The ECRIMO application was developed by a multidisciplinary team (editors, teachers and researchers from Grenoble Alpes University) and has been scientifically validated with several hundred first grade students. It is intended for students who are learning the alphabetic code (CP or end of GS) or who encounter particular difficulties in learning this alphabetic code.

Encoding exercises (writing under dictation) are very beneficial for learning written language, particularly for students with difficulties. Unfortunately, we know that beginning student readers (5-6 years old) get too little practice in coding.

The primary goal of ECRIMO is to train students to encode words they hear in writing, repeatedly, to improve their knowledge of the alphabetical code and thus support reading. Its second goal is to start memorizing the spelling of words and the particularities of the written French language (graphotactic frequencies).

Thanks to digital technology, each student works independently, at their own pace, receives feedback after each written word, assistance to better segment the dictated word and memorize phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

How does ECRIMO work?

The application can be played on a tablet or computer.

The child hears a syllable or a word and writes it by clicking on the appropriate letter labels. If the word is written well, the child immediately receives positive feedback. If it contains an error, the student is invited to try again. The correct letters remain in the answer cell and a syllabic segmentation of the word is audible, as well as visible in the answer box. If he fails again on the 2nd try, the correctly written word is immediately shown to him associated with its oral form, to give him the opportunity to see it spelled correctly and to compare it to his own answer.

ECRIMO has two progressions: one to start encoding at the start of CP and one to progress in writing from the middle of the CP year. There are 960 words per progression, or 1920 words to write during the entire year of CP!

The words to be written are adapted to the progression of learning in CP, with increasing difficulty based on the increase in the length of the word, the difficulty of the sound-letter correspondences to be used and the number of distractor letters offered.

A scientifically validated application

ECRIMO has been the subject of several experiments in real situations, in CP classes in Isère. In the main study, 311 students participated. For 10 weeks, one group used ECRIMO, an active control group carried out the same dictations but without application (words dictated by the teacher) and a passive control group was without training. The results suggest that offering ECRIMO in class during first grade helps the weakest students to progress in writing words, as much as intensive practice of traditional dictations could do. Another experiment (publication currently being written) confirms these initial results: ECRIMO, compared to a control application, significantly improves the abilities of CP children to write phonologically accurately and helps the weakest to memorize lexical spelling.

Link to the popular scientific publication: https://fondamentapps.com/wp-content/uploads/fondamentapps-synthese-ecrimo.pdf

Link to the scientific article: https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.13354

To test ECRIMO, go here: https://fondamentapps.com/#contact