Classroom Success of an Intelligent Tutoring System for Lexical Practice and Reading Comprehension

We present an intelligent tutoring system called REAP that provides reader-specific lexical practice for improved reading comprehension. REAP offers individualized practice to students by presenting authentic and appropriate reading materials selected automatically from the web. We encountered a number of challenges that must be met in order for the system to be effective in a classroom setting. These include general challenges for a system that uses authentic materials, as well as more specific challenges that arise from integrating the system with pre-existing classroom curricula. We discuss how these challenges were met, and present evidence that REAP has gained acceptance into the classroom at the English Language Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.