Experimental Study On Using The Voice Recognition And Concept Mapping Technologies To Support The Students With Writing Disabilities

Learning disability is a long-standing problem in elementary and secondary education. There are many types of learning disabilities, typically including reading disabilities, writing disabilities and mathematical learning disabilities. The ability of writing is one of basic subject ability and it is a basic tool for learning others. This paper focused all attention on intervention for students with writing disabilities.Since 90's, along with the development of multi-media computer and network, researchers try to intervene students with writing disabilities by technology and obtain many results abroad. But in our country, this kind of research is almost empty. This paper investigated the validity of using the voice recognition and concept mapping technologies to support students with writing disabilities. Meanwhile, the effect for writing attitude and writing interest were also examined.Factorial experimental design was adopt. Twety-four intermediate-grade elementary students were divided into four groups to compose essays. Each group was under one of four conditions: voice recognition technology support, concept map support, voice recognition and concept map support and no-technology support. The dependent variables are composition scores.Our results showed:a) For intermediate-grade elementary students, it is easy to master the technologies of voice recognition and concept mapping. The accuracy and identifying rate of transcription of voice recognition can suffice the demand of dictation.b) In Chinese environments, dictation supported by plan and voice recognition could bypass low-level writing difficulties. In this writing mode, writing plan and the accuracy of transcription of voice recognition system were key problems.c) In Chinese environments, the concept mapping strategy was introduced to assist the students with writing disabilities. It could provide multi-media composition environments and let the student with writing disabilities to overcome high-level writing difficulties. This led to the longer composition and better quality also. In this writing mode, rebuilding cognitive relations about concept map and composition was one of key problems and another was using multi-media composition environments and plan completely.d) The interacting analyses showed it was unnecessary that using concept map and voice recognition assisted the student with writing disabilities at the same time.e) Either voice recognition or concept map, for the student with writing disabilities, could improve their interest and influence their attitude for writing.