4th Grade Focus Group

In the spring of 2004, twenty-three (23) fourth grade students participated in a CAL Tutor focus group. The students where asked to take several CAL Tutor Spelling tests on 20 weekly spelling words from their school spelling text book. CAL Tutor spoke each spelling word and the accompanying definition and sentence.

After the testing, the students were told to honestly rate CAL Tutor. If they disliked CAL Tutor, they were encouraged to say they how much disliked it. They selected from the following to rate CAL Tutor.

awesome
like it very much
like it
dislike it
disliked it a lot
awful

They rated CAL Tutor as follows:

13 awesome	57%
6 Like it very much	26%
3 like it	13%
1 dislike it	04%
23	100%

The following reasons were given by 22 students as to why they liked CAL Tutor.

The computer gave me more time to spell the words.
I like when it said the sentence and tells you want it means.
It encourages kids to work on computers.
It tells you the misspelled words and lets you practice them over and over.
I like typing in the words.
It teaches you and helps you learn the words.
It is fun while you learn words.
I like to listen to the computer voice.
It helps me study and I can study more.
It can help people who get bad grades.
You can go back and respell a word.
After a test, it tells you the answer.
Everybody doesn’t go at the rate. Now everybody doesn’t have to raise their hand and ask for the words to be said again.
I do not know why I like it. I just like it.
You can study without the book,
It helps me study my words in a new way.
You get to keep a copy of your tests.
You can hear the words better.

The following reason was given by the 1 student as to why he disliked CAL Tutor.

I am not good at computers and it won’t help me.