Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition: The CSLU
Vocabulary Tutor in Oral-Deaf Education
Lecia J. Barker
University of Colorado
Deficits in vocabulary have a negative impact on literacy and
interpersonal interaction for deaf children. As part of an evaluation, an outcomes assessment was conducted to determine
the effectiveness of a computer-based vocabulary tutor in an
elementary auditory/oral program. Participants were 19 children, 16 profoundly deaf and 3 hearing. The vocabulary tutor
displays line drawings or photographs of the words to be
learned while a computer-generated avatar of a “talking head”
provides synthesized audiovisual speech driven from text.
The computer system also generates printed words corresponding to the imaged items. Through audiovisual reception, children memorized up to 218 new words for everyday
household items. After 4 weeks, their receptive vocabulary was
tested, using the avatar to speak the name of each item. Most
of the students retained more than half of the new words. The
freely available vocabulary tutor, whose characteristics can be
tailored to individual need, can provide a language-intensive,
independent learning environment to supplement classroom
teaching in content areas.
Half of all deaf seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds who
took the 1996 Stanford Achievement Test read at the
fourth grade level (Holt, Traxler, & Allen, 1997). Although research shows that deaf students’ potential for
learning is the same as that of their hearing peers (Quigley
& Paul, l989; Bradley-Johnson & Evans, 1991), they are
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation (9996246 and 9996075). Special thanks to Pamela Connors, who
played a significant role in planning the study and capturing the data. This
study would not have been possible without the interest and contributions
of Dr. Patrick Stone, Christine Soland, Alice Davis, George Fortier, Kerry
Gilley, Linda Goodwin, and, especially, the children. Correspondence
should be sent to Lecia J. Barker, Alliance for Technology, Learning, and
Society Evaluation and Research Group, University of Colorado, UCB
320, Boulder, CO 80309–0320 (e-mail:[email protected]).
© 2003 Oxford University Press
significantly less likely to graduate from high school
than hearing children and much more likely to work as
manual laborers (Easterbrooks, 1999). According to educators, literacy is the strongest predictor of success in
the education of deaf children (Carver, 1990; Carney &
Moeller, 1998), yet increasing the literacy of deaf children is difficult for many reasons, one of which is inadequate vocabulary. Vocabulary is critical to reading
comprehension (Bradley-Johnson & Evans, 1991; Garrison, Long, & Dowaliby, 1997; Paul, 1996; Quigley &
Paul, l989; Smith, 1997) and, by extension, to the development of “higher level thinking skills and to [understanding] advanced abstract concepts in later years”
(Roffe, 1998, p. 27). In fact, “learning, as a languagebased activity, is fundamentally and profoundly dependent on vocabulary knowledge” (Baker, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995). Yet vocabulary development is especially
difficult for deaf children, because they “have no undistorted access to the flow of language and information in
the environment” (Vess & Douglas, 1995, p. 1127).
Vocabulary and language deficiencies have effects
beyond education in the interpersonal and private
realms. It has long been argued that deaf children’s development of personal identities and cognitive function
are negatively affected by their relatively impaired language ability (Breslaw, Griffiths, Wood, & Howarth,
1981; Carney & Moeller, 1998). Deaf children tend to be
passive in relation to their hearing communication partners (Johnson, 1997), in part because carrying on ordinary conversation requires a good foundation in the
vocabulary for the situation as well as the ability to spon-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:2 Spring 2003
taneously produce it. Vocabulary is also important for
solitary activities, such as watching television and reading (Jensema, McCann, & Ramsey, 1996).
The vocabulary deficit is not specific to educational
content areas but extends to everyday words that hearing persons take for granted. One solution, according to
the Deaf Children’s Society of British Columbia (2000),
is for parents to “label everything by its name in the
house (e.g., ‘stereo’, ‘lamp’, ‘mirror’).” However, families often develop routines and conventions that make it
easy to communicate without using language (K. Gilley,
telephone interview, 2000). And when they do use language, “hearing people, especially parents, who live
with deaf children often ‘dumb down’ their language to
make themselves more easily understood, [using] . . .
fewer idioms, adjectives, and synonyms” (Roffe, 1998,
p. 24). Further, most parents know their children have
holes in their vocabularies, but older children often resist this type of active education delivered by their parents.
For these reasons, vocabulary acquisition is a typical
goal of treatment by speech pathologists and teachers of
students in manual, total, and auditory/oral programs
for both content-related and “everyday” subject matters
(Carney & Moeller, 1998). Research on vocabulary instruction with hearing children shows that intentional
vocabulary instruction is more effective for developing
vocabulary knowledge than incidental vocabulary instruction, that is, through ordinary experience with language (Baker, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995). However,
no single best method of intentional vocabulary instruction has been identified (Beck & McKeown, 1991).
The explicit teaching required for intentional vocabulary instruction can be quite time-consuming for
teachers. As a consequence, teachers often seek out
less time-consuming ways of teaching vocabulary. One
choice is computer software that teaches vocabulary, but
relatively few software packages are available for developing vocabulary for children with hearing loss, and
even fewer are available for children in auditory/oral
programs, where word discrimination and production
are considered critical to the development of oral language (Ling & Ling, 1978). This study investigated the
acquisition of “everyday” vocabulary of deaf children
in an auditory/oral program using specially designed
computer-based vocabulary applications.
Background of the Study
Development of the Toolkit for Use by Deaf Children
In September 1997, the Center for Spoken Language
Understanding (CSLU) at the Oregon Graduate Institute received a National Science Foundation Challenge
Grant for a 3-year project to develop interactive technologies and applications for learning and language
training with profoundly deaf children. These tools were
developed and tested in collaboration with the educators and deaf students at an oral school in Portland,
Oregon. “Oral School”1 is a day school that provides
auditory/oral elementary education for 16 profoundly
deaf children integrated with a smaller number of hearing children. The CSLU Toolkit includes technology
for text-to-speech synthesis and speech recognition,
which can be used to drive written word-to-speech and
speech-to-word coding and also to generate visual
speech by a speaking avatar, an animated talking face,
nicknamed “Baldi” (Massaro, 1998). The CSLU Toolkit also includes a number of important further features
(for details, see http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu). At the time of
the study, children at Oral School, both deaf and hearing, had been using Baldi (their way of referring to the
toolkit) for 3 years, over which time CSLU researchers
made many modifications to accommodate teacher and
student needs.
To aid the integration of the toolkit into teaching
and learning, two CSLU staff members worked on site
at the school during the 3-year grant period, supporting
toolkit use, acting as liaisons between researchers and
school staff, and interacting with teachers and students
on a regular basis. With their support, the teachers and
speech pathologist integrated the toolkit use into the
curriculum at Oral School to enable independent practice with speech production and reception while students were learning vocabulary and content.
During the third year of the project, independent
evaluation of the project was sought to gather and analyze data on the teaching and learning outcomes resulting from use of the toolkit. This report is the first based
on this evaluation. In addition to the results of the vocabulary study that form the focus here, data collection
included interviews (two with each Oral School teacher
and the speech pathologist, three with the school’s director, one or more with each toolkit researcher and pro-
Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition
grammer, and numerous, lengthy conversations with
the on-site liaisons); observations (ordinary classroom
and nonclassroom school-based situations, children’s
use of various toolkit applications); and document
review (weekly reports, articles written by CSLU researchers). I also attended a retreat in which all members of the project participated, including researchers,
programmers, educators, and liaisons.
In interviews, Oral School teachers described the
following benefits from children’s toolkit use as a language learning tool. First, toolkit-based applications
can be multimodal, permitting practice with reception,
production, reading, and writing. Using headsets and
microphones, children can produce language, listen to
their own recordings, listen to Baldi saying the same utterance, and correct their own speech. Also, both discrimination and production can be built into the same
task, which more closely mimics a natural language situation. Second, natural or synthetic speech is automatically synchronized with Baldi’s realistic lip, tongue,
mouth, and facial movements, permitting practice with
lipreading and increasing the amount of information
available for reception (Massaro, 1998). Third, the orientation of Baldi’s face can be changed for viewing from
different perspectives while he is speaking. When deaf
students have difficulty making a sound, teachers often
try to show them the place of articulation. This teaching
function can be simulated by making Baldi’s face transparent, which reveals the movements of the teeth and
tongue while producing speech. Fourth, the children
see Baldi as ultimately patient, speaking slowly and carefully, and repeating lessons as many times as necessary
for a child to learn. The visual and interactive realism of
Baldi is good; I observed one child replying “hi” to Baldi
when he greeted her. Finally, teachers say that one of
their greatest teaching challenges is finding the time to
teach children individually. Use of the toolkit allows
children to work independently within the classroom on
individually tailored learning programs, while the teacher
can work with specific children, one at a time, for individual face-to-face instruction.
Vocabulary Tutor Instructional Design
During the third year of the grant period, Oral School
educators discussed using the toolkit to help children de-
189
velop their relatively deficient vocabularies of everyday
items. Several examples were given that identified this
need. Children were reported trying to have conversations, using phrases such as “the window in the front of
the car,” “the big shelf where the sink is,” or “the step
by the street,” rather than “windshield,” “counter,” or
“curb.” Oral School educators believed that memorizing
the names of things in their world would help children to
take the next step to become “flexible with vocabulary”
(Yoshinaga-Itano, 1997). The lead CSLU liaison worked
with teachers to create a set of applications that would
incorporate teachers’ vocabulary instruction methods,
be easy to create, and would appeal to the children.
Oral School teachers and the speech pathologist have
master’s degrees with specific training for auditory/oral
education, placing Oral School teachers into Brill’s
(1997) “best” categories of competency and interest in
teaching. Teachers’ methods of vocabulary instruction
were elicited, then two meetings were held during which
teachers agreed on what they thought a vocabulary acquisition application should contain. The resulting instructional method included both visual and aural reception and production. When Baldi speaks a word, the
child is required to respond by mouse-clicking the corresponding image or written word on the screen. According to Johnson (1997), such stimulus-response applications can help deaf children to memorize words
while at the same time shaping auditory reception and
speech production.
The vocabulary pedagogy was incorporated into applications teachers created using an embedded software
utility (CSLU vocabulary “wizard”). This utility allows
users to insert the desired image, select portions of the
image for vocabulary instruction, enter the text to be
associated with these selections, and individualize the
instruction by child, if desired. The applications were
put through a series of test-and-revise cycles to ensure
technical usability and incorporation of the desired
teaching method. One teacher, who described herself as
“computer illiterate,” reported creating applications in
about 10 minutes. The applications generated by using
the wizard, called vocabulary tutors, include Baldi’s
speaking face with both facial dynamics and acoustic
speech, as well as written words and pictures with several clickable areas; these areas become highlighted
when the mouse is passed over them. The lessons are
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:2 Spring 2003
consistent with Easterbrook’s (1999) suggestions that
software for deaf education be visual, presenting information in pictures or with graphics and with simple,
minimal text.
Consistent with the instructional procedure developed by teachers at Oral School, the vocabulary tutors
required that each vocabulary item be presented at least
four times (picture-speech/speaking head) and the written representation of the word be presented once; in addition, students were required to orally produce each
item once. Baldi gave spoken feedback for correct and
incorrect answers; visual feedback appeared as smiley
faces or unhappy (though amusing) smileys. Although
students saw the written word once, emphasis was on
audiovisual reception, with all testing done using reception only. The vocabulary tutor sequence is presented in
Table 1.
Table 1
Method
Participants
Ten girls and nine boys used the applications. Oral
School is split into two groups, the “upper school” and
the “lower school.” Student characteristics are summarized in Table 2. All children in the lower school class
used the lessons. In the upper school class, all the deaf
students and two of five hearing students used the lessons. All the deaf children have profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (90 dB HL or greater); nine were
deaf at birth and seven developed deafness during infancy or early childhood due to meningitis or other illnesses. Some of the children use cochlear implants
exclusively, some use hearing aids with FM systems exclusively, and some of the children have a cochlear implant in one ear and hearing aid in the other. According
Sequence of vocabulary tutor
Segment
Purpose
Actions
Pretest
Introduce lesson objectives to student;
provide baseline data for determining
how manywords a child actually learns.
Presentation
Associate the visual images of the words
with receptive and written language.
Practice
Drill to ensure child has associated
words with their images.
Posttest
Assess whether child should repeat
the lesson or move on.
Production
Child practices expression and
self-assesses the quality of
the expression.
Baldi says, “click on the <item in picture>” for each item
defined as a learning goal by the teacher. The student moves the
mouse around the picture. A line around defined items becomes
highlighted and flashes upon mouse-over. This is repeated for
each word.
Baldi says, “Let me show you” and the word “demonstration”
appears momentarily on the screen. Baldi says, “this is the <item
in picture>” for each item and the highlighted item flashes. The
written form of the word is also shown in this stage. Baldi then
asks the user to click on the item. Baldi repeats this sequence until
the student clicks on the right image for each word.
Baldi says, “Let’s practice” and the word “practice” appears on
the screen. He says, “click on the <item in picture>” or “where’s
the <item in picture>?” The student clicks on it. If correct, he or
she gets positive aural and visual feedback (“good,” “great,” a
smiley face); if wrong, the student gets negative feedback (“sorry,”
“no,” and frowning smiley) and another word is randomly
presented. When a child correctly identifies all words twice (or
more, depending on teacher choice), he or she moves on to the
posttest.
Baldi says “click on the <item in picture>” and the child gets
only one try. If correct, Baldi tells the student “correct” or “good”
and the student gets a smiley face. If incorrect, Baldi tells the
student “sorry, that is not the <item in picture>” and the student
gets a frowning smiley face.
Baldi says, “this is the <item in picture>; say <item in
picture>.” The child’s utterance is replayed for the child and
recorded in a.wav file for teachers to listen later.
Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition
Table 2
191
Profile of participants using vocabulary tutor
Group
Age range
Deaf
Hearing
Total
Incidence of additional problems
Upper school
11–14 years
(mean 12.3)
8–10 years
(mean 8.6)
8–14 years
(mean 11.15)
11
2
13
5
1
6
Usher Syndrome (1), ossification of cochlea (2),
ADHD (1), poor fine motor skill (2)
Usher Syndrome (1), ossification of cochlea (1)
16
3
19
Lower school
Total
to teachers’ subjective judgments, all of the children are
average to good students relative to their language ability on a “poor–average–good” scale. As in most groups
of deaf children, the additional difficulties of these children vary widely. These additional problems, which are
indicated in Table 2, may account for some of the variance in the results.
Vocabulary Items and Lesson Development
The teachers’ aim was to help the children develop their
vocabulary of everyday items. The words, all nouns, fit
into two categories: objects or actions (e.g., using the
gerund form of a verb, such as “digging”) that children
have seen in their homes, at school, in supermarkets,
but for which they have no linguistic label. Students
photographed many of the items to be learned in their
own homes. According to Tarulli (1998), photographs
have strong pedagogical value for deaf children, since
they help them to learn language to describe what they
know best, their home and family, and can allow them to
build specific vocabulary in context. In addition, teachers chose drawings of common objects as learning goals.
Teachers chose the items they believed students should
learn as new vocabulary.
The photographs and drawings were computer
scanned by technical support staff who integrated them
in the vocabulary tutor. Lessons were not personalized
for each child, though a great deal of personalization is
made possible by the capabilities of the toolkit and associated software. Six applications were made for exclusive
use by lower-school children (these had fewer words). An
additional 22 lessons were made for use by both groups,
though the lower-schoolchildren used fewer of these.
Most lessons contained 10 words, though some contained 15 and those made specifically for the lower school
Usher Syndrome (2 [siblings]), ossification of
cochlea (3), poor fine motor skill (2)
had as few as 5. The usage details and words included in
the lessons are shown in Table 3.
Student Use of Applications
Oral School children had used the toolkit routinely during the 2 years before this assessment. By the time of the
study, there were no reported difficulties in its use.
While using the toolkit, some children looked at the animated talking face and others did not, depending on
their ability to hear and see, or personal preference. All
the children used headphones and microphones during
the test period.2
Students used the segments of each lesson as described in Table 1. Once a student received a score of
100% on the posttest, he or she moved on to another lesson the next day. Lessons were repeated daily until the
student scored 100%.
Data Acquisition
Data from each use of a lesson were captured automatically, totaling 217 sessions. Data included item identity
clicked on for each question of the pretest, practice, and
the posttest; student name; time elapsed in seconds for
the entire lesson and for each segment. Correct and incorrect items were not recorded during presentation.
Retention was tested 4 weeks after each successfully
completed lesson, using the posttest procedure only.
Dependent Variables and Experimental Hypotheses
The number of words per lesson was recorded as mouse
clicks for each item. While the applications required
that students produce the words, production competence was not assessed in this study. Both immediate
192
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:2 Spring 2003
Table 3
Lessona
Usage details, pretest results, and words of each lesson
No.
students
Times
used
Lower school
pretest results
Upper school
pretest results
M (SD)
M (SD)
Items
1
15
21
2.75 (2.22)
2.82 (1.33)
6
2
15
28
3.75 (2.63)
3.27 (1.49)
6
3
15
28
1.75 (2.06)
3.45 (1.92)
7
4
15
26
4.75 (2.06)
5.36 (1.43)
10
5
14
23
2.67 (1.15)
4.00 (2.24)
10
6
14
30
4.33 (5.13)
3.27 (2.57)
10
7
10
21
Raw score 2b
2.33 (3.35)
10
8
10
18
Raw score 2b
3.67 (1.00)
10
9
10
16
Raw score 1b
3.89 (1.76)
11
10
9
15
Raw score 1b
3.13 (3.36)
13
11
9
17
—
3.11 (2.93)
10
12
9
11
Raw score 10c
5.38 (1.51)
10
13
10
16
Raw score 10c
3.40 (3.60)
11
14
8
10
Raw score 10c
5.86d (3.02)
10
15
7
11
—
5.00d (4.93)
15
16
6
11
—
7.29e (4.96)
14
17
6
13
—
4.00e (3.87)
13
Words included
Bicycle pump, bicycle wheel, extension cord, tool
box, water heater, broom
Hiking backpack, gas lawn mower, push lawn
mower, cooler, water bottle, ten speed bicycle
Glasses, bowls, plates, mugs, bread box, tea kettle,
oven
Chair, cordless phone, microwave, coffee maker,
dishwasher, mini blinds, floor, ceiling, cupboard,
counter
Dish soap, sink, dish drainer, faucet, handle, salt
and pepper shakers, place mat, booster chair,
tablecloth, napkins
Cutting board, loaf pan, strainer, ice cream
scooper, wooden spoon, rubber spatula,
tablespoon, teaspoon, can opener, silverware
Electric mixer, egg beaters, measuring cups,
rolling pin, rack, grater, cheese slicer, serving
spoon, ladle, serving spatula
Kitchen knives, pot rack, toaster, stool, pot,
burner, outlet, basket, frying pans, kitchen towels
Couch, coffee table, stereo, table lamp, fireplace,
TV stand, mantle, vase, TV antenna, remote
control
C-clamp, jigsaw, saw, grounding plug, circular saw,
tape measure, wrench, scraper, hatchet,
workbench, pliers, hatchet, mallet
Shower head, curtain rod, sponge, stopper, soap
dish, medicine cabinet, bath mat, shower curtain,
hair dryer, towel rack
Door lock, side mirror, glove compartment, bucket
seat, gear shift, steering wheel, visor, seat belt,
vent, armrest
Door handle, windshield wiper, gas gauge,
rearview mirror, speedometer, turn signal, horn,
ignition, brake, accelerator, dashboard
License plate, brake light, backup light, taillight,
backseat, child’s seat, gas tank, headrest, hubcap,
tire
Stepladder, feather duster, circuit breaker,
dustpan, plunger, vacuum cleaner, attachments,
ironing board, iron, pipe, light bulbs, dryer,
washing machine, laundry, laundry detergent
Hammock, sprinkler, barbeque, lounge chair,
wheelbarrow, garden hose, drainpipe, gutter,
watering can, patio, power saw, lawn, hedge
clippers
Picking, mowing, trimming, watering, digging,
planting, painting, carrying, salting, shoveling,
chopping, raking, filling
Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition
Table 3
Lessona
Usage details, pretest results, and words of each lesson (continued)
No.
students
Times
used
Lower school
pretest results
Upper school
pretest results
M (SD)
M (SD)
Items
Words included
Brake, seat, sprocket, pedal, reflector, fender,
handle bars, hand brake, cable, valve, spokes, gear
changer, chain
X-ray, wheelchair, sling, band-aid, cast, examining
table, crutch, attendant, stethoscope
Chart, doctor, stretcher, instruments, oral
hygienist, drill, basin, pedal, dentist
Nurse, patient, stitches, alcohol, cotton balls,
gauze bandage, gauze pads, needle, syringe
Blinds, bed spread, wallpaper border, bookshelf,
poster, toys
Chest of drawers, banner, light switch, thermostat,
picture, bathrobe, door knob
Desk, lamp, keyboard, computer monitor, stereo,
cord, wastepaper basket
Bunk bed, ladder, guard rails, armchair, headboard
Forehead, eyebrows, eyelashes, nostril, cheeks,
chin
Clock, door frame, desk drawers, pegs, cubby, bed
frame
18
2
2
—
1.50 (2.12)
13
19
2
5
—
2.00 (2.83)
9
20
2
3
—
2.50 (0.71)
9
21
2
2
—
0.50 (0.71)
9
Tutor 1
6
11
2.00d (1.06)
—
6
Tutor 2
5
14
4.60d (2.07)
—
7
Tutor 3
4
9
3.60d (3.21)
—
7
Tutor 4
Tutor 5
4
5
7
10
2.50d (0.58)
2.80d (1.79)
—
—
5
6
Tutor 6
3
5
2.00 (1.00)
—
6
217
383
Total
193
9.3
a
“Lessons” were developed for children in the upper school, though they were also used by lower school children. “Tutors” were developed for children in
the lower school.
b
Only one lower-school child used this lesson.
c
One Lower-School child used this lesson; this was a hearing child.
d
e
Includes one hearing child.
Includes two hearing children.
acquisition and longer-term retention were analyzed.
The study addressed two questions. With respect to immediate vocabulary acquisition, what are students’ immediate learning gains from using lessons and what differences emerged across groups (upper versus lower
schools; deaf versus hearing children)? To what degree
are these learning gains retained over time?
Results
Time Spent on Task
The mean number of minutes lower-school students
spent using lessons was 147 minutes, or nearly 21⁄2 hours.
Upper-school students spent about an hour more using
lessons than lower-school students. Table 4 shows the
total time students in the upper and lower schools used
the lessons, as well as the mean number of attempts.
Vocabulary: Basic Measures and Immediate Gain
To calculate vocabulary gain, it was necessary to establish a reliable measure of the extant (pretraining) vocabulary of each child. Since children’s responses were not
monitored for accuracy, some items clicked in response
to a spoken name during the pretest period may have
been arrived it by chance. However, these items were
identified during the training phase, when they were incorrectly produced. This adjusted measure (“already
known”) showed no difference between the school class
groups, t(df = 17) = .901, p = ns). Table 5 shows the
means and distributions of the corrected value (the al-
194
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:2 Spring 2003
Table 4
Total time using lessons
Table 6
Total lessons
attempted
Minutes using
lessons
Baseline scores by school
Baseline scores
(already known)
School
n
M (SD)
M (SD)
Group
n
M (SD)
Lower
Upper
Total
6
13
19
17.3 (10.7)
21.4 (8.1)
20.1 (8.9)
146.6 (111.1)
215.7 (99.2)
193.9 (105.3)
Upper school
Lower school
13
6
38.3 (24.7)
22.1 (17.8)
175
Immediate gains
Total words presented
Deaf
Hearing
Combined
Words already known
Deaf
Hearing
Combined
Words correct on posttest
Deaf
Hearing
Combined
Min.
Max.
M (SD)
12
13
12
217
72
217
116.1 (60.7)
51.7 (33.5)
105.9 (61.4)
1
13
1
86
52
86
32.2 (24.4)
38.3 (22.0)
33.2 (23.6)
150
125
2
13
2
215
72
215
113.1* (33.2)
51.3 (62.0)
103.4* (62.2)
19 participants: 16 deaf, 3 hearing.
*Significant learning gain over “already known,” p < .0001.
ready known scores), as well as total words presented to
students in the lessons and the number correct on the
posttest by the deaf and hearing groups and combined
scores. Deaf children learned a mean of 81 new words
(range: 0–158) over the study period. As expected, hearing children scored significantly better on words already
known than deaf children. Also, the mean posttest score
of the deaf children was a significant difference over
their already known score, whereas the mean posttest
score of hearing children was not a significant difference
over their already known score.
Table 6 shows the mean values for baseline scores
(based on already known) for upper and lower school.
The difference is not statistically significant (Levene’s
test for equality of variance = .464, p = .172).
Figure 1 shows the immediate vocabulary gains by
individual students. The scatterplot indicates that all
but two students experienced an overall gain in vocabulary. For most of the deaf children, represented by circles
on the chart, gain increased significantly in proportion
to their pretest scores. For hearing children, represented by solid triangles, gain was lower, showing a
Post-test, numbers correct
Table 5
100
75
50
25
Deaf
Hearing
0
0
25
50
75
100
'Already known', numbers correct
Figure 1
known.
Correlation between posttest scores and already
larger original vocabulary. Hearing children scored 81%
on pretests, whereas deaf children scored only 23% correct on pretest. This difference is statistically significant
(Mann-Whitney U = .000).
Overall, students could correctly identify significantly more words at the end of each lesson than they
could identify at the beginning (baseline mean score
3.78 per lesson, posttest mean score 9.02 per lesson; p <
.0001). Students correctly identified about five words
per lesson that they had not previously known. Figure 2
shows students’ cumulative learning gains by lesson.
Retention
It is reasonable to expect that some words will be forgotten over time, especially if they do not arise in conversation or other context. An average of 32 days after achieving 100% on the posttest of each lesson, students were
given the same posttest with no preparation. The mean
number of words retained per students was 38.5 out of
the 70 they had learned, or 55% of their posttest scores.
Table 7 shows the overall mean gains for the upper and
Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition
Figure 2.
Table 7
Cumulative learning gains.
Words retained after four weeks
M (SD)
Upper school (13 students)
Words already known
No. correct on posttest
No. correct on retest
Lower school (6 students)
Words already known
No. correct on posttest
No. correct on retest
38.3 (24.7)
119.9* (65.1)
74.4* (39.3)
22.2 (17.8)
67.7* (38.8)
41.2* (6.1)
*Significant gain over baseline score (already known) at p < .0001.
lower schools. Though retest scores were significantly
lower than posttest scores, the gain was still significantly
improved compared with baseline scores.
Discussion
These results suggest that the vocabulary tutor is an effective means of explicitly teaching vocabulary, despite
some loss of vocabulary in the period following immediate testing. On average, children learned 70 words for
everyday objects from immediate use of the lessons and
remembered nearly 39 of these words after more than 4
weeks. Had the students been taught in the context of
some other learning goal, it is possible that they would
have retained more of the items learned in isolation from
other school-based activities. Oral School teachers believe that the tutor could be effectively incorporated into
the curriculum, for instance, in the context of classroom
instruction for subjects such as anatomy. Teachers suggested that it could be useful in reinforcing vocabulary
knowledge within such subject areas. The kinds of vocabulary words acquired are only those that can be pre-
195
sented adequately in visual form. This covers many
nouns, some actions, and some prepositions (over the
mat, under the mat). As teachers point out, however, as
presently configured, the application is not suitable for
teaching abstract concepts.
Children had mixed reactions to using the vocabulary tutor. Some liked it; others did not. Also, as in any
classroom, children had differential success. For example, one child with other learning difficulties was unhappy because the task was too hard for him. For this
child, just sitting still and manipulating the mouse while
listening to Baldi was difficult. Some children worked
hard at learning; they were attentive to what they were
doing and cared to get the answers right. One child enjoyed using the tutor and performed well, but personal
problems at the end of the year caused his work to decline. Teachers and the on-site liaisons reported that the
children were happy when they got all happy faces (i.e.,
received 100% correct) and that they often compared
their results with each other. Statistical variability in the
results of this study reflects the individual variation in
the student community, which is marked. These results
must be interpreted in light of these differences.
The lack of statistically significant difference between upper- and lower-school students’ baseline scores
in number of words categorized as “already known” deserves further attention. One would expect that older
children would have a larger vocabulary than younger
children, yet all these children showed a similar level of
deficit relative to their hearing peers in their verbal
knowledge of the names of everyday household items.
Oral School teachers suggest that this is probably due to
the routines that families develop for getting things
done. Once these routines are in place, parents may forget the need to explicitly teach children the names of
things. Also, as children get older, they may resist this
sort of explicit teaching. The disturbing failure to develop a basic vocabulary despite extensive schooling, as
revealed by this study, suggests that more research
needs to be conducted in this area, both for learning the
reasons for the deficit and for developing solutions.
Oral School’s director believes the vocabulary tutor
can provide consistent exposure to content. Moreover,
its use does not displace other important learning activities. Teachers questioned the amount of time the children spent using the tutor, however, and suggested that
196
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:2 Spring 2003
the students use the toolkit at home for everyday vocabulary and at school to augment their vocabulary within
content areas. The tutor has been criticized for being
nothing more than an expensive, high-tech memorization tool; however, teachers and the speech pathologist
believe that deaf children need particular help with
memorizing words and that the tutor has the potential to
provide essential vocabulary acquisition scaffolding in a
multimodal environment. The tutor’s emphasis on audiovisual reception, so that which must be memorized is
the sound of words rather than their written form, is another important feature of it. Learning to discriminate
sounds and apply meaning to them is an important part
of literacy instruction for oral-deaf education.
Several families requested the toolkit and the vocabulary tutors for use over the summer so that they could
teach their children the words they would need for particular summer activities (e.g., camping) or just to increase their children’s vocabularies. This is a particularly important outcome, in light of studies of spoken
language development in children. In their 1996 study,
Musselman and Kircaali-Iftar identified several factors
contributing to high performance among children with
severe or profound deafness. Two of these were structured teaching by parents and parents who are highly
committed to their children’s language development.
According to Oral School teachers, using Baldi has raised
parents’ awareness of what their children do not know
and what they need to work on. The ease of use of the
vocabulary wizard for developing the lessons is an important contributor to parents’ ability to use the tools in
their homes.
Limitations of the Study
A key weakness of this study is the lack of a control
group for comparison of results of teaching vocabulary
using other methods or for tracking the children’s increase in vocabulary without explicit training. I believe
that these children would not have made the gains they
made without the vocabulary tutor, considering the similarities in vocabulary knowledge between the younger
and older groups. Although no claim is made that toolkit
use would result in better results than other vocabulary
acquisition methods, it would be interesting to compare
teaching methods if the number of varying factors
across teaching methods could be minimized. In addition, no attempt was made in this study to include any
gains children may have made in their speechreading.
Another study might use a broader definition of learning outcomes and compare the speechreading skills of
students interacting with Baldi to students interacting
with real persons.
Deaf children have about three times as many additional disabilities as hearing children (Pollack, 1997),
which adds confounding variables and makes generalizations quite difficult. Conducting a similar study for a
larger audience that also factors in children’s etiologies,
learning disabilities, problems with implants, and so on
would improve our knowledge of how this tool works for
aiding vocabulary acquisition for different segments of
the oral-deaf education population. Further, the sample
size in this study is quite small. Though generalizations
cannot be made safely, researchers and educators may
consider whether the groups of students and learning
environments that they study or educate are analogous
to those described in this article.
Implications for Practice
This study contributes a small piece to the critical need
for outcomes data that can inform decision making in
schools (Amiot, 1998; Carney & Moeller, 1998; Easterbrooks, 1999); such studies are needed to address the effectiveness of different types of educational tools and
for different subgroups of the deaf population.
Most deaf children in the United States are educated in public schools (Easterbrooks, 1999), which is
a serious problem because few public school teachers
have the in-depth training or resources needed to effectively teach deaf children. Teachers can often comfortably assume that hearing children know certain words
when they introduce new subjects. For example, hearing seventh-grade students usually already know, have
heard, or can guess the meaning of the words “border”
or “boundary.” A teacher can count on the presence of
this knowledge and get on with the geography lesson.
Unfortunately, mainstreamed, hearing-impaired children may not recognize the words, so the lesson may be
lost on them or take longer to learn. The vocabulary tu-
Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition
tor could be used to bring these students and other students with language deficits up to speed for terminology
needed within particular content areas. The vocabulary
tutor, as one small tool in the acquisition of language,
could be used inexpensively in schools, given that it
can be downloaded and installed free via the internet.3
Its ease of use takes teachers little time to support these
children.
The developers have also begun work on facilitating
language acquisition for Spanish-speaking deaf children, the number of whom is increasing rapidly in the
United States. These children have special difficulties,
comprehending printed material significantly worse
than white, non-Hispanic American deaf children
(Easterbrooks, 1999). Whereas no educational tool or
technology should be considered a “magic bullet,” it is
clear that the CSLU vocabulary tutor may be an effective way to increase vocabulary and literacy of children in
oral-deaf education in an independent, aural language–
intensive environment, freeing teachers’ time for more
individualized instruction with other children.
Notes
1. This nomenclature protects the anonymity of the school.
2. One child used the written version of the words, rather
than a visual image, for all segments of each lesson due to difficulties with her amplification system.
3. The CSLU toolkit and vocabulary tutor can be downloaded from http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/toolkit.
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Received March 12, 2001; revisions received December 29, 2001;
accepted January 14, 2002