eVillage – Sri Lanka

Please send your comments to develop the English Plan which is detailed below.

All the eVillage communities (students, staff, professionals, villagers, etc.) need an English education program. It should be integrated with the ICT program. More weight should be put on educating students and youth than the others. However, the Professional Service Provider is of the view that this should be done using the resources available in the close proximity such as public school teachers, private tuition masters, local and foreign volunteers, online resource people, etc.

These methods were used in Mahavilachchiya Horizon Lanka Academy and students started getting A passes for OL English and they got the confidence in doing presentations in front of big audiences in Colombo conferences. So, with the right implementation this program can be used in all 5 eVillages as well.

1. Introduction to English Alphabet
   1. Teaching English alphabet to remember each letter by heart
   2. Teaching English alphabet in a way the learners can identify each letter correctly
   3. How to write English alphabet correctly in both block and small letters using double rule exercise books
   4. Each learner is expected to use double rule books for the exercises till they write correctly in them. Most probably after one or two books any student should be able to write letters correctly.
   5. Teacher should be able to check ALL exercise books. Teacher can first find few learners who do the writing properly and then get those learners to correct the other learners’’ books.
2. Identifying Sounds
   1. Learners should be asked to write Sri Lankan names such as names of the friends, family members, actors, actresses, sportspersons, singers, leaders, villages, cities, etc. – This is for the learners to understand how English letters make simple sounds when used with a purpose.
   2. Learners should be asked to write foreign names such as actors, actresses, sportspersons, singers, leaders, cities, countries, etc. – This is to understand how English letters are used in both regular and irregular ways.
   3. Learners should be asked to identify above mentioned proper names from English newspapers, magazines, text books, etc. and rewrite them in exercise books.
   4. Learners should be encouraged to watch English TV programs as much as possible and write down the proper names they find in the programs.
   5. Learners should be encouraged to listen to English radio stations and write down the proper names they hear.
3. Listening to English
   1. Learners should be asked to listen to English radio stations. No need of understanding the content into a great deal at the beginning. Rather than listening to local languages each learner should listen to an English radio station at least one hour per day. They can use the time while getting ready to come to school, meal times, etc. for this. (Teacher should talk to the students on what they listened to.)
   2. Teachers should do exercises by loud reading simple texts such as fairy tales, sports news, cricket score cards, interesting news items about teledramas, movies, etc in front of the students.
   3. Listening to at least one English news broadcast per day should be made compulsory. Learners should write down what they understood. Teacher can monitor how far they improve with time.
   4. Listening to live sports commentaries, special event commentaries, debates, documentaries on both radio and TV should be encouraged.
   5. Cassettes, CD ROMs, internet should be used to the maximum to encourage listening.
4. Speaking English
   1. Learners should be encouraged to read texts aloud. Teachers can use very simple texts at the beginning. At the beginning, learners can read proper nouns, etc aloud.
   2. Encouraging learners to act as announcers in all school, eVillage events. Certain events should be bilingual. And learners should be encouraged to do presentations about themselves, their projects, etc. in English for the visitors, villagers, etc.
   3. Learners should be used to bring live sports commentaries, festival commentaries in English along with a teacher.
   4. Debates, discussions, speeches, etc. should be organized and videoed as much as possible to correct their mistakes. Good videos can be uploaded to YouTube.com for a wider range of audiences.
   5. Learners should be encouraged to use IM (Instant Messenger) software such as Skype, Yahoo, etc with headphones and microphones to talk to online friends in English. The center manager should be able to monitor this well.
5. Reading English
   1. Learners should be encouraged to buy at least a Sunday English newspaper so that they can start reading from the simple texts in cartoons and advertisements to more advanced texts. May be few friends can get together and organize study circles and share the newspapers among the group and between the groups.
   2. Learners should read school text books as much as possible. The weaker students can read the lower grades’ text books. At this stage, teacher should not concentrate on the meaning of the text. Students should be encouraged just to read the content in the texts. Understanding the meanings can be done at a later stage.
   3. Learners should be encouraged to buy at least a small dictionary. First it should be an English-Sinhala dictionary and once the learners gather more knowledge, they should be encouraged to buy an English-English dictionary.
   4. Learners should be encouraged to read Sinhala translations of popular books such as Asterix, Tin Tin, Famous Five, Harry Potter, etc. and at a later stage they will start reading original English versions of the said books.
   5. Each student should be encouraged to buy at least a small English book once a month. They can start with small fairytales. There are very low cost books with Colombo old book sellers and may be the English teacher or SEMP center manager can collect money and buy books from Colombo once a month and transport them by a train or a bus.
6. Writing English
   1. All learners should be encouraged to maintain a diary and daily diary entries should be compulsory.
   2. All learners should be asked to maintain a journal. Both diary and journal can be published as a blog and once they get responses from others they will be encouraged to write more.
   3. All learners should be asked to contribute with news items, etc to www.hamletpamphlet.org which is a village news website. Learners’ reports will be added to this site with their names and email IDs. Only development related news should be posted leaving out controversial political, etc. news.
   4. Learners should be encouraged to write emails to their friends from other eVillages, schools, countries, etc.
   5. Learners should be encouraged to write professional reports, funding proposals, web updates, etc.