Developing LEMI: A new corpus based literacy support tool for schoolchildren

Abstract

[EN] This study centres on the developing and testing stages of a literacy support tool dedicated to young schoolchildren. The LEMI tool is currently in development (since January 2023) at the CODHUS research centre (Centre for Corpus Related Digital Approaches to Humanities) from the West University of Timișoara, Romania. LEMI aims to stimulate interest in reading during the first individual and collective reading activities (ages 7-11). This aim will be achieved by creating a digital reading repository with a user-friendly interface that verifies reading text complexity and delivers automatic reading-level reports to users. We use corpus linguistics methods to create a text complexity formula adapted to the Romanian language, which can be integrated into the automated complexity evaluation interface in LEMI. The necessity of such an instrument is motivated by the fact that, in Romania, there are increased rates of functional illiteracy and school dropout. We hypothesise that texts must be level-adapted (according to grade or readability) for schoolchildren to relate positively to reading activities. In the Romanian context, LEMI is the first digital tool wholly tailored to children’s literature, which complements national curricula and didactic materials provided to young children. Distinctively, LEMI responds to the need for easy-to-use tools to adapt reading individually, according to the reader’s profile. LEMI is a unique tool, not only for Romanian but also for children’s literature in other languages. The functionalities of the LEMI pilot version will be tested with the partners involved in the project (three schools from Timiș county and an educational NGO).