Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Academic Exchange Quarterly

The voice as a learning technology: a review.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Voice recognition technologies (VRT) are learning technologies that enhance students' composing processes. They encourage instructors to ask questions concerning what benefits oral composing can bring. This essay reviews several studies (specifically those conducted by BECTA, "Speaking to Write," and Scotland's CALL Centre) that have explored students' interaction with voice recognition programs to produce texts. Drawing from these studies, which focus on the writing of younger writers, it also delves into what future areas we should explore about oral composing technologies in the college classroom.

Introduction

Writing teachers talk about "voice" in scholarship, but they employ the term as a metaphor for the persona that comes through in students' texts that are, generally, produced in silence. For example, Donald Murray writes that instructors should "listen carefully for those words that may reveal a truth, that may reveal a voice" (5) and that they must respect students for those potential voices. However, in neglecting truly oral composition as a form of "voice," instructors overlook an area of the writing process that can benefit students.

Voice recognition technologies, rather than simply a means of delivering text to screen orally, are learning technologies that enhance students' composing processes. Several researchers (some of the most notable examples are Sheryl Lee Day (education); Michael Chamberlain (education); John Reece and Geoff Cumming (composition); Carl Berieter and Marlene Scardamalia (education); Beatrice Bourdin and Michel Fayol (psychology); and Susan De La Paz and Steve Graham (education and learning disabilities)--have weighed in on questions surrounding the use of technology and dictation to make composing easier. Beyond these sources, it is crucial to look at the work done with student writers, as doing so offers a glimpse into how C-MOC (the term I will use to refer to computer-mediated oral composing) works in practice.

Projects completed by three international groups of researchers (In Britain, The United States, and Scotland)--have been conducted concerning the effects of speech technology on pre-college students' writing. The results of these studies, as well as the training materials generated from them, are groundbreaking for all instructors who integrate speaking/writing into the classroom. Reviewing the methodologies, findings, and further questions raised by these projects helps consolidate the current literature. Additionally, such a review illustrates how these studies' observations are essential in creating new pedagogies of multi-modal writing instruction.

Overview of Studies

Materials and findings from educational projects offer a perspective on oral composing that takes into account the experiences of student writers. Corporate training materials for speech software programs, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, do address some aspects of the composing process (usually telling writers to do such things as speak as if conversing with a friend to increase accuracy). But they also tend to address composing in...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!