Catholic Charities (CC) is a social service agency serving the Pittsburgh area. Among their services, they help resettle non-English-speaking refugees that are seeking a new life in Pittsburgh. This includes helping refugees find and maintain employment. To this end, a critical step is helping refugees acquire the English language skills necessary to perform their employment duties. The objective of this V-Unit is to extend REAP, a reading tutoring system developed at CMU, to help refugees acquire new vocabulary in their particular job domain.
An important component of language learning is vocabulary acquisition through reading practice. However, providing a student with reading material that is well-suited for language learning poses some challenges. The material should be at the student's reading level, contain well-formed text, be interesting to the student, and have an appropriate balance of known and unknown vocabulary. The REAP system addresses these challenges by providing easy access to appropriate reading material harvested from the Web. My goal is to allow REAP users to find appropriate reading material within a particular job category.
This will enable refugees to focus on new vocabulary likely to be useful in their jobs. Currently, refugees improve their language skills by receiving instruction directly by CC volunteers or by enrolling in English as a second language (ESL) courses available to the general public. Access to REAP offers refugees the possibility of continued self-training and self-improvement.
