The Sri Lanka "Books in School" program

tudent Background

In Sri Lanka, students first learn to read and write in either Sinhalese or Tamil. English is taught as a second language beginning in the third year of school. It is taught by specialist English teachers. English is not used at home, however it is the main language for studies at the University level, as well as work in tourism or trade. However, for the most part, it remains a second language.

Hypothesis

The thought was that the students would easily learn the new language from this large increase in the amount of comprehensible information in that language. They expected that by increasing the students' exposure to the language, at a level that they could comprehend, they would be able to pick up the language in a more intuitive way and with less rote memorization. This was to be achieved through the students reading and re-reading books which were expected to be interesting to them.

Experimental Set-up

The project began in March 1995 with a pretest of English reading skills of students in Year 4 and Year 5 by the National Institute of Education. Students in 40 schools were tested. Half of the schools were urban and the other half were rural. 30 schools were chosen to participate in the project: 20 smaller schools with low achievement and no library were chosen to implement to "Books in School" Program while 10 similar schools were chosen to be the Control Group.

Between March and September 1995, the teachers participating in the project received 100 books for their Year 4 and Year 5 students. Since the official English curriculum still had to be covered, due to the end of year tests that the students needed to pass to move on to the next year, reading sessions only lasted 15-20 minutes a day.

Students in the Control Group continued to use the normal English curriculum which was covered in about 40 minutes a day. They worked through a textbook which focused on vocabulary, grammar, and communication skills. This was supplemented with regular workbook activities.

Teacher Preparation

The English teachers in the participating schools attended a two-day workshop to learn about the Shared Reading method. They were also introduced to associated activities that would help the students gain more from their interaction with the books. These activities included acting, rewriting, preparing big books, and discussing. At this workshop they received their first 25 books.

As the project progressed, two more one-day workshops were held, in June and September. These workshops focused on improving the teachers' story reading and questioning skills, as well as the student writing activities.

Unexpected Contributing Factors

Due to a Civil War in Sri Lanka during the time of this experiment, absenteeism ran about 20% and the schools were closed for two months. This resulted in the students being exposed to the books for only about 5 months. For this reason the end of year exam was postponed from November to January, at which point most of the students had not had contact with the books for about three months. Since English is not used at home, this is thought to have been a major disadvantage.

Evaluation of the Students

In January 1996 the students in both the "Books in School" classes, as well as the Control Group were tested as follows:

Year 4
*Reading Test: Matching pictures with words, phrases and sentences; Sentence completion
*Listening Comprehension Test: Matching picture with a sentence read aloud; Listening to unfamiliar stories that are read twice, and then answering questions.

Year 5
*Reading Test: Matching pictures with words, phrases and sentences; Sentence completion; Silent reading followed by comprehension questions
*Writing Test: Writing sentences describing a series of pictures
*Attitude Scale: Answering questions about their favorite activities and classes in school, as well as how many books they read, etc.

Also, the teacher and principal at each school was interviewed to find out how well the books were used and the kind of access the children had to the books. In addition, the teachers filled out an anonymous survey about their attitude towards the program.

Evaluation of Impact

Reading Tests

The post-experiment reading tests were structured in a very similar manner to the pre-experiment reading tests, and because of this a net gain could be calculated. For students in Year 4, the overall improvement of the students in the project schools, both urban and rural, was about 11%. In the control group the improvement was less that 4%. For students in Year 5 those involved with the project improved by about 9-10%. However those not involved improved only by about 3%.

Looking at the project schools in more detail shows that even within these schools there was a range of improvement. In three of the 20 schools, the low improvement level was enough to bring down the overall improvement of the project schools. Exploring the reasons for these low improvement scores it was found that in one school the teacher was not able to attend any of the workshops. In another the teacher left halfway through the year, and the replacement teacher did not attend workshops. In the third school, improvement was affected by the fact that the school was on the verge of closing due to low enrollment. This shows the importance of teacher training. The presence of the books alone is not enough.

Writing Tests

Overall the students in both the project schools and control schools had difficulty with the writing tests. Even with this, the results showed that the project urab schools had the best writing skills. While the project rural schools did not do as well, they were still clearly ahead of the control group. Again, problems with teacher participation and training in certain schools significantly lowered the scores for that school, irrespective of its location.

Final Thoughts

Once again the results prove the theory that by increasing the amount of time students spend engaged in the language, through literature, greatly improves their reading and writing skills. As can be seen from the reading tests, the students who were exposed to the books grew in their English proficiency 3 times as fast as those without exposure to the books. In addition, it is interesting to note that no school had good writing scores that did not also have good reading scores. This leads to the conclusion that the ability to read is a prerequisite to being a good writer, at least in a second language. Which means there should be all the more emphasis on promoting reading skills in second language classrooms, and this looks to be a successful method of doing so. The program does not take more time than current language instruction, it can even be added in addition to the current instruction as was done here. One key factor to note, it is important that the teachers be on board and participating fully in the project, both in school with the students and out of school with the workshops, for the students to receive all the benefits.