Because much education through ESL takes place in broader contexts of development, this article explores the links between areas often dealt with separately, namely, language, literacy, education, and development, particularly national economic development. We characterise the contrasting histories of rich and poor countries and discuss definitions of development, poverty, literacy, and L1. We review evidence showing that education and literacy are more effectively achieved in a known language, and that effective education contributes to both economic and human development. Education in poor countries, however, is ineffective, one reason being that students have an insufficient understanding of the instructional medium (typically English or French). Unfortunately, the status quo is maintained because of political priorities of unification and modernisation, and parental pressure. Development depends on an interdependent complex of economic, social, and educational factors that combine to produce vicious or virtuous circles: Effective education at the primary level, implying the use of a language understood by the students, is therefore crucial.
Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof. (Daniel v.8) /. 1 Introduction The years since the last reading survey appeared in this journal (Brumfit, 1977) have seen growing interest and stimulating advances in the development of theoretical perspectives on reading in a foreign language. The increased attention is reflected by the appearance of specialist publications, including three noteworthy collections (Mackay, Barkman & Jordan, 1979; Alderson & Urquhart, 1984a; Carrell, Devine & Eskey, 1988), as well as the journal Reading in a Foreign Language (College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth). Although no generally accepted theory of reading in a foreign language has emerged (if by theory we mean the identification of all relevant elements and the specification of relationships between these elements), a broad consensus is appearing. Over the past two decades the development has in the main been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, with innovative elements being introduced-often via LI pedagogy-from psychology, discourse analysis, linguistics and sociology. 1.2 Psycholinguistic models 1.2.1. Research and pedagogy in both LI and L2 in the '70s were influenced particularly by the model elaborated by Goodman (1967) and Smith (1971) (for typical examples of such influence, see Da vies & Whitney, 1981, Teacher's Guide, and Clarke & Silberstein, 1979). Goodman's model is a top-down (or concept-driven) model in which the text is ' sampled' and predictions are made on the basis of the reader's prior syntactic and semantic knowledge. Reading in this model is a ' psycholinguistic guessing game' (Goodman, 1967). By contrast, bottom-up Eddie Williams works at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Reading. He has published in the areas of reading, achievement testing and bilingual education.
This article reports on the evaluation of an extensive reading programme in primary schools in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa. The programme involved the delivery of book boxes at Years 4 and 5 to every Malawian primary school. Summative evaluation was achieved through baseline and project‐end testing, with observations and interviews employed for illuminative purposes. A time‐lapse design was employed, with testing in 1995 of Year 6 students (who had not had the programme in Years 4 and 5), and retesting in 1999 of Year 6 students in the same schools (who had had the programme in Years 4 and 5). Results unexpectedly showed a statistically significant decrease in mean score. The article explores deficiencies in programme implementation, but concludes that implementing educational innovations in Malawi requires sensitivity to the cultural‐educational context. Furthermore, there is merit in Malawians radically questioning the appropriacy of innovations.
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