Origin and History of The Language Enrichment Program

During my first semester of teaching at Neinas Junior High School in Detroit, Michigan, I noticed that a very bright girl who sat near the back of the room was having difficulty keeping up with the rest of her class in the reading assignments. She did not know how to read silently, and otherwise was a poor reader. My department head, who also noticed the girl, was planning to remove her from the class. The seventh grade girl came to me with tears, begging me to let her remain with her class, for she did not want to be taken away from her friends and placed in a slow learning group with strange students.

This little girl's tearful plea motivated me to begin to develop some special reading materials just for her needs. Soon I found other students could benefit from the individualized instruction I had developed for Andrea. In a week or less Andrea learned to read silently, and my department head did not bring up the matter again.
At the close of the semester I was disappointed that several students had to be given failing grades, despite the fact that they had been in class every day and were trying to do the work. I did further work in developing a reading skills file to meet their needs.

The following year (1963) I had a class which was to combine English and reading instruction for a double period. I found the students were doing fairly well with reading, but were unable to handle the difficulty of the textbook supplied for their English instruction. On the day of New Year's Eve, I had some free time, and decided to try writing some programmed instruction lessons. I had read about the technique in a then recent book by Shelly Umans, New Trends in Reading Instruction. I wrote the rough draft on some discarded telephone bill envelopes. I transferred the draft to some 3x5 cards, placed them in a "Kard Kaddie" metal file box, and brought the unit to school after Christmas vacation.

I decided to test the program first on my seventh grade honors class students, figuring they would not be upset if there were some unanticipated difficulties in the program. I revised the program based on the responses of these first bright users of the program, Betty, Colleen, and Donita.

I asked volunteers to use the program during homeroom time (to help settle and quiet them down!), and the students were so interested that they wanted to stay beyond homeroom time to use the material. I again revised the program in response to student questions and mistakes. I began using the program with my English classes. Since there was only one master copy of the program, handwritten at that, such use began on a rather limited basis, but as more students worked further into the program, additional students began using it.

In the spring semester of 1964 I conducted the experiment of having the lowest academic group use the program in addition to their regular work; the second lowest group was denied its use. The results were remarkable: the lowest group by the end of that semester showed greater reading gains. In fact, when they went on to the next teacher, the teacher came to me and said "You must have done a terrific job with this group. They do just as well as my better classes do."

I was particularly encouraged when Jacqueline, a small but lively black girl who had been the disciplinary terror of the class, came up to me one day and said "I want to earn an A in your class. Will you let me take the seat in the corner and work on the boxes? I promise I won't talk, and I'll earn an A." Before this she wanted to be the center of attention, could do nothing but recite oral poetry which she made up herself (she was good at that), but was far behind in reading and writing skills. I agreed, and the rest of the semester she worked quietly and diligently on the "boxes." On the day of the reading posttest, I promised to let the first one or two students who finished the test know the results of their test immediately. Jacqueline was the first student to finish. I suspected she had not really read the test, but had just marked in answers. But when I scored her answer sheet, I was pleased and excited to learn she had advanced from her pretest score of 5.7 to a post test score of 10.6, a gain of nearly five years. She was now reading at a level more years ABOVE her grade level than she had been behind her grade level.

In February of 1967 I spoke at the Michigan Science Teachers Association on the topic "Programmed Teaching of High School Science." I discussed several of the commercially available science programs which were in use in the programmed learning laboratory at Cass Technical High School. I also mentioned my own experiences with writing a program, and I posted on the chalkboard the post test scores of the top seven achievers in the two homeroom groups in my informal study. During the questioning period afterwards, one man stood, announced he was the principal of Western High School in Detroit, and flatly denied that my statistics could be true. I invited him to see me afterwards, and I would furnish him the last names of the students listed, and since the students were now students at Western High School, he could check up on their progress himself! Not long after, my principal at Cass received a call from the principal at Western, asking that I be granted permission to come to his school to hold a workshop about programmed instruction for his staff, for he wished to establish just such a learning laboratory at his school.
Such a lab was opened at Western High School for a time, and some of the student aides who assisted in running the laboratory there were the bright students from my original seventh grade honors class who were the first students I tried my initial program with—Betty, Colleen, and Donita.

Not all responses to my using such a program were positive. One day the assistant principal of Neinas Junior High School observed one of my students working silently on the little steel "box" of cards in the library. He was reading over her shoulder, and watched her check an answer "wrong." Well, he was upset that the answer was counted wrong, for it was the very answer he had come up with in his own mind!

He took the little box from the Spanish girl, and took it directly to three other English teachers, who all agreed with the "correctness" of his wrong answer! Then he came to my room, very much upset—and before the entire class, told me I had no right to use these students for "guinea pigs" and experiments. He argued that programmed instruction is useful only for rote memorization, and the students needed to be taught concepts. Besides, what was this girl doing in the library doing her lessons without being directly under my supervision? And my program was incorrect, as three English teachers had just testified. I asked the assistant principal if he ever read the Harvard Educational Review. He said, "Yes, I graduated from Harvard." I then referred him to an article by Lauren B. Resnick, "Programmed Instruction and the Teaching of Complex Intellectual Skills," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 30, No. 4, for fall of 1963. I commented, "The very title of the article runs counter to the statements you just made."

I then said that as for the student's "error," she was the first student to have made an error on that frame, and I showed him the validation chart with student names, and the student responses recorded. I said, had you and the three English teachers you consulted read what came before the frame in question, you would not have made the mistake. And the fact that so few students have missed that frame (she was student 17 of 20 on the chart) demonstrates that the program is working just fine. The assistant principal responded, “I'm going to speak to your department head about this. Has she given her permission for you to do this with your students?”

Not long after, the assistant principal asked how a student, a ward of the court, who had just been enrolled in my reading class, was doing. I explained that I had given the student my linguistic program, and he was behaving and doing just fine. Well, the boy had just threatened to beat up the social studies teacher over an argument about a girl's ring. Could I possibly have James stay in my class during his social studies period to work in my class? I said that would be fine. A few days later the assistant principal told me that James had gotten into a fight with the gym teacher, would I be willing to take him in to my class that hour also? I said that would be fine.

When the assistant principal observed that difficult students responded well to my program, and showed remarkable achievement, he no longer was against what I was doing. He seemed to give high praise for my work, and in other ways became a good friend.

I have used the program with elementary school age students, junior high students, senior high remedial students, and senior high gifted students, with adult learners in a night school program, with college age friends who needed assistance with English reading and writing skills, and with business men who wanted to improve their reading skills, and all seem to have been most appreciative of the benefits derived from using the program.
 

Evaluation Of The Language Enrichment Program

The Program in the Classroom

Student use of the original version of the program Writing by Structures (now called The Language Enrichment Program) was entirely voluntary. No student was urged to complete the program; the student could continue as far as the student wished or stop at any time. The program for the greater duration of this project was in its first validation form: the program was hand written on 3 x 5 index cards. The program occupied about 1400 index cards, assembled in fourteen "Kard Kaddie" Steelmaster card index files, a file particularly adaptable to this use.

Since there was only one copy of the program, its use was restricted to the classroom and the school library. The "Kard Kaddie" file box was counted as a hall pass to the library by arrangement with the librarian, who permitted students to use the school library for this work. Students sometimes preferred to work the program in the library where they would not be disturbed by the ongoing activities of an English class.

Naturally, having just one copy greatly limited initial class participation in the use of the program. But as students who began the program first progressed to later "boxes," new students could begin using the program. Sometimes students had to wait several days before they could work the next section of the program, for they had to wait their turn. The programs were kept on the teacher's desk in a small corrugated cardboard box, and students were free to use them at any time. Students could elect to use the program instead of doing the regular classroom work, or could use it when they finished the regular work early.

No class instruction about the program or its content was given beyond a few introductory remarks regarding the intended purpose of the program and some brief directions about how to use it. Beyond this, the students and program were on their own, and the class proceeded with its normal work in reading instruction.

Students were eager to begin the program, and once a student began the program the student nearly always continued working on it until it was completed. There generally was quite a scramble to get the boxes from the desk before the start of class, and students were so eager to use the program that at times there was an extensive written waiting list of students who wanted to be next to start the program.

Pupils were encouraged to consult the teacher immediately whenever they encountered difficulty or otherwise had a question. In this way the program was subjected to an editing procedure for each pupil who utilized it, for frames were frequently rewritten or additional frames were added to and even within a sequence to clear up difficulties at the very time the pupils asked the questions. Generally these interruptions did not occur often enough to disrupt the normal procedure for the rest of the class. As the program was successively revised, the number of questions asked by the additional pupils using the program was reduced.

It did not take long to observe that the simplest way to occupy a disruptive pupil was to permit that pupil to use the program. Students who would not read and could not write became unmanageable for the two hours they were present each day until they were given the program to use. Once started upon the program these normally very disruptive pupils would sit quietly the whole two hours working the program. The 1400 frames kept them avidly engaged for the remainder of the semester. Not only that, but the students gained so much confidence in their academic progress that they began to do the regular classroom work in addition to working the program, and in the end did more work, and showed more improvement, than the rest of the class.
 

Results in the Classroom

What does the program accomplish? Though its original title (Writing by Structures) clearly indicates it was not designed to teach reading, in the classes where it has been used there is evidence to suggest that it teaches reading more successfully to slow learning seventh graders than the reading materials used during regular classroom instruction. At least that is the conclusion drawn when, for example, students who were successful with remedial materials on the second grade reading difficulty level were unable to do materials on the third grade level. These students were then allowed to work on the program, and did so successfully. They then asked if they could also do the work with the rest of the class. By this time the class was using materials of fifth grade difficulty, and students who worked the program were able to use the fifth grade materials with no difficulty.
It appears to be generally known that the use of programmed instructional materials leads to improvement in reading, even when the programs involved in the instruction do not relate specifically to reading instruction. This study lends support to this general finding to a degree somewhat greater than studies of this effect commonly report.
The two seventh grade classes participating in this study were grouped homogeneously according to intelligence and general achievement by the administration. The reading—language arts classes in this study constituted the bottom two groups of a total of seven homeroom groupings in the seventh grade (7A) at the Neinas Junior High School in February, 1964. Students in these two classes all had reading achievement test scores (as measured by the Stanford Achievement Tests) two or more years below grade level. While not "inner city" by strict geographical location, a consideration of such factors as the educational level of parents, family income level, and the amount of reading material in the home, would lead one to conclude that these students are definitely academically disadvantaged.

The two classes received exactly the same instruction, used the same reading materials, worked through the same units in the same order. The only difference in instructional technique was to permit the bottom homeroom group to use the program Writing by Structures (now titled The Language Enrichment Program) under the conditions previously described. On June 11, 1964, both classes were given the same form of the Stanford Achievement Tests in Reading. Below is a list of the reading scores (paragraph comprehension) obtained by the top seven achievers in each group:

FINAL READING SCORES OF THE BOTTOM (OF SEVEN ABILITY GROUPS) HOMEROOM 7A 310: TOP SEVEN OF 39 STUDENTS.


 

 


FINAL READING SCORES OF THE SIXTH (FROM TOP) HOMEROOM 7A 205: TOP SEVEN OF 32 STUDENTS.
 

The class earning the higher scores used the program. The probability that they should evidence greater reading achievement should have been less since they were the bottom of seven ability groups. Besides a greater overall improvement for the class using the program, all students who showed a gain of three or more years in reading achievement came from this group. Two students, who at the beginning had scores below the fourth grade, achieved a tenth grade reading level on the paragraph comprehension post test. This improvement occurred in the space of one twenty week semester.

Those pupils showing considerable reading improvement, the students now reading above grade level, were transferred by their counselors to the next to the top ability group in their grade, and for the remainder of their junior high school years were kept in that group and achieved average or better grades.
In January of 1965 I was transferred to teach English at Cass Technical High School. I also helped to supervise the new programmed instruction laboratory there. I put the linguistic program in a cardboard carton in my apartment walk in closet, and went on to other things.

After perhaps a year of teaching at Cass, a visitor to the programmed instruction laboratory heard about the success I had with my own teacher written programmed learning. She asked if the program was available for use. I explained that it was not currently in use. "Where is it?" she asked. I told her it was in a box somewhere at the bottom of a pile of boxes in my apartment closet. She asked that I make it available to her for use in the "Continuing Education for Girls Program."

I then began rewriting, revalidating, and extending the program for use on the high school level. I used it with my English classes at Cass. I permitted students to check individual chapters out for voluntary homework overnight once extra copies became available. Students generally seemed to like the program. A few years later, I was more than once stopped in the hall by counselors and the school principal, who commented that in their interviews with students who had completed their freshman year at college, I was one of the most frequently mentioned teachers who had "helped them most" in college preparation. This was considered most unusual, since most of these students had my class when they were in the tenth grade. Students generally tend to mention teachers they had in the twelfth grade.
I also used the program when I taught night school at Cass. Many of these students were adults returning to earn their high school diploma. I was told by the principal that my class had the best attendance of any in the night school at that time—and he was especially surprised one stormy winter night to see I had a full class, despite the inclement weather. I especially recall one student, a Roman Catholic nun, who completed all the units of my program, and went on to successfully work a college level program in transformational grammar.

In 1974 I took a leave of absence to assist a friend of mine from college days, Carl George, who had a private school in Gainesville, Florida. He was eager for my assistance to set up a reading program in his school to help those students transferring in from public schools. Such students were far behind the private school pupils in their reading level, and found it hard to compete with them in academic work. Also, the school was very high in its science and math achievement scores, but not in the reading scores. The students of the school used my program for the one semester I was there (in spring of 1974). The entire school rose dramatically in reading achievement that semester. While there I wrote ten additional units for the linguistic program to help students in my sixth grade class understand the concepts presented in the program.

In the fall of 1974 I returned to teaching in Detroit, and was placed in the social studies department at Southeastern High School, where I taught world and American history. In January of 1975 I began treating my history classes as reading classes, and introduced my linguistic program into my history classes to boost the reading scores of the students. The students made remarkable progress in reading, many students showing from one to five years improvement in reading achievement in a single semester of work.

In 1981 I was transferred to the English department, and made a reading specialist, in charge of teaching the Article 3 reading program.

Below is a list of the students from my sixth hour, eleventh grade, English class, showing pre and post test scores for reading comprehension, and the gain (or loss) achieved (Stanford Achievement Test in Reading, Form JM, KM):

 

The mean pretest score for the class was 5.6; the post test mean was 7.694; class mean score gain is therefore 2 years, for an eighteen week semester. The test score gains using the Stanford JM and KM achievement tests may be less than modern tests would show; I noticed at the time that the pre to post test gains on the California Achievement Test were much greater, student number 6 I distinctly recall achieved a 12.6 score in reading comprehension on the C.A.T. post test.

Other classes of students I have taught since this class showed very similar reading gains to those of the class detailed above, but teacher time being at the premium that it is, I did not compile any more classroom charts like the one above.