ROOTS

Roots is founded by Corbo brothers, James and Stephen, who are both Speech Language Pathologists (SLP) in the NYC Department of Education. Over the past year and a half, we have developed a vocabulary building a mobile app, Roots(http://roots.nyc/)l which teaches Academic and Subject Area Tier III vocabulary through etymology and gamification. Learning vocabulary is often difficult, time consuming, boring and in some cases expensive. Roots was built on the premise that people need to learn ... vocabulary for a variety of reasons; High school and college students need to learn tier III vocabulary to prepare for standardized tests and to be proficient in academic subject areas. English Language Learners need to learn vocabulary for success second language acquisition, many times for academics as well as for socialization and activities of daily living. Work on Roots, the mobile application, began in April of 2012. Over the past year and a half the founders have collaborated with three teams of student programmers from NYU Poly tech to build three iterations of the initial concept. The alpha prototype that you have tested is our latest iteration. The Strategies Behind Roots Etymology is an excellent strategy for vocabulary acquisition for two reasons. First, by dissecting the words one is learning, into their roots, users build strong associations that help word recall in the future. Secondly, studying root words provides students with an approach to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words that they have not studied. A wealth of research is available on the efficacy of etymology as a vocabulary learning strategy. Research also suggests that gamification of education can increase student’s intrinsic motivation as well as self-efficacy. Moreover, studies done by Pearson, state, “what is most unique about digital games—as opposed to any other learning innovation—is the combination of motivation, engagement, adaptivity, simulation, collaboration, and data collection that can’t be achieved at scale any other way.” We are eager to get our product into the hands of users so that we may learn from their feedback. If you have the opportunity to try the app please let us know what you think.More