent common misunderstandings the learners tend to have and help them thus to get rid of these. This process encourages deeper thinking about the subject and fosters critical thinking skills. It simply reveals that not all words or sentences are equally important which an early learner does not know.
The CG was used in rural Zambia (Katete) after we had trained families to acquire the BRS using the GL technology. The results are shortly illustrated in more detail below but to motivate them to continue reading the complete report of that study, we can describe below that it made children able to elevate their school results although the climate change-related material, that we used for training them to comprehend written language, was not connected to the content they had to learn by reading from their school books to elevate their marks.
Methods
The study had two phases. A pilot study preceded the final study.
The Pilot Study.
Participants. The participants typically comprised whole families. There were 24 participants in total, 9 males and 15 females. The average age of the participants was 30.6 years, ranging between 13 and 54 years.
The collection of data. Paper and pencil comprehension test where the researcher spoke the content to the participants to assess their initial 1) reading skills and 2) knowledge of the impact of climate change on their immediate environment.
The Main Study
Participants. A total of 118 pupils were chosen from three grade six classes at Kaputu Primary School in Katete district of Eastern Province. 54 of them were boys and 64 girls. Aged varied between 11 and 15 years.
Comparison groups. 59 pupils, comprising 35 girls and 24 boys, were randomly selected for the intervention group, and 58 other children who were demographic equals of the intervention group (comprising 29 females and 30 males) were also randomly selected to act as a control group. These pupils were in the same classes and learned the same lessons as our intervention group but did not use the ComprehensionGame as support.
Study Design and Assessment Procedure
The Pilot Study
This part of the study was comprised of an intervention study with a pre-test/post-test design in which a sample of children and adults living in low-income and low-literacy villages in the rural Katete district of Zambia were loaned smartphones with the tools in question, first the GraphoLearn-based game was used for learning the basic literacy skills. After noting that a sufficient basic reading skill was acquired the Comprehension Game (CG) was used to help them to learn information on climate change under the supervision of a research assistant. Particular emphasis in the true sentences was laid on instructing them to know the effects of climate change’s anticipated consequences, especially on their food security. The pilot was focused on validating the efficiency of how the mentioned sentence (claim) material works via training to benefit it as needed for understanding any visually presented content, (that is) not only text but also figures. Our goal was to train children and adults to learn to read with comprehension and motivate them to do that with a critical attitude. Thus our goal was to help them to learn via written content (using CG) how to cope with climate change-related challenges faced in today’s modern world.
The participants were given all the testing and training material using their spoken language. The tests comprised spoken questions on climate change relevant to the participants’ environmental conditions. The assessment of comprehension comprised 21 multiple-choice questions representing the knowledge the ComprehensionGame was implemented to help them acquire.
The researcher at the school made the pre-intervention assessment. Then, phones were distributed to the participants, and the researcher instructed them on how to access and play the Comprehension Game. After 10 days of exposure to the game, the participants were given a written post-exposure comprehension test to determine how much knowledge they had gained from playing the games.
The Main Study
Based on the results of the pilot, we designed a study that was aimed at equipping children in primary school with Full Literacy skills based on the acquisition of accurate and fluent decoding of whatever text and the comprehension of what they read. Only such a reading skill is enough to help them learn effectively from written lesson texts of any curriculum content area.
This study was a randomly controlled trial in which 117 grade six children at a primary school in Kaputu village of Katete district school were randomly chosen to control and intervention groups. 59 of the pupils were assigned to the intervention group and were given smartphones with ComprehensionGame to support their learning of lessons. The teachers of these children were trained to convert topics of selected subjects that children were learning during their normal lessons to tokens to be used in the game. Fifty-eight other children who were demographically equal to our intervention group were assigned to act as a control group. These children were learning the same lessons as our intervention group but only via traditional instruction of teachers without ComprehensionGame as support.
The subjects whose learning was assessed comprised social studies, science and creative and technology studies (CTS). At the end of the term, all the pupils were given tests, and the results of our total sample, i.e., control group and intervention group, were compared.
The pupils were also subjected to a pre-assessment interview in which they were asked to state the number of different books they have at home, how many were specifically meant for children, and how many were not related to school. They were also asked if they had ever visited any library.
At the end of the term, all the schools held their traditional tests given to all pupils to learn how much knowledge pupils had gained from what they had learned during the term. These tests included all subject areas that our intervention group were given the opportunity to learn using ComprehensionGame (Social Studies, Science and Creative and Technology Studies).
Results
The pilot. The results are summarized in a paired samples test and shown in the table below. They indicate a recognizable and significant difference in the results of the comprehension test between the pre-test and that of the post-test: t (23) = -9.063 p < .001 as shown in the table below. As expected, the results indicate that the participant’s exposure to the content of the Comprehension Game on the phone helped them increase their knowledge of the effects of climate change in their area.
The main study. Initially, we analyzed the responses from the preliminary interviews, where we asked pupils about the availability of reading materials in their homes. The results reveal that only 8% of the participants had more than five books available for reading at home and a large portion of those books (35%) were not suitable for children’s reading. Only 38% percent of the available books were not related to school, and the participants reported, that a majority of the available books (over 48) were related to religion. 57% of the participants reported that they had visited a library.
We further compared the two groups to assess whether there was a difference in terms of availability of reading materials in their homes, the results as indicated in the t-test and shown in the table below that there was no difference between them on this variable.
The next step was to compare the pupils’ end-of-term mean test scores to determine if they differed. As the graph below reveals the results indicated that children who were exposed to their normal lessons in addition to using ComprehensionGame performed better in all the 3 subjects compared to those that were not exposed
To determine whether the differences in the mean scores were significant we subjected the data to an independent samples t-test. The results of the test showed that the mean scores on all the end-of-term tests; social studies (t (94) = 6.935 p < .001), science (t (97) = 6.446 p < .001) and creative and technology studies (t (102) = 7.686 p < .001) were significant.
Discussion
As expected, school achievements are better when academic school-based knowledge is gained after acquiring full literacy (FL). This comprises two skills: accurate and fluent basic decoding skills and the ultimate goal of reading, Full Literacy, which is the crucial skill needed for efficient and stressless learning from schoolbooks. Zimmerman and Hutchins (2003) explain that reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process what one has read and then understand its meaning. Lyytinen and Louleli (2022) summarize how Full Literacy (FL) can be acquired: either naturally by reading leisure books after learning the decoding skills or by being specifically trained to learn the correct strategy of reading for learning. Because our participants did not have leisure books for learning (FL) in natural ways, we used the ComprehensionGame that they proposed for this purpose. It trains children to identify the key content of what they read by choosing the most informative sentences that they have to be able to store to their memory as learning results from e.g. their schoolbooks.
The ComprehensionGame (CG), as the name suggests, trains players to decode the tokens they read and understand them, it is an interactive process that occurs not only while the players are reading but afterwards (when repeating as recommended when studying schoolbooks) the use of the CG equips learners slowly with reading strategies which are the basis of comprehension skills. Comprehension skills are fundamental to effective reading and, consequently, to attaining full literacy. Full literacy is a necessary prerequisite for informing communities about, for example, issues that are relevant for their survival in this unstable world beset with worsening climatic conditions. And more generally FL is the guaranteed way to succeed in school without stress because reading schoolbooks is a central part of every subject one needs to learn in school; additionally, these skills are integrated into everyday social interaction because they help organize communication to emphasize the essential points.
Last but not least, the strategy CG uses for training children to acquire FL also helps learners develop critical reading skills. Not all “news” today is true. One has to learn to be critical and choose carefully what to believe.
ComprehensionGame runs on all digital devices, including cheap Android phones, which is most realistic for African children where families tend to own such devices today. It is essential to know that CG’s use is most effective in a noiseless environment where learners have opportunities to concentrate on the most effective tasks. Thus, it is recommended that CG be used in the home environment. We do not recommend the use of phones in the school environment but in the home only.
The most challenging condition for effective use of the CG is the interest and skill of teachers to identify the content from lessons that the child had to be able to store for her/his later life and do it in a form that is interesting enough for the child to attend. This as well as the technical skills for the implementation, require training, which is available in ComprehensionGame.info pages. The training there runs using the very same way children learn their lessons. In this case, teachers need to use the content we call Creator to learn the implementation. The pages contain guidelines on how the content should be chosen for the implementation. We suppose that a good teacher knows that and is interested in learning how to pick the most informative sentences of the lessons that children have to be able to store in their memory. The most challenging part of this duty is to formulate the sentences that contain the most informative part of the lesson in such a way that it is of sufficient interest to the learners.
The pilot study results showed that it is possible to provide the necessary literacy skills, even to rural communities for illiterate adults to access and interpret information effectively. the study not only showed that knowledge-starved rural dwellers were able to read and gain new information on issues that affected them personally and communally but also information on how global issues impacted their community. A vital example of this was the knowledge that these rural adults and children acquired (through reading the game’s content) and the connection between the high cost of fertilizers used in farming and the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
