This study describes an intelligent tutoring system to improve reading literacy skills called TuinLEC and it presents the results of its application to a group of sixth grade students. TuinLEC adopts the reading literacy theoretical framework of PISA (Program for International Students Assessment, OECD, 2009). TuinLEC includes eight lessons distributed in two phases, one for modeling and guided practice, and the second for independent practice. TuinLEC interacts with every student and it provides help and feedback for the task in a game-like environment. Half of the students were taught with TuinLEC, whereas the other half served as the control group. Children in both groups were paired according to reading comprehension scores. We measured students’ reading literacy skills after intervention, which showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. Students who were taught with TuinLEC were also given a questionnaire measuring satisfaction, usability, and self-efficacy; TuinLEC scored positively in all these measurements. We discuss how TuinLEC can improve the reading literacy skills of sixth-graders as well as the contribution of intelligent tutoring systems to instructional interventions.
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