Greaney, V. (Ed.). (1996). Promoting
reading in developing countries: Views on making reading materials accessible
to increase literacy levels. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
[This
review, by George Jacobs, appeared in 1998 in Asian Journal of
English Language Teaching, 8, 125-131.]
This book discusses the state of first
language literacy in developing countries, focusing on the need for sufficient
quality reading materials to raise and sustain literacy levels. English is not
the first language of any Asian country; so, why should readers of this journal
be interested in the book? Four reasons suggest themselves.
First, the ESL field should support first
language literacy in other languages because we should hold an additive, rather
than replacive, view of our goal (Alatis, 1975), i.e., we help people learn
English as an additional language, not to take the place of their current
language(s). Second, research suggests that literacy skills transfer across
languages; so, good readers and writers in their native language have a head
start towards being good readers and writers in second languages (Koda, 1994).
Third, as education professionals, we should concern ourselves with more than
just the scores our students get on English proficiency tests. These broader
concerns start with the overall education of our students and of the general
population in the countries in which we work (Cates, 1990). Building from
there, literacy and education generally form key prerequisites of human and
social development. Last, but not least, we should support literacy as a human
right.
Fortunately, there is good news to report on
the literacy front. Estimates indicate that the percentage of illiterate people
internationally will decline from 39% in 1970 to 22% in 2000. Asia is no
exception to this trend. Despite the progress made towards promoting universal
literacy, almost 1 billion people remain illiterate worldwide, with the
overwhelming majority of these in developing countries. This book provides
important ideas on how to resolve this gaping wound.
The book comprises 10 chapters, with an
overall focus on developing literacy among children rather than adults. In
Chapter 1, Vincent Greaney begins by furnishing an overview of reasons for
illiteracy and paths towards its elimination. In addition to lack of quality
reading materials, the book’s main focus, other key reasons for illiteracy
include:
1. Health problems - e.g., malnutrition
annually causes blindness in up to a million children.
2. Gender inequality - in developing
countries, illiteracy among females stands at 45% versus 25% for males, due in
part to girls’ lower school attendance.
3. Unfavourable home conditions - e.g.,
poverty often leaves homes without space and light for reading and forces
children to spend their time working rather than reading.
4. School deficiencies - e.g., teachers
often lack training and livable salaries.
Greaney concludes his chapter on an
optimistic note, citing the case of South Korea which in 1945 had an illiteracy
rate of 78%; however, with sustained effort, today that rate has fallen below
4%.
Warwick Elley has done literacy research and
development work in Asia and the Pacific. In Chapter 2, he reports on
implications of a 4-year study comparing literacy practices in 32 countries
from around the world. Elley notes that such cross-national studies provide
unique insights, because many factors vary more between than within countries.
Results of the study reported by Elley, for which data were collected in the
early 1990s, suggest key factors in raising literacy are:
1. A sufficient quantity of readily
available books.
2. School time for students to read.
3. Instruction which places less emphasis on
teacher-led drills of discrete skills and more on motivating students to enjoy
reading and to read on their own.
Chapter 3, by well known reading researcher
Richard Anderson, reviews the research behind the view that large quantities of
reading are the most important factor in vocabulary development and overall
reading competence. For instance, he states that if students read just 15
minutes a day in school and 15 minutes a day outside school, they will be
reading more than a total of 1 million words per year. If 20,000 of these are
new words and, as research suggests, at least 5% of these are learned, Anderson
estimates 1000 words a year will be learned, much more than would normally be
learned by direct vocabulary instruction. Reading also surpasses oral language
via conversation and TV as a source of vocabulary enrichment. Anderson cites
one study which found that even comic books provided at least a two times
richer lexical environment for children than did talking with adults.
Chapter 4 by João Oliveira
and Chapter 5 by Tony Read discuss how to improve the quantity and quality of
textbooks and children’s literature, respectively..
Oliviera notes that In many developing countries,
although textbook expenditure seldom amounts to more than 1% of the education
budget, textbooks are scarce. Indeed, while many reading experts advise against
over-reliance on textbooks, many teachers are thankful just to have them,
because in many schools textbooks provide the sole source of written language
for their students. Further, textbooks supply guidance on what to teach and how
to teach it.
Oliveira gives several reasons for the
textbook shortage. First, as educational opportunity has expanded beyond
economic elites, many more children are attending school, but the parents of
these new students often lack the money to purchase textbooks. Second, while
once the same textbook could be used for several generations, the rapid pace of
curriculum change necessitates much more frequent textbook turnover. Third, the
infrastructure for textbook production, which can take as long as 15 years to
develop, has been stifled by economic woes and unfortunate policies.
The
lack of sufficient children’s literature for the development of L1 literacy,
according to Read, derives from two main causes: insufficient markets and lack
of human and physical resources needed to develop sustainable publishing
industries. The small markets result from such factors as:
1. Wealthier parents and the private schools
which their children attend often buy imported books in English rather than
locally produced books in national and local languages.
2. Teachers may not request the purchase of
children’s literature and instead favour sole reliance on textbooks, because
they are unfamiliar with teaching methods which promote the kind of wide
reading supported by research summarised in the Anderson chapter.
3. Inadequate distribution networks stifle
sales, e.g., in one project in the Philippines, 46% of the books produced did
not get distributed.
4. The existence of languages spoken by only
a portion of the population reduces the demand for books in those languages.
Read provides suggestions for increasing
market demand and developing the expertise and equipment necessary to greatly
increase the quantity and quality of children’s literature in developing
countries.
In Chapter 6, Nelson Rodríquez-Trujillo
discusses lessons from successful local pilot projects for promoting independent
reading in South America. He notes that certain prerequisites must be met in
order to extend these projects beyond the controlled settings in which they
first grew:
1. Demonstration models.
2. A nucleus of educators who stay with the
project.
3. Ongoing teacher development in line with
the practices suggested in the Anderson chapter.
Scott Walter’s Chapter 7 follows from
Chapter 5 by describing efforts to develop a children’s publishing industry in
Africa. He argues that a "book famine" currently exists in Africa due
to over-reliance on government publishing and distribution, and on imported
books. Among Walter’s recommendations are:
1. Allocate funds to support demand for
books rather than to support book production.
2. Develop local editorial, design, and
marketing skills.
3. Promote books set in local contexts.
Chapter 8 is devoted to Elley’s description
of "Book Flood" programmes which have been used to boost literacy in
schools in several developing countries. Elley outlines 5 characteristics of
book floods:
1. Students start reading extensively at
primary school.
2. Students have access to a large number of
books.
3. Books are selected to be appropriate in
terms of student interest, cultural sensitivity, local context, resistance to
wear, and print size.
4. Students are encouraged to read often by
such means as allotted school time and teacher promotion of books.
5. The shared reading method is used. In
this method, the class or a group of students read a book with the teacher who
introduces the story, reads to the students, stops to involve them in
predicting what will happen next and discussing what has happened, highlights
key language points, e.g., vocabulary, as the need arises, and gradually has
students do more and more of the reading themselves.
In Chapter 9, Rosamaria Durand and Suzanne M
Deehy discuss book donation programmes. Such programmes have been criticized
for jeopardizing the development of local book publishing and for the fact that
many donated books are unsuitable, because they are outdated or irrelevant to
local needs. However, the supply of potentially donatable books is huge, e.g.,
just in the U.S., every year 40 million new books are destroyed and a minimum
of 2-4 million are donated. Durand and Deehy argue that donations can be a
valuable interim way of supplying large quantities of quality reading materials
if recipients and donors work together to ensure that book donation programmes
are driven by demand.
Libraries constitute a key source of reading
material, especially when book stores do not exist or are too expensive.
Rebecca Knuth, Barbara Perry, and Brigitte Duces use Chapter 10 to illustrate
how libraries in developing countries can meet the demands of their potential
clients. The authors urge that libraries should change from being passive
institutions serving mainly as book caretakers to become active centres which
reach out to provide a range of services to the communities they are to serve.
Alternatives can take the form of:
1. Mobile libraries.
2. Rotating collections which move between
different schools, libraries, and community centres..
3. Staff who support users’ reading.
4. Provision of other services tied to
literacy, e.g., storytelling, games related to reading, and health and
childcare instruction.
To conclude with some general comments, the
book grew out of a seminar sponsored by the World Bank which, at least at that
time, stood for a larger role for the private sector in many spheres of
society. Thus, it comes as no surprise that several of the book’s authors propose
a wider role for private sector publishing and a smaller role for publishing by
governments.
An alternative both government and privately
produced books is the generation of materials by students and teachers themselves,
a common practice in whole language approaches to literacy (e.g., Davidson, et
al., 1997). This could have received more attention in this volume. Computers,
especially CD-ROM, provide another source of reading materials not highlighted
in the book. For instance, the United Nations University is participating in a
project which plans to produce over 6,000 3,000-book CD-ROM libraries at a cost
of US$50 per library (United Nations University, 1997). The obvious drawback
here is the expense of computers and the infrastructure needed to support them.
Most of you reading this review probably
have access to large amounts of reading material via libraries, bookstores, and
the internet. Indeed, nowadays we hear about people suffering "information
fatigue" from all the material out there to read. That is definitely the
case for the writer of this review. However, we should remember that, as this
book vividly points out, a significant proportion of the world’s population
lack the ability to read, in part because they lack access to sufficient
materials to read. The situation of information fatigue in the developed world
and book famine in the developing world approximates that of people in the
developing world spending large sums of money on pills, programmes, and
equipment to prevent the ill effects of consuming the large quantity of food
available to them, while some in the developing world suffer and even die from
lack of access to food.
The International Reading Association has
published many fine books, the current volume among them. This book serves its
readers by informing us of the many avenues which exist for promoting literacy.
ESL educators have already been involved in such efforts, e.g., the Global
Issue in Language Education interest group of the Japan Association for
Language Teaching
<http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/nsig/globalissues/gi.html> has
supported efforts to maintain minority languages in Japan. Hopefully, with the
insights and inspiration found in this book, we will be able to do more and do
it better.
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TESOL and bilingual education. In M.K. Burt & H.C. Dulay (Eds.), On
TESOL ‘75 (pp. 3-14). Washington, D.C.: Teachers of English to Speakers of
Other Languages.
Cates, K. (1990). Teaching for a better
world: Global issues in language education. The Language Teacher, 14,
3-5.
Davidson, C. Ogle, D. Ross, D., Tuhaka, J.
& Ng, S.M. (1997). Student-created reading materials for extensive reading.
In Jacobs, G.M., Davis, C., & Renandya, W. Successful strategies for
extensive reading (pp. 144-160). Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language
Centre.
Koda, K. (1994). Second language reading
research: Problems and possibilities. Applied Psycholinguistics 15,
1-28.
United Nations University (1997, July). UNU
joins humanity project. UNUnexions. 3.