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This intervention study was conducted to document conditions under which a computer based literacy game (GraphoGame™) could enhance literacy skills of first grade students in an African city. The participants were first grade students from Government schools (N = 573). These students were randomly sampled into control (N = 314) and various intervention groups (N = 259). GraphoGame™ was administered on cellphones to students at their schools under supervision. Each student in the study was assessed using a battery of locally developed cognitive tests that measured emergent literacy skills (Orthography test), decoding competence (Spelling test), vocabulary (Picture Vocabulary Test-PVT) and arithmetic (Zambia Achievement Test-ZAT). There was a positive effect of the game for the Spelling test--which closely targeted the skill GraphoGame™ is designed to promote. The most effective intervention combined exposure of both the teachers and the students to the game. Initial letter knowledge was a good predictor of final letter knowledge on GraphoGame™.

This paper reports on pilot studies which were set up to investigate the usability of and potential efficacy of technology-enhanced training, Graphogame, for learning to read in multilingual settings in Zambia. Apart from the intervention data, the studies revealed interesting opportunities for the identification of challenges faced by the early readers in Zambia. Previous research has shown that training the basic skills of reading (starting from letter-sound correspondences) with Graphogame significantly improves pre-readers early reading skills in a transparent orthography such as Finnish. Since the orthographies of locally spoken languages in Zambia are comparably transparent with that of Finnish, it was hypothesized that the Zambian children would similarly benefit from playing the game. The results support our hypothesis on the usability of the game but more importantly reveal reasons for poor reading achievement of early readers. Children found certain letter-sound correspondences surprisingly difficult. It seems that teaching the local languages by mapping the letter-sound correspondences based on the English letter names has a negative influence on children's learning. We discuss the impact of language on literacy instruction and learning outcomes in light of our empirical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]