Taking the sting out of learning English

Hope Chizuzu Features Correspondent
HOW often do we listen to our children pronounce English words either as they play or do their homework?
Are we as parents adequately equipped to assess, test and even assist them in doing it the right way, so that they do not end up saying exactly the opposite of what they meant?
Is it really possible to be perfect with the Queen’s language, coming as it does as a foreign, second or third language?

The questions above beg for honest answers, but crucially demand that we be thoroughly trained to be able to master the leading global language. Educationists in recent years have attempted to remedy deficiencies by studying and researching the problems before coming up with programmes. One such programme that captures all rudimentary aspects of teaching the complete language has been with us since the 1990s.

Teaching Handwriting Reading and Spellings Skills (THRASS) in Zimbabwe is being run under the watch of World Links in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Its director, Eliada Gudza, an educationist of impeccable credentials and experience, is a zealot in driving the project amongst mainly primary school teachers to dovetail it with the theme of “Catch them young”.

“The THRASS programme is based on 44 sounds of English (phonemes). Each box on the picture chart representing a different sound with 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds, focusing on the 120 key spellings of English (graphemes) as indicated in the 44 sound boxes.
“That helps learners of all ages and abilities to say the right sounds when they read and choose the right letters when they spell. The programme is also for pre-school learners, the gifted and those talented but requiring special education such as the deaf, autistic, dyslexic and those with Down’s syndrome,” Gudza explained.

To help ensure that the project cascades down to intended beneficiaries, World Links, housed at Zimsec Building in Mount Pleasant, in collaboration with the Education Ministry have established National Telecentre Networks in all provinces, which they use as conduits for channelling material such as charts, reading materials, CDs, computers and training programmes.

The centres are in every province, even though some provinces have demonstrated more appetite for the product than others, with Matabeleland provinces leading. The move was deliberate to enable training to cover everyone as will the distribution of the teaching materials for teachers.

“I must state that the schools in Matabeleland province have been very good. Their attendances of courses and training programmes have been excellent. We have registered the most numbers in terms of teachers attending training courses and uptake of materials. The level of enthusiasm has been humbling and we can see that in the way they have flooded our offices in Harare with requests for their needy areas at school and the ministry officials in those regions have been very supportive too. They have taken to the project so well that the results for it will be showing very soon if not already in their products,” he added soon after conducting one such workshops at Eveline Girls High in Bulawayo recently.

The programme, which is encouraged even at home since it is of a multi-sensory nature using activities that simultaneously involve vision (visuals), hearing (auditory) and touching (the VAK skills as commonly known in teaching circles), has a lot of unexplored benefits. Key among them is the THRASS Early Pack that comes in three categories of sing-along colouring book, pictures chart (desk size) and song books to encourage the correct pronunciation of words which in turn makes spelling easier to master.

Although there have been challenges regarding material provision to schools with the most debilitating being the fact the Zimra charges them 40 percent duty on the material when it arrives, World Links have persevered with the assistance of a South African bank, Bidvest, coming in very handy. Schools can access packaged programmes and computers for very low prices, where need is discovered and resources required.

The South African banking behemoth has been bearing the cost for production and delivery of material, including the shipment of computers and accessories for use in the project. World Links, which runs a fully stocked computer lab to package the correct software for use at schools has thousands of ready units for use as schools have been slow in taking up the gadgets with many rural school hamstrung by lack of electricity.

But THRASS has been a hit with Eaglesvale Preparatory School thaving been the first in line for it with Ariel, Ridgeview, Digglesford and Marikopo following.

The very important Nziramasanga Commission which raised, among many issues, language handicaps in the education system has been used to identify needy areas. Gudza, who was also a member of that Commission, added that they give schools state-of-the-art computers to enable the use of technology in teaching our children.

“Information technology is very key and we have embraced it in our project as a way teaching THRASS to our children. That is why we have computers to enable us to demonstrate the use proper sounds (phonemes) in spoken English with audio imitation making the whole thing real in realtime.

“It is important to also point out that it then calls for the prices of computers to be low to enable schools to buy them for their lessons. We offer ours at US$150 a whole unit under the programme to ensure honest use for it. Teaching speech sounds and spelling choices (graphemes) has been a wonderful experience with the use of computers.

“What we also discovered during the training programmes is that few teachers have computers but almost all of them have mobile phones, which demonstrates that if we offer such facilities at concessionary prices, our children will benefit for the proper teaching as teachers are ready to embrace innovation in the teaching discourse,” Gudza said.

Hope Chizuzu is a Media and Communication Consultant