Ashley Adams

The EMBRACE project is designed to help young English Language Learners develop skill in comprehending written texts in English. This iPad application offers support in English and Spanish and works by scaffolding children as they learn to create internal, dynamic simulations of the text content. In the physical manipulation stage, children move objects on the screen corresponding to sentences they read (those sentences highlighted in blue). In the imagine manipulation stage (not yet implemented), children are taught to imagine how the objects would be moved to simulate content. An ITS will select texts near the child’s zone of proximal development.