Abstract

North American children have a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. For children whose mother tongue is still being spoken at home, maintaining and advancing parental linguistic instruction is an ongoing effort. This effort must be upheld by the parents and other classroom based media if the child is to preserve and further his mother language acquisition. We propose a means for computer assisted language delivery based on an expandable language content delivery system. The system is applied to the instruction of the Arabic language for grade one, second language instruction. All aspects of the delivery process are demonstrated in terms of letter shape, composition, recognition, connection shapes, and relevant vocabulary models. The model discussed in this thesis is relevant to the instruction of cursive languages such as Urdu or Persian. We drew on relevant research to enhance and contrast our system where necessary. A system designed based on the model gave rise to the creation of an engaging, user oriented interactive software application for the use of children at the grade one level. A total of seven students were asked to use the software and their interaction was observed and analyzed. The results of our experiments reveal acceptance and enhanced language acquisition as demonstrated by the evaluation experiments.