Literacy Program - Essay Example

R.Preeti 26/4/2009 LITERACY PROGRAMME The main aim of a literacy programme is to fulfill the very objective of education----the help a student develop his or her reading comprehension, writing, speaking and listening skills. These are the four-fold skill-sets of an effective literacy programme. An effective literacy programme is one that helps a student overcome infirmities and helps the student develop his communication skills in accordance with the standard required. This paper attempts to develop a literacy programme for students, in order to achieve this end. This literacy programme is scheduled for a week's time, wherein a strategy is evolved to include all components of the programme. READING COMPREHENSION When the reading level of the student is identified, "the objective then becomes measurable, and the teacher can collect information that will provide evidence as to whether it has been met" (Gunning, 2004). In order to improve the reading comprehension of a student, I would like to introduce a combination of materials, that would help a student understand the different kinds of written materials and also improve his overall reading skills. I would include the following components in the reading comprehension module: Reading of a newspaper, a classic novel that is pertinent to the standard of the student, reading columns or articles by eminent personalities that would interest the student, reading a text book of English language, reading comics and finally, reading a project based on the interest levels of a student of the particular standard. Each day of the week-long strategy would include one item from the list each. The list is a pretty comprehensive one, with diversity in the reading approach. This would help a student understand the different kinds of writing styles and also help the child appreciate and absorb the different communication styles, thus imbibing it into his or her own practice. The pre-test would include a reading comprehension test that would portray the students' ability before taking up the module. After the course of the week's programme, a post-test in the form a summative assessment programme, to determine the effectiveness of the programme. PHONICS Teaching phonics is an especially difficult task, since the English language makes use of a combination of sounds, that are pronounced differently under different rules of stress and syllable-framework. Hence, students find it difficult to understand pronunciation under different circumstances. For examples, homonyms are difficult to teach. Hence, the literacy programme would include a strategy to help students pronounce words correctly, keeping in mind, the context. The programme would include reading lessons, wherein students would be introduced to the concept of phonetics, the symbols for each modern letter in the English alphabet, the concept of syllables, exercises based on not just synonyms and antonyms, but also homonyms. Exercises in the form of listening lessons, by encouraging a student to record his/ her reading test everyday on the tape and then asking him/her to come up with a personally assessment of the pronunciation of words. This would help the student understand and analyse words, besides marking the progress he has made in the course of the programme. DEVELOPING VOCABULARY In a literacy programme, developing the strength of the students' vocabulary is very important. For this aspect of literacy education, one cannot generalize the extent of a student's vocabulary. The strength of a student's vocabulary is dependent on the student's experiences, social setting and the exposure to the language. However, it is important to devise a module that all students can adhere to. The week-long programme would include sessions of reading Shakespeare and classic poetry. Upon encountering new words, students would be encouraged to use the dictionary extensively. Writing down new words with their meanings, learning about half a dozen new words every day, would ensure the right balance of learning new words, without removing it from the context, thus promoting contextualized reading. Word sets, word diagrams, solving crosswords and jumbled words, playing scrabble and word games are some fun ways to involve students and making the developing of vocabulary easy and effective. STRUCTURAL READING A literacy programme also encompasses the studying of the structure of a text, the characterization, the genre, the style of writing, etc. For this, the students must be exposed to the different styles of writing by varied kinds of authors from different backgrounds. The students must be taught to analyse the text, based on the genre, the backdrop of the work, the ideas and themes of the work, the kind of language used, the impact of the text et al. A critical study of a text helps a student draw parallels and differentiate one text from another on the basis of the above mentioned parameters. To achieve this end, students will be studying one short work every two days. The first day will involve the reading of the work and the next d ay will involve the analyzing bit. This process repeats in three sets, for three different works. Then, on the final day of the programme, a comparative study of all three works on the parameters will be done. The assessment can be based upon the final copy of comparison done by the students. WRITING SKILLS In a literacy development programme, the written communication of a student matters immensely. The tangible form of a student's communication ability is the written form of communication. Hence, a module to help students develop their writing skills, is imperative. The training sessions in writing would revolve around the usage of the words learnt in the vocabulary session. It would involve writing on different genres, like business writing, article-writing in the form of the inverted pyramid style, short story writing, writing of essays et al. The module would involve the students thinking creatively, logically, investigating and analyzing and also translating thoughts into words and using the best possible words, to describe and convey ideas for the right impact. The assessment will not only assess the creative skills of a student, but will also assess how the other modules have impacted his or her writing skills positively. Besides this, the student's ability to use the right words in the right situation, to create the right impact will be tested, apart from sentence, paragraph and story construction. OVERALL SKILLS The literacy programme would thus, endeavour to help a student achieve a great improvement in his or her oral communication, the pronunciation of words, the usage of the right kind of words and using a diverse collection of words, the analyzing of written texts and works of literature, the ability to write different kinds of communication and creative works. Thus, the student is impacted positively by the overall approach of the literary programme. The assessments in the form of a multi-fold approach, by emphasizing on the involvement of the student in monitoring his or her progress is a great way to infuse interest in the student and to encourage him or her. The assessments help the student understand his or her weaknesses and gets the student to work on it. The final overall assessment of the programme will be assessed on the final day, and will include a public-speaking test, to test the vocabulary, the content, the structuring of the speech etc. It will be followed by a written test, wherein a student can come up with a story that is creative, novel and written keeping in mind the critical aspects of literature as also the structure, vocabulary et al. Hence, the literacy programme is aimed at the overall development of student's communication. REFERENCES Gunning, T. G. (2008).Creating literacy instruction for all students in grades 4 to 8(2nded.).Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. The website provided. Read More