The Fiji Book Flood

tudent Background

Students in Fiji first learn to read and write in their native language, either Fijian or Hindi. Then in their third year of schooling (Year 3), some of their education is in English. From the fourth year of school on (Year 4), the majority of their schooling is conducted in English. In general their schools do not have many reading books, and exposure to English outside of school is minimal.

In 1980, when this study took place, the main method of teaching English was through an audio-lingual method called the Tate Oral English Program. Through this program the students learned the English grammar orally first and then brought that into reading books. To make this possible the structure and vocabulary of the books were carefully selected. The program had clear and standardised lessons, making it easy to teach for teachers. However, the English taught was insufficient for the students to become fluent. A Book flood project was set up in eight rural schools to compare the book method with the traditional Tate Program.

Hypothesis

The belief was that the students would easily learn a language from the influx of comprehensible information in that language. With the increase of readable materials, the students should be able to learn the language in a more intuitive way and with less rote memorization. Students would achieve this by rereading books interesting to them.

Experimental Set-up

Half of the students were to be taught through the Shared Reading Method. In this method the students participated in repeated chorus reading of the books with direction from the teacher. Then they would participate in activities that helped them to engage in the language of the books. Some of these activities included acting, writing, talking, reading silently, and reading out loud. The second half of the students were to take part in the Sustained Silent Reading Approach. Here the teacher was to promote the books and read some stories out loud. However, the main contact between the students and the books would be through the silent reading period each day. Both of the approaches took up 30 minutes of the day in the time slot for the Tate Program. No extra time was spent on English instruction/learning in the Book Flood groups than in the Tate Program groups.

Teacher Preparation

For teachers who would be guiding their students through the Shared Reading Method, there was a three-day workshop. For the teachers participating in the Silent Reading Method, there was no workshop. Instead there were written directions distributed on how to promote the books, read aloud, and organise the silent reading time. The teachers in the control group, who were working with the Tate Program, participated in a one-day workshop to help refresh the teaching methods and restore enthusiasm for the program.

Overall Design

Dates: February 1980-November 1981

Shared Book Experience Group: pre-tests; three-day workshop; 250 books supplied for classes of Year 4 and Year 5, post-tests; follow-up tests

Silent Reading Group: pre-tests; no workshop; 250 books supplied for classes of Year 4 and Year 5; post-tests; follow-up tests

Control Group: pre-tests; one-day workshop; usual program (Tate Program); no extra books, post-tests; follow-up tests

Evaluation of Impact

Testing was done on all the students after eight months in the program. The students were then tested again one year later. These tests assessed reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking, and use of English grammar. There was an evident pattern from these tests: the Flood Book groups showed much larger improvement than the Tate Program groups. For the Year 4 students, after eight months of being in the program, both the Shared Reading and the Silent Reading groups improved their levels by 15 months. The Tate Program group, on the other hand, improved by only about 6.5 months in the same eight month period. This trend was even more drastic for the Year 5 students. The trends continued for listening comprehension and English structures. Oral language and writing results showed similar trends with an insignificant difference statistically.

When the tests were conducted again the second year, the Book Flood group continued to increase their ability. Their growth was even larger than in the previous year. The effects of the growth could be seen in areas that had not been so successful the year before such as writing.

Then, in the following year, the Year 6 students, who were no longer a part of the program, took the Fiji Intermediate Examination. These results showed that the Shared Reading group placed well above the expected average levels for rural schools. The improvement of English also affected the development of their vernacular language.

Overall, there was little difference in the results between the Shared Reading and the Silent Reading programs. However, when the results were looked at more closely, it was evident that the students who gained the most from any of the programs were the students who were part of the Shared Reading Method and whose teachers followed it as they were helped to understand.

Final Thoughts

It seemed the hypothesis has been proved; students surrounded by and encouraged to take part in the reading community produced an unusually rapid rate of growth. It was seen that although the students taking part in the Book Flood program spent less time studying the letter clusters, they performed better than the control group. In the beginning, this change was seen in reading and listening. By the second year of the program, however, these effects had also spread to writing, vobacb, science, math, etc