Never Too Late
Studies show that 60% of college students struggle with reading comprehension. There are many struggling readers who have mastered principles of phonics but struggle to extract meaning from written text. Reading comprehension difficulties may be a manifestation of any of these issues - decoding words, vocabulary, background knowledge gaps and language processing issues. These gaps compound over the years and teachers are faced with an impossible task; they can’t customize their lesson for 30 students. Struggling readers need a way to customize their learning to their interests, knowledge gaps and reading levels. With release of Comprehend-Reading 2.0, I wanted to reiterate motivations behind creating this app and research based methods I have refined using my app.
Main idea of Comprehend-Reading is customization, whether it's by AI content generation from prompts, using existing text to create AI generated custom quizzes and audio narration, or modifying existing text to the reader's level. The way I've used my app is to generate content ( I keep the passage short so as not to overwhelm the struggling reader: ~4000 characters ), have student first read it out loud, stopping every 1-2 paragraphs to check their understanding. Studies support that decoding words phonetically is crucial in understanding content. I also make note of vocabulary words student may not know. I usually take a detour to fill in background knowledge using AI generated images or YouTube videos. I then use the TTS feature in my app to have text read out loud to the student. High quality TTS I found helpful to get student get the big picture of the reading after the initial reading. I pause to retest the vocabulary words we studied earlier. I’ve found that reading a book with a student, the same vocabulary words occur throughout, which provide required repetition to master many words without having to review them separately with flashcards. After the reading, I have verbal discussion with the student on the passage. What was it about? What do you think happened with ___? Why did ___? Then I use the AI quiz question generation feature on my app to have the student go through the quiz, whether it's 5 WH questions or custom quiz with main idea, inference, detail and vocabulary questions. I imagined the app as a companion to intensive help with a dedicated parent or tutor.
I made this app with absolute belief that it is never too late to improve reading comprehension and that there need to be means for remediation at any stage of life.
Writing Contest! Enter the 2.0 Writing Contest