2 groups of freshman students, enrolled in their first vocabulary building course, participated in the study. Before instruction, both groups took written vocabulary and spelling and oral reading pre-tests. Their oral reading was recorded and timed. Comparisons of the pre-test scores showed no significant differences between both groups in vocabulary knowledge, spelling ability, oral reading speed and pronunciation weaknesses. Then, both groups were exposed to the same in-class vocabulary instruction. They covered the same lessons, skills, exercises and tests. Since freshman students have problems in producing phonemes, consonant clusters, word stress and lack skill in associating written graphemes with their corresponding phonemes, read word by word and lack oral reading fluency, the experimental group used a natural text-to-speech software. Every week the students typed and paste the lessons they took in class from the textbook into the software and practiced listening to the lessons read by the software while following the parts being read on the screen. They could listen to the text as many times as they needed in the lab and at home and could adjust the software reading speed. Every 4 weeks, experimental students took an oral reading test and at the end of the semester (after 12 weeks), both groups took a vocabulary, spelling and oral reading post-tests. Results showed significant differences between the experimental and control groups as a result of using the text-to-speech software. Improvement was noted in spelling ability, reading fluency and pronunciation correctness but not in vocabulary knowledge. Comparisons of experimental students’ performance on the pretest and the intermediate and post tests showed slow but gradual improvement. Significant improvement was noted after 8 &12 weeks.
Prof. Reima Al-jarf
King Saud University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf
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