Using email to teach literacy

Abstract or Summary

The literacy level of adults in numerous developed countries remains a concern for many governments despite the considerable resources being expended on attempting to raise levels. Increasing the general level of literacy is recognised as an important step in improving the well-being of children. The current method of teaching literacy in schools is not meeting the needs of many and perhaps new and innovative approaches can be explored. Children are spending increasingly more time communicating electronically and this paper on vocabulary development investigates the strategy of incorporating the teaching of literacy into Mifrenz, a children’s email application (www.mifrenz.com). Vocabulary can typically be divided into groups of words from frequently used words to ever more specialized words. This vocabulary tool, analyses emails that individual children send and it keeps a record of the words that the child has already used to determine at which level the child is currently working. Each time the Mifrenz application is used, the child can choose to click on the ‘Word of the day’ – i.e. a word that 1) is at their level, 2) has not yet used by the child and 3) has not yet been displayed to the child. The child is also given the meaning of the word and an example of how it can be used in a sentence. Mifrenz is a multi-lingual application and therefore the new words that are displayed must match the language the child is using. The database, background logic and user interfaces have been designed to allow for an unlimited number of languages to be used.