9-hole

Literacy students graduating from our literacy class is only the first step of their journey. Dr. John Cairns, the former Director of UNESCO’s Experimental World Literacy Program, estimated that students require at least 600 hours of reading practice to secure their skill in reading. To become fluent readers it isn’t enough to just be introduced to reading and writing the syllables needed for the Kovol language. Learning the syllables needs to be followed by consistent reading practice.

Our students are now into what we call “post literacy” where the goal is to give them the reading practice they need to cement literacy skills rather than lose them. 600 hours of material is a huge task for our post literacy program. The only written materials available are ones we have created ourselves! Every huge task is completed a little bit at a time and so for the moment here is the plan.

Our post literacy currently consists of a library of  19 short booklets of translated stories. There is a mix of non-fiction and fiction and the lengths range from 4 to 100 pages, but the longer books obviously took longer to produce! We’re expecting 2 copies of each title to arrive from the printer on the next helicopter flight.
The other part our post literacy effort is our structured 9-hole program.

The 9-hole program

9-hole refers to holes that are punched into a progress tracking bookmark. We have 7 reading levels: snail, gecko, rat, wallaby, pig, cassowary and eagle. Just as each animal is faster than the previous one, the levels mark a different reading speed. Snail starts at 20 words per minute and eagle ends at 100 words per minute reading speed.

At each level there are 9 tasks, or holes. Holes 1-3 are flashcard tasks where students study a list of words and syllables and need to show the teacher that they can say them all correctly in 1 minute. Holes 4-6 are writing tasks where students copy syllables, words and then sentences. It also includes dictation and a small amount of creative writing at the higher levels. Holes 7-9 are reading tasks. Students read booklets with 20-word long stories at snail and 100-word long stories at eagle. The syllables used are also restricted, with earlier levels only using the most common syllables until eventually at eagle we have the whole language available. Holes 7 and 8 are reading tasks where students need to answer comprehension questions to check they have taken in what they have read. Hole 9 is the 1 minute reading test. Students need to accurately read the story in a minute to pass.

The final reading level uses as its reading material paragraphs out of the Joseph story. I translated the 8 Joseph chapters of Genesis as a sort of translator training. What has been translated won’t all be used in the upcoming Bible teaching. We tell our students that the goal of the literacy program is that they can read God’s word for themselves, so what better ending is there than having them read from the Bible in their own language?

How hard should we push?

We’re now finishing the third week of 9-hole. We’ve chosen to hold classes from 9 to 11:30am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Excitement for this first class has been high. Outside the classroom on any given day will be a gaggle of spectators. It feels like reading has become a spectator sport sometimes! With all that excitement and all those spectators none of our students want to let the side down.

Our students seem to be enjoying the 9-hole more than the first course. They all get to move at their own speed. We’ve seen the students spread out and we have some working on the eagle level already and some still on the gecko level. As we hoped, we have caught the students discussing the level they are at and seeming to have high motivation to “level up”.
At the tail end of 4 months of classes 5 days a week, and now classes 3 days a week, we are starting to hear about a little strain on the students. We’ve heard indirect talk about people waiting for the course to finish before they plant a garden with their family, or family members talking about how they need to do all the garden work while a family member is in the class. The schedule is an arbitrary choice I made. To get things going I decided 5 days a week for literacy and 3 days a week for post literacy. I tried to get student input asking, “How often do you think we should have class?”, but the default response is always, “We don’t know. You guys know best.” So we’re keeping our ears open. The Hansen family and ourselves are flying out to Goroka in a week and a half for our annual conference and the 9-hole students will take a break. We’re considering coming up with a less intensive schedule.

The schedule intensity is particularly important to figure out for our potential literacy teachers. We’re going to be inviting 4 to 6 of the current graduates to train as literacy teachers and help us with the next class in the new year. Going forwards we want a literacy program run by the Kovol people for the Kovol people. We’re really eager to get some concrete feedback on what would be the best schedule, but culturally no one really dares to speak up to us too directly. Our high status due to our skin colour, money and education make us like lumbering elephants. We need a lot of wisdom and sensitivity to be able to hear people’s true opinions when they say, “We will do whatever you say.”

Literacy seems to have started well, but we need to be sensitive to figure out if the pace we have set is unsustainable for the long term.

The payoff

Having invested around 220 hours now into our students it’s gratifying to see signs of people reading outside of the classroom. Every now and then I look out the window to see two or three of our students huddled around a booklet reading together. Today a student showed me a story he had written at home in his exercise book. One of our students has used the backside of a poster at his house as a practice paper and he has filled it with handwriting practice.