Handbook of Literacy in Africa (Literacy Studies, 24) 3031262492, 9783031262494

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Literacy Studies: Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences, Linguistics, Psychology and Education

R. Malatesha Joshi Catherine A. McBride Bestern Kaani Gad Elbeheri   Editors

Handbook of Literacy in Africa

Literacy Studies Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences, Linguistics, Psychology and Education Volume 24

Series Editor R. Malatesha Joshi , Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Editorial Board Members Rui Alves, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate School, New York, USA Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Catherine McBride, Department of Human Development, Family Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Rebecca Treiman, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

While language defines humanity, literacy defines civilization. Understandably, illiteracy or difficulties in acquiring literacy skills have become a major concern of our technological society. A conservative estimate of the prevalence of literacy problems would put the figure at more than a billion people in the world. Because of the seriousness of the problem, research in literacy acquisition and its breakdown is pursued with enormous vigor and persistence by experts from diverse backgrounds such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and education. This, of course, has resulted in a plethora of data, and consequently it has become difficult to integrate this abundance of information into a coherent body because of the artificial barriers that exist among different professional specialties. The purpose of this series is to bring together the available research studies into a coherent body of knowledge. Publications in this series are of interest to educators, clinicians and research scientists in the above-mentioned specialties. Some of the titles suitable for the Series are: fMRI, brain imaging techniques and reading skills, orthography and literacy; and research based techniques for improving decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension skills. Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Marianna Georgouli; Springer; Van Godewijckstraat 30; 3300 AA Dordrecht; The Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected]

R. Malatesha Joshi • Catherine A. McBride Bestern Kaani • Gad Elbeheri Editors

Handbook of Literacy in Africa

Editors R. Malatesha Joshi Teaching, Learning, and Culture Texas A&M University College Station, TX, USA Bestern Kaani School of Education, Department of Eductional Psychology, Sociology, and Special Education The University of Zambia Lusaka, Zambia

Catherine A. McBride Department of Human Development and Family Science Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA Gad Elbeheri Global Education Consultants New Cairo, Egypt

ISSN 2214-000X     ISSN 2214-0018 (electronic) Literacy Studies ISBN 978-3-031-26249-4    ISBN 978-3-031-26250-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Introduction

Africa is the second largest, second most-populous continent, with the youngest population in the world. There are over 2000 languages spoken in Africa, along with its varieties of writing systems. Yet, to our knowledge, there has not been a systematic attempt to bring the literacy development in Africa into a coherent volume. We hope this volume will bridge that gap. Africa is widely accepted as the place of origin of humans, the earliest Homo sapiens (modern humans), found in Ethiopia. Among the many firsts in Africa, we can also add the written language, at least the precursor to the alphabetic writing systems as we know them today. Egyptian Hieroglyphics is the forerunner to many of the current alphabetic writing systems such as Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts (Pillai 2021). This system encompassed alphabetic/phonetic, ideographic, and pictographic principles. Thus, the signs do not represent a bird and an eye but the sounds /m/ and /jr/ and, by contrast, the ideographic signs represent objects or an idea, not the sounds; for example, represents Sarcophagus. Furthermore, the format of Egyptian writing was often determined not by spoken language but by social and religious conventions, which resulted in written syntax departing noticeably from spoken Egyptian. For example, the phrase “servant of God,” which ought to be written as

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hm-ra, (hm = servant; ra = God) was actually written as ra-hm “God servant” where the logogram ra (God) preceded the phonogram hm (servant). This change in syntax was due to the tradition of giving precedence to the Gods over man. Thus, the language and literacy aspects of Africa deserve special attention. In the present volume, despite the fact that there are 54 countries and 8 territories in Africa, we were able to cover literacy in only about 20 countries. One of the biggest challenges that Africa is facing is that the majority of children in Africa learn to read and write in a language that they do not speak. This theme is highlighted in this volume, and it deserves careful consideration. In this volume, we have arranged the chapters from the north to south, starting from Egypt and going all the way to South Africa. David Share opens the volume by outlining the problems associated with the literacy situation in Africa and sums up it one word: “catastrophic.” He traces this to the linguistic, orthographic, and pedagogical legacy of colonialism. In the North, with mostly Arabic-speaking countries, Share notes that on the 2016 PIRLS rankings, 9 of the 10 lowest performing countries were the Arabic-speaking countries; this phenomenon is attributed to factors such as diglossia and the unique visual-­ orthographic features of the Arabic writing system; poverty, civil unrest, and armed conflict exacerbate the difficulties of literacy learning in many North African countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the major obstacles for literacy acquisition seems to be linguistic distance – the often very great difference between the child’s spoken language at home and the language of instruction in school, i.e., diglossia. In the early grades, the home language or the predominant language is often used for instruction. However, beginning in the second or third grades, languages such as English, French, and Portuguese are introduced to students. These languages are grammatically and phonologically often dramatically different from the language children are used to. Further, the teaching methods suitable for the many orthographies such as English, French, and Portuguese may not be suitable for the transparent local African languages. Share also notes several problems with teacher preparation and teacher resources. For instance, many teachers themselves may not be proficient in a given second, or foreign, language such as English, French, and Portuguese that they must teach in. Other problems include limited resources such as books, papers, and pencils, large class sizes, and overcrowded classrooms. Further, on the home front, there is very little support for children’s literacy learning, as there may be very few books and other reading materials available at home. Moreover, parents and caregivers may not be familiar with the language of instruction in school, be it English, French, or Portuguese. Teachers also may not have been prepared with appropriate instructional procedures in their pre-service training programs. Share calls for a “fundamental reappraisal” of the educational system in Africa.

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Daniels overviews various African languages and scripts. He explains phonological principles, such as labial flap, labiovelar stops, vowels and vowel harmony, implosives, and tones in different African languages. Further, Daniels highlights some distinctive features of different African languages. He begins with Khoisan languages, mainly found around Kalahari and noted for communicating through clicks, “made by creating an air-tight space in the mouth, reducing the air pressure in it, and releasing it audibly” (Daniels, this volume). Niger-Congo is another distinct group of languages that includes Bantu, which is widely known and the most widespread of the Niger-Congo group. The Nilo-Saharan group includes the Nubian language group mainly spoken in southern Egypt and Sudan. The Afroasiatic group of languages includes Egyptian, as well as Semitic, including Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. Some of the other Afroasiatic languages are Berber, Cushitic, Omotic, and Chadic. Daniels notes that, in addition to various spoken languages, Africa also has many indigenous writing systems; he traces these from ancient times to modern times. Beginning with Egyptian hieroglyphics, several writing systems can be traced back to Africa. These include Aramaic, Coptic, Tuareg, a variety of Berber, and Meroitic, which is an abugida with an inherent /a/. Some of the present-day scripts use the Ethiopic script, which was first used for the Gəʿəz language and also for Amharic. One of the important developments is the Vai syllabary. Those using Vai tend to have a high literacy rate. One of the challenges to literacy development in various African countries has been to develop the written equivalents/counterparts, or the orthography, to many of the African spoken languages. Roberts traces the history of an attempt to develop an equivalent Roman script to many of the African spoken languages beginning from the 1850s. He notes the challenges involved in such a task, including aspects such as the under-representation of vowels, grammatical tone marking, dialect, and cross-border issues. How these aspects can be applied in countries such as Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are highlighted in this chapter. Barbara Trudell, Benjamin Piper, and Wendi Ralaingita articulate the problems with the language of instruction and the problem associated with it in many countries of Africa, especially in sub-­ Saharan countries (countries that lie below the Sahara Desert). For instance, in Kenya, Kiswahili is used as the language of instruction and students might have been exposed to it before instruction, whereas in Malawi, the language of instruction is English but only 5% of the population actually speaks English. Further, many of the indigenous languages, such as in Nigeria, where there are literally more than 500, may not have a written format, but only a spoken one. Additionally, in some of the African countries, many of the teachers themselves may not be proficient in the language that they are expected to teach in. Thus, literacy acquisition is a huge challenge in Africa. One of the oldest civilizations and writing systems was developed in Egypt. Elbeheri, after explaining the phonological, morphological, and orthographic characteristics of the Arabic language, overviews the educational system in Egypt and offers solutions to improve the system in Egypt. Similar problems are also faced in Libya, but the country takes a broader definition of literacy to include reading and

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writing skills but also communication. Omar also outlines the problems facing Libya, including those that are political and related to hunger. Laaredj-Campbell outlines similar problems in Algeria but also includes very current problems (for 2020–2022) with COVID, consequently highlighting distance learning as well as the problem with the education of young girls and women. Interestingly, since the initiative by the Ministry of Education in the 1990s, the author notes that actually in Algeria both young girls and women surpass men in literacy skills. Morocco also faces similar problems as in other countries of Africa with low literacy rates as well as problems with the diglossic nature of Arabic. Dabi notes the situation in Morocco and highlights its three-language system – Arabic as the “main school language,” Amazigh as a “language of communication,” and French as a “language of wider communication.” However, Amazigh-speaking children, although they have difficulty in the first two grades due to learning in Arabic, seem to catch up from grade 3. Additionally, students are also exposed to and learn from different languages such as French, Spanish, and English beginning about grade 3. One of the more contemporary countries, Eritrea, begins children’s literacy learning at grade 1 with English and a regional language. However, beginning in grade 6, children use English as their medium of instruction in school as well, written in three languages (Tigrinya, Arabic, and English) and three scripts (Ge’ez, Arabic, and Latin). The country has nine regional languages and there are efforts to teach adults in one of these languages to improve the literacy skills. The authors of this chapter on Eritrea cite a study that showed an advantage of the alphasyllabic Ge’ez script over the Latin script in reading and spelling at the early grade levels for the children, but this advantage appears to disappear among skilled readers at grade 4. Certainly, more research is needed. Mekonnen reviews the literacy education in Ethiopia first from a historical perspective going forward to the present time. The chapter highlights the progress made in the past, starting from religious education and moving forward to the current situation with an emphasis on technological education. Despite the progress made recently, Mekonnen points out that problems still persist in Ethiopia with its many different languages: There are about 80 different languages in the country. Further, as in some other countries in Africa, there is a persistent problem of the school language being different from the home language, in addition to neglect of both educational needs of girls and of students with disabilities. Below, we highlight some of the situations in other African nations as well. Côte d’Ivoire lies in the western part of Africa and is the leading producer of cocoa in the world. Thus, many of its school-aged children, especially in rural areas, work in cocoa fields. There are about 70 spoken languages in the country, and the literacy rates in the local languages are low, ranging from 5% to 60% depending on the language. However, literacy instruction in school generally is in French, though only about 43% of the adult population is literate in French. Recently, the government has made plans to combat this problem by opening a literacy center in every school district and encouraging bilingual education that includes both a local language and French. With many initiatives from the government, it is hoped that the literacy situation will improve in Côte d’Ivoire.

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Similar to Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso lies in western Africa. It includes 60 or so local languages, mostly tonal, and the instruction in elementary schools is in French, in addition to the local language. There are also schools in which the medium of instruction is only in French. With so many local languages, the country developed a national writing system based on the alphabetic system in 1979; this system has undergone many revisions since then. Despite this national writing system, sometimes Burkina Faso schools that make use of French as the medium of instruction are preferred because of perceived job prospects for those who can communicate fluently in French. Burkina Faso has faced similar problems to other African countries related to literacy instruction, such as lack of available literacy materials, overcrowded classrooms, and teacher shortages. In addition, it has had to endure effects of terrorist activities, particularly in the northern and eastern parts of the country, resulting in displacement of children and closure of schools. In another western African nation, Ghana, as in most of Africa, students are taught in two languages, namely, English and one of the main languages. Notably, there are 73 total languages spoken in Ghana. Thus, whereas the medium of instruction is English, one of the 11 Ghanian languages is also introduced for 35–40 min per day. In this chapter, Schroeder and Nindow explain the phonological and morphological principles of 11 major Ghanian languages and their work in developing scope and sequence in Ghanian first and second grades based on their work with 9400 students in 470 schools and 940 teachers. In this study, students using their trained scope and sequence read 17 more words per minute on average, as compared to the group that did not use this scope and sequence. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly called Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. This is the second largest country by size in Africa and the biggest Francophone country in the world. DRC has three types of languages: official, national, and other. The “official language” of DRC is French. There are also four “national languages,” based on usage by large groups of people and in many urban centers. These four languages are Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili (also referred to as Kiswahili), and Ciluba (also referred to as Tshiluba). Swahili, Lingala, and Ciluba are fairly transparent orthographies; Lingala and Ciluba are also tonal languages. The DRC practice is to teach schoolchildren in Grades 1 and 2 to read and write in one of the national languages or in the children’s home language if the materials are available. French is taught only as an oral language in the first two grades, but beginning in Grade 3, reading and writing starts in French also. In the chapter on the DRC, Louge, Gándara, Gibson, and Thomas describe a successful development of teaching and learning materials, along with scope and sequence charts in French as well as in Kiswahili, Lingala, and Ciluba. These were developed based on international best practices for Grades 1–2 in both formal and non-formal schools, or alternative learning programs. Kenya is a country in Eastern Africa, and its educational system follows a similar pattern to that of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the sense that the mother tongue is taught as the main medium of instruction in grades 1–3, while English and Kiswahili are taught as subjects. There may be as many as 67 spoken

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languages in Kenya. From fourth grade onward, English is the main language of instruction in Kenya, while Kiswahili continues to be taught as a subject. However, instruction in English is preferred by families and communities despite students’ low levels of oral fluency in English because it is seen as prestigious and opens up avenues for better employment as well as access to technological tools. Wawire’s chapter summarizes some difficulties faced by Kenyan students. The author notes some problems with teacher training, mastery of effective pedagogical skills, high absenteeism among both teachers and students, overcrowded classrooms, limited resources, and a lack of literacy support as some of the existing problems in Kenyan educational systems. The Kenyan government is trying to address these issues to improve the education of Kenyan students. Malawi is located in the south central part of Africa. Malawi has 16 indigenous languages, but the majority of the people can speak Chichewa, a member of the Bantu language family. Therefore, children are taught Chichewa in school from the early grades; English, the official language of the country, is also introduced as a second language. Chauma outlines the literacy problems in Malawi by citing studies that have shown that, in the second year of elementary school, 70% of children are not reading a single word. Moreover, only 40% of sixth year students could read materials written for their grade level. The author cites large class sizes, understaffing, lack of classroom space, absenteeism, and failure to use evidence-based literacy practices as the major reasons for high incidence of literacy problems. However, the Malawi government has started some programs created in order to resolve the literacy problems. One such program centers on reading camps, an after-school program developed by the World Vision International organization. The next two chapters of this volume highlight literacy learning in Zambia. Zambia is a land-locked country with about 70 languages and dialects. English is the official language of the country, and instruction in English is introduced by grade 2. From the 70 indigenous languages, 7 of these, belonging to the Bantu language family group, are considered to be national languages. These are primarily tonal and widely spoken. Their orthographies are fairly transparent. In their chapter on literacy-learning in Zambia, Kaani and Joshi outline some of the problems that are associated with children’s literacy acquisition. These include a lack of reading materials at home, underexposure to print-rich environments, over-crowded classrooms, mismatch between students’ mother tongue and the language of instruction in schools, and a lack of evidence-based reading programs used in schools. Preschool education is not common in Zambia, and many preschool children, particularly in rural areas, drop out mainly to help their parents. These problems are reflected in the poor performance by Zambian schoolchildren in the recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) report comparing the reading performances of children across countries. Kaani and Joshi conclude the chapter with some suggestions as to how to improve the current literacy crises. While most of the book chapters in this volume highlight issues related to reading skills, Kalindi and McBride describe a study on writing among Zambian second graders. The chapter explores adult mediation of children’s developing writing skills, specifically invented spelling, in Bemba, one of the seven Zambian national

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languages. Bemba is a highly transparent tonal language. Participants in this study were Zambian early learners who were on average around the level of grade 2 and generally classified as of relatively low socio-economic status. The authors show that parent/adult mediation of writing is uniquely important for literacy acquisition, specifically, invented spelling, among Zambian early learners. They offer recommendations as to how to improve literacy acquisition further in Zambia, including community involvement of adults, including parents or other literate helpers, to provide feedback, and to scaffold the learning process in children. Thus, it is important to establish collaborations among children, teachers, and their parents or caregivers. In the next chapter, Lee, Puplampu, and Zuilkowski report on their findings based on their interviews with teachers in Zambia and Mozambique about the poor literacy performances of children in those two countries. Both countries are economically poor, with different “foreign” national languages, namely, English in Zambia and Portuguese in Mozambique. All teachers interviewed in this study were from rural areas and taught in Grades 1 through 3. It was observed that the schools in both the countries lacked many common, essential learning materials, such as textbooks, magazines, maps, and number and letter charts. Teachers also mentioned absenteeism of students and other problems. However, the teachers were also resourceful in using and suggesting alternate materials for fostering learning of reading, writing, and mathematics. Zhang, Quinonez, Lai, Nakamura, Downes, Manuel, and Joshi also present the results of a study conducted on the literacy status in Mozambique. According to the 2020 World Bank System, Mozambique is one of the top ten poorest countries in the world. The literacy level of the country is also low, with the adult literacy rate estimated to be about 45%. In their study, about 1500 students in grades 1–3 were administered word reading, pseudo-word reading, and fluency tasks in both Portuguese (L2) and in the local language (L1) of the students. In this work, rural area students manifested significantly lower L2 fluency scores than urban students. Moreover, L1 fluency played a significant role in L2 fluency individual differences. Namibia is highlighted in the next chapter. This country is located in southern Africa, with English as the official language. Primary school students in Namibia often have low literacy skills. Mashinja notes that 1 of 16 languages is used as the medium of instruction in Namibia up to Grade 3. From the beginning, English is introduced as a subject; however, beginning Grade 4, English is used as the medium of instruction and the home language is then taught as a subject. The chapter presents a brief overview of the linguistic properties of the Bantu and Khoisan language families. Because of the varieties of Namibian languages and the fact that the medium of instruction is English, much translanguaging occurs. Literacy learning difficulties in Namibian children may be attributable to some language switching, lack of availability of literacy materials in both English and Namibian languages, and inadequate teacher preparation. However, there are indications that the Namibian government might be making moves to improve the situation.

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The next chapter focuses on Botswana, a landlocked country in southern Africa, next to Namibia. Although the precise number of languages of Botswana is not known, 90% of the natives of Botswana use Setswana as either a first or second language. It is the only language used as a medium of instruction in the first two grades and offered as a compulsory subject in the elementary and secondary schools. However, English is used as a medium of instruction starting from Grade 3, even though many teachers, especially in rural areas, have reported that it is difficult to teach in English. Consequently, many teachers have reported continuing to teach in Setswana, not in English. Further, there are also difficulties in the secondary education as many students do not attend the school regularly for various reason including helping in housework or working outside the home in order to help with the financial needs of the family. There is a move to encourage the use of mother tongue in earlier grades given that some research suggests that students perform better when they are instructed and tested in their native tongues in Grades 1 and 2. Omidire and Morgan note the problems facing Africa regarding literacy acquisition and report on the situation in South Africa based on an in-depth interview with two classroom teachers of Grade 1. Their schools were located in an inner city, low-­ fee, private school in Pretoria. The authors note the problem based on the UNESCO (2017) report that “Across the region (Sub-Saharan Africa), nearly nine out of ten kids between the ages of about 6 and 14 are not gaining minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics.” Similar to the situations outlined before, South Africa also encourages use of home language and an additional language, generally English, in the first three grades. Omidire and Morgan were interested in exploring the methods teachers use to teach pre-reading skills to English Second Language learners and the resources and support available to teachers. Both teachers interviewed reported that they use evidence-based synthetic phonics approaches in teaching reading but noted the challenges for effective literacy instruction such as the large class size at Grade 1, with about 35 students per class. In addition, the children came from different language backgrounds, making it difficult to teach English. Other problems noted were poor parental involvement and lack of teaching resources. On-going teacher training and support to help the teachers may help improve the learning and teaching situations in South Africa. Overall, this volume begins the critical task of cataloguing literacy learning in countries throughout Africa. The chapters provide some comparisons across countries as well as some analyses within individual countries. Overall, the empirical data from Africa remain sparse. Yet clearly some of the issues related to literacy acquisition in various African nations are unique and in need of increased attention. Each country is distinctive, but many African countries face similar difficulties, particularly in the area of mismatches among the languages the children actually speak, the languages their teachers and parents speak, and the languages and scripts of reading and writing instruction. Such issues interact with socio-economic status broadly defined, including, most specifically, access to literacy resources, as highlighted by Share and others. We are proud to have compiled this important resource for researchers interested in literacy learning in Africa. But this is only the

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beginning. We look forward to both more and more research in this critical area and also unique solutions to issues of language and literacy mismatches around the African continent and around the world. We hope our volume has energized your interests in researching and ameliorating the unique challenges of children’s literacy learning in Africa. Thank you for your interest in this far-reaching and vital issue. College Station, TX, USA West Lafayette, IN, USA Lusaka, Zambia New Cairo, Egypt

R. Malatesha Joshi Catherine A. McBride Bestern Kaani Gad Elbeheri

Contents

 Literacy and Illiteracy in Africa: The Tower of Babel Predicament����������    1 David L. Share Languages of Africa ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19 Peter T. Daniels Non-Roman Scripts of Africa��������������������������������������������������������������������������   45 Peter T. Daniels Roman Script Orthography Development in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives��������������������������������������������������   59 David Roberts Language of Instruction in the African Classroom: Key Issues, Challenges and Solutions������������������������������������������������������������   79 Barbara Trudell, Benjamin Piper, and Wendi Ralaingita Literacy in Egypt����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  103 Gad Elbeheri  Literacy Practices in Basic Education at Libyan Schools����������������������������  121 Youssif Zaghwani Omar  Literacy and Education in Multilingual Algeria ������������������������������������������  135 Anne Laaredj-Campbell  Language Choice, Literacy, and Education Quality in Morocco����������������  153 Mohammed Dahbi  Literacy Education in Multiple Languages and Scripts in Eritrea������������  185 Yonas Mesfun Asfaha and Saleh Mahmud Idris Literacy in the Polyglot Ethiopia: Towards Breaking the Quantity-Efficacy Tradeoff ����������������������������������������������������������������������  211 Abebayehu Messele Mekonnen

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 Literacy in Côte d’Ivoire ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  235 Kaja K. Jasińska, Mary-Claire Ball, and Sosthène Guei  Literacy in Burkina Faso��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  255 Béatrice Konfe Tiendrebeogo and JeDene Reeder  Ghana’s Orthographies Shape Literacy Curriculum Design����������������������  269 Leila L. Schroeder and Mohammed Osman Nindow Teaching Linguistically Diverse Students: A Case Study for Developing Early Grade Literacy Materials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo������������������������������������������������������  299 Nathalie J. Louge, Fernanda Gándara, Maik Gibson, and Hali M. Thomas  Language and Literacy Practices in Kenya��������������������������������������������������  327 Brenda Aromu Wawire  Malawi Chichewa Language: Handbook of Literacy in Africa������������������  353 Amos Moses Chauma Parent and Literate Helper-Child Writing Interaction in Zambian Children ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  377 Sylvia Chanda Kalindi and Catherine McBride Literacy Practices in Zambia: Becoming Literate in a Multilingual Classroom����������������������������������������������������������������������������  405 Bestern Kaani and R. Malatesha Joshi How Do Teachers Organize Primary School Literacy Environments in Zambia and Mozambique?������������������������������������������������  439 Jeongmin Lee, Nefertiti Puplampu, and Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski The Non-Existent Culture of Reading and Misplaced Institutional Policy on African Languages: An Academic Epidemic for Low Literacy in Namibian Schools����������������������������������������������������������  463 Begani Ziambo Mashinja Historical Development of Setswana and the Teaching of Literacy in Botswana Schools��������������������������������������������������������������������  487 Annah Molosiwa and Andy Chebanne Expressive Language Proficiency and Decoding Development in Local Languages and Portuguese in Mozambique: Evidence from Nampula and Zambézia��������������������������������������������������������  507 Shuai Zhang, Juan F. Quinonez-Beltran, Jialin Lai, Pooja R. Nakamura, John A. Downes, Carlos J. Manuel, and R. Malatesha Joshi The Teaching of Pre-Reading Skills in Multilingual Classrooms: What Can We Learn?��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  529 Funke Omidire and Leanne Morgan

Contributors

Yonas  Mesfun  Asfaha  Department of Language Education, Asmara College of Education, Asmara, Eritrea Mary-Claire  Ball  Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Amos Moses Chauma  Department of Curriculum and Teaching Studies, School of Education, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi Andy  Chebanne  Department of French, Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Mohammed  Dahbi  School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Ifrane, Morocco Peter T. Daniels  Independent Scholar, Jersey City, NJ, USA John A. Downes  American Institutes for Research, Arlington, VA, USA Gad Elbeheri  New Cairo, Egypt Fernanda Gándara  Room to Read, San Francisco, CA, USA Maik Gibson  SIL International, Dallas, TX, USA Sosthène  Guei  Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire Saleh  Mahmud  Idris  Department of Language Education, Asmara College of Education, Asmara, Eritrea Kaja  K.  Jasińska  Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada R. Malatesha Joshi  School of Education and Human Development, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

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Contributors

Bestern  Kaani  School of Education, Department of Eductional Psychology, Sociology, and Special Education, The University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia Sylvia Chanda Kalindi  Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada Anne Laaredj-Campbell  Educational Exchange Service (PAD) at the Secretariat of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz), Bonn, Germany Jialin Lai  Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, School of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Jeongmin  Lee  The Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Nathalie J. Louge  FHI 360, Durham, NC, USA Mark Lynd  School-to-School International, Pacifica, CA, USA Carlos  J.  Manuel  Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Faculdade de Letras e Ciencias Sociais, Campus Principal Universitario, Maputo, Mozambique Begani Ziambo Mashinja  University of Namibia, Katima Mulilo Campus, Katima Mulilo, Namibia Catherine  McBride  Department of Human Development and Family Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Abebayehu  Messele  Mekonnen  Department of Linguistics, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Annah  Molosiwa  Department of Languages and Social Sciences Education, Faculty of Education, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Leanne  Morgan  Department of Educational Psychology, Groenkloof Campus, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Pooja R. Nakamura  American Institute for Research, Arlington, VA, USA Mohammed  Osman  Nindow  Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana Youssif  Zaghwani  Omar  Benghazi Language Center, University of Benghazi, Benghazi, Libya Funke  Omidire  Department of Educational Psychology, Groenkloof Campus, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Benjamin Piper  RTI, Nairobi, Kenya Nefertiti Puplampu  Webster University, Accra, Ghana

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Juan  F.  Quinonez-Beltran  Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, School of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Wendi Ralaingita  RTI, Evanston, IL, USA JeDene  Reeder  SIL West Africa and SIL Francophone Africa, Port Orchard, WA, USA David Roberts  Independent Researcher, Cornwall, UK Leila L. Schroeder  Literacy Department, SIL International, Dallas, TX, USA David L. Share  Department of Learning Disabilities and Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Hali M. Thomas  School-to-School International, Pacifica, CA, USA Béatrice  Konfe  Tiendrebeogo  SIL Francophone Africa and Advocacy and Alliance Building, SIL Africa, Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso Barbara Trudell  SIL Africa Learning & Development, Nairobi, Kenya Brenda Aromu Wawire  African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi Kenya, Human Development Theme, Nairobi, Kenya Shuai Zhang  University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT, USA Stephanie  Simmons  Zuilkowski  Learning Systems Institute, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Literacy and Illiteracy in Africa: The Tower of Babel Predicament David L. Share

Abstract  This chapter surveys a variety of factors that have conspired and continue to conspire to ensure that Africa remains the world’s least literate continent. I focus mainly on the fact that most African children are educated in a language they don’t speak – either the ex-colonial languages such as English, French, or Portuguese in Sub-Saharan Africa or Modern Standard Arabic in Arabophone North Africa. This ostensible “solution” to the challenges of communicating across a multitude of mutually unintelligible African vernaculars (a “Tower of Babel” predicament) rapidly replaces the largely token mother-tongue instruction that exists in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa in the initial elementary grades. Additional obstacles to literacy include the adoption of a European writing system (the Roman alphabet) that is well-adapted to European languages but has proven difficult to adapt to African languages, and a “large-unit” reading pedagogy that has proven popular for teaching children to read in centuries-old “deep” orthographies such as English and French but which differ markedly from the fledgling and highly “transparent” African orthographies used in mother-tongue reading instruction. Additional factors, briefly reviewed, include endemic geopolitical turmoil such as coups, terrorist insurgencies, and civil war, extreme economic hardship, a predominantly oral culture that sees little intrinsic value in books and literacy, and entrenched ex-colonial beliefs and practices regarding the superiority of European languages, writing systems, teaching methods, and culture. I also touch on two other obstacles specific to literacy acquisition in Arabophone North Africa – diglossia and the unique visual-­ orthographic features of the Arabic writing system, namely, allography, letter similarity, cursivity/ligaturing and the multi-linear diacritical system of tashkil. I conclude by discussing some of the deterrents to conducting literacy research in Africa, and thoughts about the future of African literacy.

D. L. Share (*) Department of Learning Disabilities and Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_1

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1 Introduction Literacy in Africa can be summed up in a single word – disastrous. On worldwide rankings of 4th grade reading literacy (Mullis et al., 2016), African countries lie at the very bottom of the 50-nation list. Among the four North-African Arabicspeaking countries featured in this volume, the two that participated in the 2016 survey – Egypt and Morocco ranked 49th and 48th respectively, surpassed only by South Africa in last place – 50/50. What does this mean in absolute terms? Across the 50 participating nations, 96% of children worldwide reached the lowest of the four PIRLS benchmarks – the Minimum Basic Level of Literacy. In South Africa – the sole sub-Saharan participant, only 22% reached this minimal level. The two North African participants – Egypt and Morocco, scored 31% and 36%. The same bleak picture has been independently confirmed by other organizations evaluating educational attainment in Africa. According to UNESCO (2017), nearly nine out of ten South African children between the ages of 6 and 14 are not acquiring minimum proficiency levels in reading. RTI International (Gove & Cvelich, 2011) found that 53% of first grade Kenyan children could not read a single word correctly (Freudenberger & Davis, 2017), while Piper and Miksic (2011) reported high percentages of third grade Kenyan children with zero scores on an oral reading fluency task (Dholuo L1 20%; Gikuyu L1 15%; Swahili L2 19%; English L3 14%) and even higher percentages in Uganda (Lango L1 51%; Luganda L1 26%; English L2 45%). In Ghana, Schroeder (2013) reported that 57% were unable to read with any comprehension. In Ethiopia, 90% of Grade 2 and 3 students were unable to master basic concepts of early grade reading (READ M&E, 2020). In Mozambique, 90% of Grade 2 students in the rural provinces of Nampula and Zambezia provinces were able to read only a single word (in Portuguese) (Creative Associates International, 2017). In Senegal, Mejía and Pouezevara (2011) found that 18% of grade 3 children were unable to read a single word of the first sentence of a text in French (L2 or L3); the average fluency of the remaining children was very low at 22 words correct per minute. In Mali, between 50% (in Bamanankan) and 70% (in Bomu, Fulfulde, and Songhoy) of end-of-grade-1 children failed to identify a single letter sound from their alphabet. Furthermore, between 50% (in Bamanankan) and 60% (in Bomu, Fulfulde, and Songhoy) of end-­of-­grade-3 children were unable to read a single word on a list of frequently used words in their language (Ralaingita & Wetterberg, 2011). And the majority of chapters in the present volume tell the same dismal story. Roberts and Walter (2021, p. 347) provide a close-up of African literacy in their landmark study of tone orthographies in ten West African languages. They observed that On average, the participants, all adults, orally read their L2 (English or French) with a speed equivalent to an American seven-year old, and their L1 whether or not tone is marked, with a speed considerably slower than what is expected of an American six-year old… Most participants are stuck on the bottom of the four rungs proposed by Zutell and Rasinski (1991), orally reading in a way that is “clearly labored and dysfluent (slow, word-by-word pauses, sound-outs, repetitions, lack of expression).

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Yet, all these readers were nominated for inclusion in Roberts and Walter’s study as the most competent readers in their community! This dire situation permeates all levels of the education system. Among tenth grade students in Kenya, 99% of the students did not attain the 50% benchmark in English literature, while in Kiswahili, 93% students did not attain the benchmark in reading comprehension (Kenya National Council of Examinations, 2020). In an experiment with South African university students reading isiZulu (L1) and English (L2), Land (2011, p. 64) reports that “the scores of nearly all the readers are consistent with very low levels of reading skills, yet all the readers had the benefit of tertiary education. And enrollment rates for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa are the lowest in the world (Bloom et al., 2014; Gandhi, 2018). Although the source of the problem on both sides of the Sahara has been linked to a multitude of social, cultural and economic factors, the chief culprit appears to be the linguistic, orthographic and pedagogical legacy of colonialism as amply demonstrated in the chapters in this volume. In many ways, the African literacy debacle can be summed up by analogy to the Tower of Babel myth.

2 Literacy in Africa: The Tower of Babel Predicament If there is no common tongue, there are near-insurmountable difficulties communicating between some 1500–2000 distinct language communities and the entire nation-building enterprise, like the mythical Tower of Babel, falls apart. In Tanzania there are over 100 indigenous languages, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, over 200, in Nigeria over 500, and so on. There are various solutions, all of which have been tried in different parts of Africa at different times. Selecting a single dominant variety as the “official” language of the state, of government and of formal education privileges one group but disempowers others, thereby sowing the seeds of ethnic rivalry – the source of a number of the current conflicts in Africa. Selecting a language that is not the mother tongue of any ethnic group – the diglossic situation of Arabic – represents a seemingly equitable solution but incurs formidable challenges for all, as I discuss below. To a large extent, this same “strategy” – adopting an ex-colonial language (English, French, Portuguese, and in one case Spanish) as the “official” language of government and of education (the reality in most of sub-Saharan Africa), avoids privileging any one ethnic group (other than the well-educated elite), but since only a small portion of Africans speak the foreign tongue with proficiency, this creates near-universal educational disenfranchisement as the numbers cited above confirm. Implementing mother-tongue instruction for all indigenous languages is fraught with many obstacles, nonetheless, a number of countries (e.g., Mali, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo) have designated a select few major languages as “national” languages to be used as

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the medium of instruction in the early primary grades.1 There are hybrid models too, in which some mixture of elements from multiple languages are presumed to give large segments of the population a sense of participation at the price of only partial disempowerment. The following sections survey the linguistic, orthographic and pedagogical obstacles to literacy, first in Sub-Saharan Africa (Sect. 3), then in North Africa (Sect. 4). I then briefly touch on some of the other challenges to literacy acquisition including cultural, economic and geopolitical factors (Sect. 5). This is followed by a consideration of the various deterrents to undertaking literacy research in Africa. The final section (Sect. 6) offers some concluding comments on future prospects for African literacy.

3 Sub-Saharan Africa Turning first to sub-Saharan Africa, the linguistic distance between the language the child speaks and the written forms in which s/he learns to read appears to be the foremost obstacle to becoming literate. As noted in Chap. 2 (this volume), when modern education was introduced to Africa by the European colonial powers, the language of instruction (LoI) was that of the colonizers. At independence, the former colonies retained the European languages as their official language and LoI, alone or together with African languages. This situation, which runs counter to the global norm of near-universal mother-tongue LoI, still prevails in sub-­Saharan Africa.

3.1 Linguistic Multiplicity and Multilingualism In addition to the extraordinary diversity of languages across the continent, multilingualism is the norm in Africa as it is in most parts of the world  today. Most Africans speak one language at home, another regional lingua franca in the urban centers, and are expected to learn yet another (ex-colonial) language in school which is not taught as a foreign language but is typically the medium of instruction throughout most of the school years. The fact that almost all African children are expected to learn to read in a language they do not speak sidesteps the problem of which ethnic group or groups will be empowered and which not, but is probably the greatest barrier to acquiring literacy in Africa. And because language is so culturally embedded, these foreign languages, in most instances, are typically imbued with cultural content that is alien to African children. Although many children in  In South Sudan, of the nominal 60 languages, only 5 constitute more than 1% of the country’s population (Myhill, personal communication, 2022). This situation, according to Myhill, makes the idea of full (K-12) mother-tongue education manageable with minimal marginalization of minority languages. Unfortunately, South Sudan may not be typical of the rest of Africa. 1

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sub-Saharan Africa begin school in their mother tongue (or at least in a lingua franca that many (but not all) speak), the medium of instruction soon switches to the ex-­ colonial languages such as English, French, or Portuguese in the upper elementary grades and thereafter. And even mother-tongue reading instruction frequently relies heavily on materials directly translated from texts written in the ex-colonial language (Trudell & Schroeder, 2007). This hegemony of European (ex-colonial) languages partly springs from entrenched cultural beliefs that European languages are not only the gateway to educational success, superior career prospects, and economic prosperity, but that African languages are inferior to European languages. Critically, only a small percentage of Africans speak the colonial languages. According to Schroeder (2013), less than ten million Africans combined (1%), out of a population of over one billion, speak any of the four former colonial languages to any degree. Skattum (2020) notes that “a majority of Africans do not master their country’s official language because it is not spoken around them but acquired mainly at school, which many have never or only briefly attended [author italics]. p. 2.” Even many teachers themselves have a poor grasp of the ex-colonial language of instruction (World Bank, 2019, see also the South African chapter, this volume) yet in many African schools children are forbidden to speak their mother tongue (Clegg & Afitska, 2011). Despite ample evidence to the contrary (Schroeder et  al., 2021; Skattum, 2020; Trudell, 2021), most African educators (as well as the parents of schoolgoers) hold to the belief that more exposure to the official language is preferable to extended mother-tongue education. To illustrate, in Tanzania, there are over 100 different spoken languages. The national language (lingua franca) Swahili, is spoken by approximately 10% of Tanzanians as a first language, and nearly 90% as a second language and is the medium of instruction in primary school, yet English, spoken by only 15% of Tanzanians (Rubagumya, 1989) is the sole medium of instruction in secondary and higher education. And although the Tanzanian government is planning to discontinue English as the primary language of instruction, (see Tanzanian Chapter, this volume) this has yet to be implemented. Even when there is a rich literacy tradition in an indigenous African language such as Amharic in Ethiopia, secondary and tertiary education is in English (as it is almost without exception throughout Anglophone Africa). This is in spite of the fact that Amharic has been the country’s official language since 1270, has been written for centuries in an indigenous script unique to the country (called Ethiopic, Fidel, or Ge’ez), and possesses a rich literary tradition. There is even empirical evidence that the native non-alphabetic Ge’ez script is easier to learn than the European Roman alphabet (Asfaha et al., 2009; see also Share, 2014). Yet another reason why few Africans master the ex-colonial languages is that African languages are grammatically and phonologically very different from European languages. This makes the challenge of L2 acquisition far greater in Africa than it is in the United States, for example, where most immigrants are native speakers of a European language (Spanish) and learners are immersed in an English-­ speaking environment.

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In the face of such linguistic diversity, the question of choosing a common national or regional language or languages (e.g., Kiswahili in Tanzania, Chichewa in Malawi, Setswana in Botswana) often means linguistic and cultural disenfranchisement of other (often rural) languages and dialects. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, pedagogical materials were developed and implemented for three of the four national languages (Kikongo (Kituba), Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba). However, in a number of areas, many children speak other languages. For example, the percentage of students observed speaking Lingala among peers in areas designated as Lingala-speaking, was only 2% in rural Sud Ubangi and only 8% in southeast Equateur (see DR Congo chapter, this volume). Unsurprisingly, the lowest literacy performance among students was observed in rural Sud Ubangi, where the local language is Ngbaka, a non-Bantu language. The results were also lower than expected in several Kiswahili-designated provinces, especially in rural Lualaba where only 65% of children were observed speaking Kiswahili. Moreover, the study found that the minority of Kiswahili-speaking children in rural Lualaba speak a dialect that is quite different from the Standard variety in terms of both grammar and vocabulary. So even with a lingua franca, there can be dialects that differ considerably from the “standard” variety. Indeed, almost all African languages, barring the smallest populations, have some dialect variation (see Chap. 4, this volume). Another example is Togo which designated Ewe in the south and Kabiye in the north as the two national languages. This proved unworkable (Roberts, 2011), particularly in the north, because it imposed Kabiye on populations who had never heard it spoken. Yet another factor exacerbating the difficulties of learning to read and write is the fact that multiple languages and dialects are spoken in any one African classroom. A language mapping study in Mozambique discovered that 60% of classrooms have pupils with different L1s (Creative Associates International, 2017; see also South African chapter, this volume).

3.2 Orthography Not only did the educational systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa adopt the ex-­ colonial languages as their medium of instruction, they also adopted the colonizers’ writing system  – the Roman alphabet  – a uniquely European invention (Daniels, 2018). As already noted, African languages differ markedly from the European languages for which the Roman alphabet proved well-adapted. In contrast to European languages, most African languages are tone languages, thus the question of whether and/or how to represent tone in the Roman alphabet has pre-occupied orthography developers for two centuries (Cahill & Rice, 2014; Church Missionary Society, 1848; IIALC, 1930; Karan & Roberts, 2021; UNESCO, 1978). Furthermore, the phonology of African languages includes other unique phenomena largely unknown in Europe  – such as co-articulated phonemes, vowel harmony, vowel length and nasality, and implosives. All these phenomena, like tone, pose special challenges for

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alphabetic writing systems which have spawned the linear “string-of-phonemes” conception of phonological awareness that dominates the Western alphabetocentric literature (Share, 2021) and which may well be optimal for non-tonal languages with a large inventory of complex syllable structures but sub-optimal for languages with small inventories of simple syllable structures which predominate in Africa (see, e.g., Asfaha et al., 2009). Conversely, yet another orthographic challenge for the many sub-Saharan Africans who are learning to read English (and to a lesser extent French) is the fact that virtually none of the sounds for English vowel letters match the sounds those letters are given in their African L1s (Schroeder, 2013). Unlike English, French and Portuguese which are all deep orthographies, most African Roman-based orthographies are highly transparent (at least segmentally), as is typical for relatively new orthographies introduced to societies without a long-­ standing literacy tradition (Sampson, 2018). This benefits the novice reader (at least for the first few generations before the spoken language changes) who is able to decode the many new and unfamiliar strings of letters, but often at the cost of morphological transparency, namely, invariant spellings of morphemes that facilitate rapid automatic word and morpheme recognition (such as ‹soft/soften› rather than ‹soffen›, ‹house/houses› rather than ‹houzes›). Finally, dialect variation can pose major challenges to orthography developers (see Chap. 4 on Dialect Issues), and orthographic variation (see Chap. 1, Footnotes 3 and 4), even for the same dialect, complicates literacy learning and written communication.

3.3 Teaching Methods Not only have most sub-Saharan African countries adopted the ex-colonial languages as their medium of instruction, as well as the colonizers’ orthography, but the teaching methods, materials and content of mother-tongue reading instruction are typically Western approaches which are based on very different languages and orthographies (Pretorius & Spaull, 2016; Probert, 2019; Trudell & Schroeder, 2007). Readers of a deep orthography such as English, French or Portuguese, the most common official languages in Sub-Saharan Africa, tend to use “large unit” reading strategies such whole word, whole morpheme, word envelope, multi-letter spelling patterns and analogies much more frequently than readers of German, Italian or Spanish, which, like most African orthographies, make clear one-to-one connections between the letters and the sounds of the language (Cook & Bassetti, 2005; Scholfield & Chwo, 2005; Seymour, 2006; Share, 2008; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). When evidence-based instruction is advocated in Africa it is frequently based on the National Reading Panel Report (2000), regarded in the West, even today, as the most authoritative statement of evidence-based practice. These alphabetic/phonemic methods are well-suited to European languages with their complex syllable structures, but, as already noted, most African languages (if and when they are

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taught) have simple syllable structures that may be better suited to syllable-based methods even when written alphabetically (see Asfaha et al., 2009; Probert, 2019; Trudell & Schroeder, 2007). It is worth remarking that most indigenous scripts created in Africa, both ancient and modern, including those now extinct, those still in use, and those not yet widely adopted are typically syllabic (syllabaries, logo-­ syllabaries and abugidas) rather than alphabetic (see Table  2, Chap. 3). Furthermore, syllables often coincide with morpheme boundaries in many African languages.2 For example, in Kiswahili, the morpheme “ni” in ‹ninacheka› (‘I laugh’) means “I”, the “na” indicates the present tense, and “cheka” is the verb root. When syllable structures are simple, syllable-based writing systems (such Ge-ez, Vai or Bamum) are viable options that do not require children to learn excessively large inventories of symbols and, furthermore, do not place heavy demands on working memory or require awareness of hard-to-access phonemic units (Ahmad & Share, 2021; Asfaha et al., 2009; Nag, 2022; Share, 2014). Unfortunately, these writing systems are often rejected because they are not perceived as having the prestige of the European (Roman) alphabet. The unique linguistic and orthographic structures of African languages call for teaching strategies specifically tailored to  these structures. For example, in their discussion of Bantu languages, Trudell and Schroeder (2007) propose an early focus on phonological awareness and syllable recognition, a later focus on varying morpheme spellings, awareness of the position a morpheme occupies within a word or phrase, and practice synthesizing long series of syllables (or morphemes) within words.

3.4 Teacher Quality, Teaching Resources, Absenteeism, and Curriculum Development A common lament among literacy researchers in sub-Saharan Africa is that teachers themselves are often ill-equipped to teach the European language of instruction owing to their own poor command of the language and a lack of mastery of effective pedagogical skills to teach early literacy. For example, in Madagascar, only 18% of primary education teachers were deemed proficient enough to teach in French (Rabenoro, 2009). Added to this is the paucity of quality teaching materials which typically contain culturally alien content. Schroeder  et  al.,  (2021) summarize the evidence from multiple investigations regarding the challenges in children’s L2 acquisition across the continent. They highlight: • insufficient time for L2 language, literacy, and content; • lack of teacher proficiency in speaking the L2;  Notable exceptions here are Tanzanian and Cameroonian Bantu languages (Roberts, personal communication, 2022) 2

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lack of teacher proficiency in teaching L2 language, literacy, and content; lack of curriculum planning for teaching L2 skills; lack of materials to support L2 reading and content acquisition; high rates of student and teacher absenteeism; and limited resources (such as books, furniture, papers, pencils), large and overcrowded classrooms, limited learning resources, and understaffed schools.

In addition, there is often little support at home for literacy: few books or magazines are found in the homes, and although written signs may be ubiquitous, there is hardly any extended text to be found. One consequence of poverty, especially in poorer rural areas, is that parents are unable to pay for schoolbooks and other services. In these areas, too, many parents are illiterate, and those who have learned to read have little opportunity to maintain the habit. It is understandably difficult for parents who do not speak the ex-colonial language to support their children’s learning; and typically, such parents consider that they have neither the right nor the responsibility to do so—literacy is considered the teacher’s sphere and not the parent’s (Abuya et al., 2015; Parry et al., 2014). Another common lament is that pre-­ service teacher training programs do not adequately prepare teachers to teach reading effectively. Teachers lack foundational knowledge on reading development and pedagogical content knowledge for reading instruction (Akyeampong et  al., 2013; Bunyi et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2016; Wawire, 2020). Moreover, little ongoing professional in-service support is available. Even when pre-service and/or in-­service training about content and pedagogical knowledge is taught, it is typically highly Anglocentric or Francoentric – often taken directly from authoritative documents such as the National Reading Panel (2000) without consideration for the unique characteristics of African languages and orthographies. Trudell and Schroeder (2007) term this pedagogical imperialism. Although it makes good sense for developing nations that lack any literacy research infrastructure to look first to the well-­ established evidence-based scientific literature on reading and writing that has emerged from research in English-speaking and European nations, this often occurs without due consideration of its applicability to the African context. Alongside this tendency for wholesale adoption of Western methods (a common practice around the globe) is the growing recognition among social scientists that conclusions from studies conducted on highly educated populations from affluent Western cultures may have limited applicability to human behavior in general (Henrich et al., 2010), as well as language (Blasi et al., 2022; Christiansen et al., 2022; Evans & Levinson, 2009) and literacy (Frost, 2012; Share, 2008).

4 Arabic-Speaking North Africa Turning next to Arabic-speaking North Africa, the performance of the two North African countries participating in the 2016 PIRLS survey – Morocco and Egypt, are by no means exceptional, but typify the situation in the broader Arabic-speaking

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MENA (Middle-East & North Africa) region. On the PIRLS 2016 rankings, Arabic-­ speaking countries occupied 9 of the 10 lowest rungs on the literacy ladder and, tellingly, this included both wealthy (e.g., Qatar and the United Arabic Emirates) and less affluent countries (e.g., Egypt and Morocco). Although additional factors (touched on below) also contribute to this state of affairs, two factors have been prominent in current research and debate  – diglossia and the unique visual-­ orthographic features of the Arabic writing system.

4.1 Diglossia Acquiring reading in a language variety that is different from the dialect one uses for everyday speech is a reality for many children around the world (Joshi & McBride, 2019; Saiegh-Haddad et al., 2022). All children who are native speakers of Arabic are raised in diglossia (Almusa, 2003; Ferguson, 1959; Saiegh-Haddad, 2018, 2022), a sociolinguistic phenomenon in which two varieties of the same language are used within the same community in different settings (Ferguson, 1959) and for different functions (Albirini, 2016). Spoken Arabic is used by all speakers for everyday speech, whereas Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used for conventional writing and formal oral language functions.3 Diglossia poses a major challenge for young novice readers because they encounter many written forms that differ from the spoken forms with which they are familiar (Bar-On et al., 2018; Saiegh-Haddad, 2018). Although spoken vernaculars are linguistically related to written Arabic, they are distinct in all linguistic domains, including phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax (see Bateson, 2003). Furthermore, written MSA is structurally more complex than the spoken varieties (Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). Psychologically, Arabic diglossia has been likened to learning to read in a foreign language (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000). Research has confirmed that the phenomenon of diglossia is associated with poor literacy levels across languages and orthographies worldwide (Ayari, 1996; Maamouri, 1998; Myhill, 2014; Saiegh-Haddad et al., 2022).

4.2 Writing System Complexities A second stumbling block to literacy in Arabic-speaking Africa is the unique visual-­ orthographic architecture of the Arabic writing system. The Arabic writing system poses difficulties not only for Arabic-speakers, but also communities that have adapted Arabic (“ajami”) to other African languages such as Hausa, Yoruba and  For non-native Arabic-speakers in North Africa such as the Berber communities, spoken Arabic is their L2 and MSA their L3, although there is a growing recognition across North Africa of the Berber languages and the Tifinagh script in initial reading instruction. 3

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Swahili. In many ways, the Arabic script is unique, containing a number of pervasive visual-orthographic features all of which are either rare or absent in most alphabetic scripts.4 First, a majority of Arabic letters have a similar or even identical structure and are distinguished only by the existence, placement, and the number of (non-optional) dots (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2014). For example, the letters ‫ ب‬/ba:ʔ/, ‫ ت‬/ta:ʔ/, ‫ ث‬/ɡa:ʔ/ and ‫ ن‬/nun/ have an identical or near-identical basic shape, and are only distinguished by dotting. A second ubiquitous feature of written Arabic is allography, namely, the variation in letter forms indicating the same sounds as in the case of English uppercase and lowercase letters. Two factors determine the form of each Arabic letter in a word: its position in the word – initial, middle, final or in isolation, and whether or not it connects to the letter that precedes it. The combination of the position and ligaturing generates many allographs: 23 of the 29 letters have four letter-forms, the remaining six letters have two forms. For many sets of allographs, the letter forms are mainly differentiated by the ligatures which typically augment the basic letter shape, so the common letter form may not be difficult to perceive (e.g., ‫ بـ ـبـ ـب ب‬/ba:ʔ/). However, for a few letters, the commonality among the allographs is much harder to discern (e.g., ‫ هـ ـهـ ـه ه‬/h/, or ‫ عـ ـعـ ـع ع‬/ʕ/ see Daniels & Share, 2018). A third feature of Arabic script is its fundamentally cursive architecture, with most letters connected to the adjacent letters. This cursivity results in three different types of written words: fully connected (e.g., ‫)جبل‬, partially connected (e.g.,‫ رطب‬/‫ )برد‬and fully non-connected words, namely words appearing with the cardinal (separate) forms of all constituent letters (e.g., ‫)زرع‬. Finally, the Arabic script makes extensive use of extra-lineal diacritic-like signs – “tashkil” that mark phonemic distinctions such as short vowels and consonant gemination, as well as morpho-­syntactic properties such as noun case and verb mood. Although many of the world’s writing systems (including many European alphabets) feature diacritics (see Daniels & Share, 2018), the sheer quantity of these in Arabic is exceptional and, together with consonant dotting, can include a “stack” of up to 3 diacritics on َّ a single letter ‫ث‬. There is a small but growing body of research suggesting that these visual-­ orthographic features of the Arabic script impede reading acquisition probably by slowing letter and word identification processes. There is still no clear picture, however, regarding the interactions among these factors, or between these factors and other variables such as morphology. For example, one potential challenge created by Arabic orthography (but yet to be investigated empirically) may be the disruption of morphemic transparency  – invariant spellings across derivations (e.g., ‹soft/ soften› in English) and inflections (e.g., ‹house/houses›) owing to positional variation in letter forms and intra-word breaks created by non-connecting letters. This  Ligaturing is found in Syriac, N’ko, Manchu and Mongolian, diacritics are found, in varying degrees, in almost all European (e.g., Spanish, Czech, Polish) as well as non-European alphabets (e.g., Vietnamese, Thaana). Allography is also common in many alphabets, at least in word-initial position (e.g., A/a). Common (and hence confusable) letter shapes (differentiated only by orientation; p,q,b,d) are well-known in English. 4

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seems likely to hinder rapid automatic word recognition. With rare exceptions (e.g., Lahoud & Eviatar, submitted; Tibi et al., 2020; Yassin et al., 2020), there is little evidence of the relative contribution of these visual-­orthographic factors to either reading or spelling which is further exacerbated by morphemic density (as is also the case for many agglutinative sub-Saharan African languages (Probert, 2019; Roberts, 2010; Trudell & Schroeder, 2007). Finally, it is worth remarking that the popular but highly Eurocentric frameworks for characterizing cross-script variation – Orthographic Depth (Katz & Frost, 1992) and Psycholinguistic Grain Size (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) completely miss the mark when it comes to a non-European non-alphabetic script such as Arabic. According to these theories, Arabic is a supposedly highly transparent orthography with near-perfect one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds and hence should be easily and rapidly acquired. Clearly, there are additional dimensions of script complexity besides phonological consistency that need to be taken into account when considering the challenges posed by different orthographies for learning to read (see Daniels & Share, 2018; Haridas et al., in press). Summing up, diglossia combined with a visually complex script appear to pose major obstacles to literacy acquisition in Arabic-speaking North Africa.

5 Cultural, Economic and Geopolitical Obstacles to Literacy African communities are predominantly oral cultures. At best, books and reading are viewed instrumentally, not as something with intrinsic value, but merely as a means to professional and economic advancement, which, once attained, can be dispensed with. Even many professionals, once qualified, no longer see any point to reading (Roberts, personal communication, 2022). In keeping with this oral outlook, socio-cultural norms in many African societies dictate that household obligations of girls take precedence over school attendance (see Algerian chapter, this volume). Turning to political turmoil and armed conflict, Africa continues to be racked by coups, terrorist insurgencies and civil wars. Of the 22 countries across the globe currently engaged in war (defined by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program as between 1000 and 9999 combat-related deaths in the current or past year), 15 are African (ISS/PSC, 2021). For an illustration of the devastating effects of civil war (in Côte d’Ivoire) on literacy, see Roberts and Walter (2021). On the economic front, Africa also leads the world in poverty. Almost one half of Africans (close to half a billion) live in extreme poverty  – defined by the World Bank as USD$1.90 a day and described by the United Nations as “a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information”. To illustrate, 38% of Angolan children under 5 years old are underweight and malnourished with serious physical and cognitive infirmities (Paulo, 2021). Extreme poverty is projected to decline dramatically by 2030 everywhere except Africa (Saleh, 2021). And

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the global repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine conflagration are certain to fuel further impoverishment, starvation and destabilization. Climate change, especially in the Sahel, is another growing factor leading to destabilization, displacement of communities and growing poverty. In areas of armed conflict, kidnappings and the danger of stray bullets are a serious deterrent to school attendance (see Libyan chapter, this volume). In Northern Nigeria, kidnapping of girls from schools by Boku Haram (Hausa: meaning ‘No Western Education’) is creating a widespread culture where girls are afraid to go to school. Policy flip-flops in curriculum also disrupt educational continuity and progress. Both Madagascar and Guinea abruptly switched their language of instruction from French to a National Language and then back to French, without empirical evaluation (Skattum, 2020). Rwanda switched from French to English after the 1994 genocide. In Ghana, English as the medium of instruction was instituted in 1957 (at independence) in the early grades, then, in 1969, switched to L1, then in 2002 back to English. In 2016, 11 indigenous languages were approved for mother-tongue education, but were used for only 30–45 min a day alongside English as the dominant medium of instruction.

6 Deterrents to Undertaking Literacy Research in Africa WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic; Henrich et al., 2010) reading science continues to dominate the field of literacy with almost all the major theories and models of language and literacy still founded on research with highly atypical but highly “convenient” samples of university undergraduate English-­ speakers examined in the air-conditioned comfort of state-of-the-art hi-tech university laboratories (Christiansen et  al., 2022; Share, 2021). These privileged and largely monolingual English-speaking participants, who have learnt to read in their native tongue, have been immersed since birth in a print-rich milieu with a long-­ standing and well-institutionalized culture of literacy and literature that makes reading an omnipresent, almost inescapable fact of life. In glaring contrast, the few literacy researchers working in Africa face formidable challenges carrying out research in “inconvenient” non-WEIRD settings (Roberts & Walter, 2021). In these primarily oral cultures, still struggling to establish literacy, technology is the blackboard and chalk, internet connections and telephone networks unreliable, most classrooms have intermittent or no electricity, and some classes are held under a mango tree.  The research participants too present challenges unknown to WEIRD reading science. Recording basic demographic data can be complicated by the absence of birth documentation (a literate invention), multiple languages and dialects spoken within an extended family, years of schooling confounded by erratic attendance and the still prevalent African custom of repeating a grade if children fail end-of-year exams. Even recording a participant’s name may not be straightforward because many Africans use different names in different domains of their lives – at home, at work, at church, and on official documents.

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Given these disincentives, it is hardly surprising, as is so often the case in other developing countries, that many talented young African researchers who are able to study abroad do not return, depriving the continent of the indigenous research community and infrastructure it so sorely lacks.

7 Concluding Comments The present overview of literacy and illiteracy in Africa highlights a host of factors that have conspired and continue to conspire against progress toward literacy and ensure that Africa remains the least literate continent on the planet. As in most parts of the world, illiteracy and semi-literacy go hand in hand with poverty, poor health civil unrest, corruption, and human misery. While many cultural, economic and geopolitical obstacles impede literacy progress in Africa, at the heart of this calamity is the Tower of Babel predicament. With such a diversity of languages, there is no simple solution that empowers all Africans. Most African nations have opted for a medium of instruction that no child speaks – the case of MSA in Arabic-speaking North Africa, or an ex-colonial language in sub-Saharan Africa that relatively few have mastered. This “solution” places all learners on an equal footing – all are equally and profoundly disadvantaged. On top of this, in sub-Saharan Africa, initial, often disingenuous, and rapidly-abandoned mother-tongue reading instruction (if it exists at all) is based on a writing system (the Roman alphabet) tailored for a very different family of distinctly non-African languages. The final straw, perhaps, is the so-called pedagogical imperialism that pervades much of mother-tongue reading instruction conveying alien cultural content via questionnable teaching methods. There are certainly non-literate ways of knowing the world, but the prosperous literate knowledge-based societies to which most African nations aspire calls for a fundamental reappraisal of colonial-era beliefs and practices. Such a re-appraisal already took place in 1965  in Teheran at UNESCO’s World Congress on the Eradication of Illiteracy which sought to promote L1 literacy and was enthusiastically embraced by African political leaders. But this initiative quickly fizzled out a mere 10–15  years later (Roberts, 2011). Why? When will Africa break free of entrenched colonial-era beliefs and practices that perpetuate illiteracy, and rekindle an appreciation of their own (perhaps superior?) languages and writing systems?

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Pretorius, E. J., & Spaull, N. (2016). Exploring relationships between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension amongst English second language readers in South Africa. International Journal: Reading and Writing, 29(7), 1449–1471. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-­016-­9645-­9 Probert, T. N., (2019). A comparison of the early reading strategies of isiXhosa d Setswana first language learners’. South African Journal of Childhood Education, 9(1), a643. Rabenoro, I. (2009). National language teaching as a tool for Malagasy learners’ integration into globalisation. In B. Brock-Utne & I. Skattum (Eds.), Languages and education in Africa: A comparative and transdisciplinary analysis (pp. 175–188). Symposium Press. Ralaingita, W., & Wetterberg, A. (2011). Gauging program effectiveness with EGRA: Impact evaluations in South Africa and Mali. The Early Grade Reading Assessment, 83. READ, M&E. (2020). Reading for Ethiopia’s achievement: Development, monitoring & evaluation. Roberts, D. (2010). Hidden morpheme boundaries in Kabiye: A source of miscues in a toneless orthography. Writing Systems Research, 2(2), 139–153. Roberts, D. (2011). The development of written Kabiye and its status as one of the “national” languages of Togo. In O.  Orwenjo & O.  Ogone (Eds.), Language and politics in Africa: Contemporary issues and critical perspectives (pp. 468–494). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Roberts, D., & Walter, S. L. (Eds.). (2021). Tone orthography and literacy: The voice of evidence in ten Niger-Congo languages. John Benjamins. Rubagumya, C. M. (1989). English-medium instruction in Tanzanian secondary schools: A conflict of aspirations and achievements. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 2(2), 107–115. https:// doi.org/10.1080/07908318909525059 Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2018). MAWRID: A model of Arabic word reading in development. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(5), 454–462. Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2022). A psycholinguistic-developmental approach to the study of Reading in Arabic Diglossia: Assumptions, methods, findings and educational implications. In E. Saiegh-­ Haddad, L. Laks, & C. McBride (Eds.), Handbook of literacy in Diglossia and in dialectal contexts: Psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and educational perspectives (pp. 135–163). Springer. Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The structure of Arabic language and orthography. In E. Saiegh-Haddad & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (Vol. 9, pp. 3–28). Springer. Saiegh-Haddad, E., Laks, L., & McBride, C. (Eds.). (2022). Handbook of literacy in diglossia and dialectal contexts: Psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and educational perspectives. Springer. Saleh, M. (2021). Population living in extreme poverty in Africa 2010–2030. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1226246/ number-­of-­people-­living-­in-­extreme-­poverty-­in-­africa-­compared-­to-­world/ Sampson, G. (2018). From phonemic spelling to distinctive spelling. Written Language & Literacy, 21(1), 3–25. Scholfield, P., & Chwo, G. S. M. (2005). Are the L1 and L2 word Reading processes affected more by writing system or instruction? In V. Cook & B. Bassetti (Eds.), Second language writing systems (pp. 215–237). Multilingual Matters. Schroeder, L. (2013). Teaching and assessing independent reading skills in multilingual African countries: Not as simple as ABC. In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language issues in comparative education (pp. 243–264). Brill Sense Publishers. Schroeder, L., Mercado, M. S., & Trudell, B. (2021). Research in multilingual learning in Africa: Assessing the effectiveness of multilingual education programming. In Multilingual learning and language supportive pedagogies in sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 33–60). Routledge. Seymour, P. H. K. (2006). Theoretical framework for beginning reading in different orthographies. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 441–462). Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584–616.

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Languages of Africa Peter T. Daniels

Abstract  A linguistic overview of the languages of Africa, beginning with a survey of the basic reference works. Some phonological characteristics widely found throughout the continent, especially those most relevant to orthography, are described. The traditional four phyla of African languages are then taken up one by one, noting recent disagreements about their classification and subgrouping.

1 Introduction1 Africa is the second largest continent on earth, at just over 30,000,000  km2 (~11,600,000 sq. mi.), with a population estimated in 2020 as about 1.3 billion, spread among 54 countries plus 2 disputed areas. Ethnologue estimates the number of languages spoken in Africa as 2144 (Eberhard et al., 2021).2 As can be seen from its lack of shading in Map 1, the language of Madagascar, Malagasy, is not an  Maps 1, 2, and 4 were created by cartographer Don Shewan. I thank Tom Güldemann (Berlin) for assistance with Map 3, Sarah Grey Thomason (Ann Arbor) for guidance on language contact matters, Jerry Friedman (Santa Fe) for  editing tips, and  especially Dave Roberts for  invaluable meticulous contributions regarding both content and style. David Share provided a thorough critique that has been essential in shaping the final form of the chapter. 2  The precise number of African languages is not known (partly owing to the problem of distinguishing languages from dialects), with estimates varying widely; “a language” and “a dialect” in this sense are not linguistic concepts, but political. Ethnologue’s figures are considered by many to be an overestimate (see, e.g., Campbell & Grondona, 2008, 637–38; Hammarström, 2015, 732–33). Greenberg (1963) could list only 730, because of the dearth of information available; the current estimate is usually around 1500. Whatever the true figure, it is clear that the African continent is characterized by tremendous linguistic diversity, and this state of affairs poses enormous challenges for literacy acquisition – an omnipresent theme throughout this volume. Because the readership of this volume is presumed to comprise largely non-linguists, various linguistic concepts are explained as they arise. 1

P. T. Daniels (*) Independent Scholar, Jersey City, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_2

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Map 1  The phyla and families of African languages. (After maps in Heine & Nurse, 2000, Wolff, 2019a, and some on-line sources)

African language; it is an Austronesian language, akin to many of the languages of Island Southeast Asia and Oceania. The large number of countries in Africa is a heritage of the colonial history of the continent, as is also the linguistic situation (Map 2). Before the arrival of European explorers in the second half of the fifteenth century, Africa had had a long

Languages of Africa

21

Be

rb

er

Berber

ARABIC Tuareg

MANINKA

TWI

Ga

EWE

Jukun

TEMNE MENDE

KANUR I

HAUSA

M

DYULA BA

SU

Fur

E OOR

Former colonial authority

Ig

m da

aw

MABA

a

Nuer

A FULA

bo

SANGO

Pidgin

DE

A

MongoNkundo

Britain

Rw

Portugal

Kikongo Kimbundu LUVALE DU

N BU

UM

Belgium

Kwanyama

Spain

Herero

Italy

Be

LOZI

mb

Tswana

Southern limit of Arabic as a Lingua Franca

a

NYANJA

Shona

FANAGALO

Xh

0

SWAHILI

A

Germany

SOMALI

GANDA

and

a Rundi

KITUB

France

0

O ro m o

ZAN

GAL

LIN

Fang

AMHARIC

Dinka

M a ku a

BAMBARA

SU

Teda

SONGHAY

YO RU

WOLOF

osa

-Zu

lu

1000 km 1000 miles

Map 2  Lingua francas and colonial superstrate languages. (After Heine, 1992, 34 Map 2)

prehistory. It had seen kingdoms and empires, tribes and compact societies, cities and villages, farmers and herders and hunter- gatherers (Ehret, 2016). Anthropologists once thought that all those categories had some bearing on the languages spoken by their peoples (Schmidt, 1926, cf. Daniels, 1997) – they have no such bearing. In fact, when European explorers and researchers began to take seriously the peoples they were encountering as they ventured inland from the coasts of Africa, they discovered for the first time that what they had expected to be “primitive” languages equaled or surpassed in complexity and subtlety anything they had known from Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit. The first Europeans to encounter Africa in modern times, however, were for the most part less interested in the people than in commodities – initially a sea route to the Indies in the East, whence they hoped to import goods (spices, textiles, and so on)

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without enriching middlemen along the land routes. Beginning in the mid fifteenth century, the first adventurers  – sent by Portugal  – began to creep down the west coast of the continent. At the same time that Columbus was feeling his way westward to likewise reach the East (on behalf of Spain), Vasco da Gama rounded the southern tip of Africa and made his way eastward to India. Portugal was followed by the other naval powers – England and Spain – and the western coast of Africa was dotted with trading outposts of the three nations that eventually became the nuclei of colonization. Maps began to show names like Gold Coast, Ivory Coast – and Slave Coast. In the 1860s, Britain and France began bilaterally to divide up Africa between them. In 1885 the European powers, by now including Germany, met in Berlin, where (ostensibly dealing with the Belgian Congo) they laid down principles for drawing lines on the map dividing up all of Africa except the two independent nations, Ethiopia and Liberia, among themselves. In many cases they ran boundaries right through individual peoples’ territories, so that for instance the Yoruba language was used in both a French and an English colony.3 Portugal held a significant amount of territory, Spain and Italy some nibbles. After World War I, the German possessions were allocated to France and Britain under the League of Nations’ “mandate” system, and in the run-up to World War II, Mussolini’s Italy made a short-lived incursions into Ethiopia. Finally, beginning in the late 1950s independence was “granted” to the colonies – some authorities taking longer than others, some having conscientiously prepared their subjects for self-­ government, some less so. Included in the Charter of the Organization of African Unity, ratified in 1964, was the agreement to abide by the colonial boundaries, even though they did violence to the territories of peoples who were divided between two or more of the new nations (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2016, 1807–9). One legacy of the colonial era is that the languages of the colonizers became the languages of administration and of education, such as it was.4 The shadings in Map 2 indicate which language was used in each colony or other administrative unit; in most cases, that language became an  – or even the  – official language of the independent country (Mesthrie, 2019).5 Also shown in Map 2 are the major lingua francas, languages used for communication between peoples who do not share a language, which are likely to exist in written form. It is not unusual, worldwide as well as in Africa, for any individual to be comfortable in at least three

 “Competing” orthographies based on French, English, or Portuguese spelling ensued.  Missionaries and administrators alike who introduced Roman-alphabet writing systems for indigenous languages of Africa were influenced by their own orthographies – English, French, occasionally German – and there were recurrent attempts to standardize and unify the representations, at least within the scope of each power’s realm, of “exotic” sounds that taxed the mere 21 consonant and 5 vowel letters available. Tucker, 1971 details forty years of experiments, spanning half the colonial period through the beginnings of independence across the continent, in many of which he himself had been involved. 5  Liberia was settled from the United States, and its administrative language is English. 3 4

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23

languages – their home language, the lingua franca used in a limited region, and the administrative language of their country. At no stage in the (recent) history of African linguistics, it seems, has anyone laid out criteria defining each family  – if a new language were encountered, where would it belong?6

2 Linguistic Literature The study of the languages of Africa divides into three phases, and individuals may have been introduced to the topic during any of the three phases. The first half of the twentieth century saw much basic research, primarily by British and French scholars, creating grammars, and many small families of African languages were identified. Much fieldwork, and descriptions of unknown languages, remained to be done. Secondly, between 1949 and 1963, Joseph H. Greenberg (1915–2001) revolutionized the field, providing the framework for most work on African languages into the early twenty-first century.7 The extensive revision in Greenberg, 1963 presented his four-phylum analysis, which encompassed every language of Africa with no residue, as shown in Map 1. He accomplished this using “mass comparison,” which consisted of arranging vocabulary lists and seeking apparent cognates.8 More recently, developments in linguistics have disputed Greenberg’s methodology and questioned some of his findings (see below), and this current approach is highlighted here.  What appears to be a complete recasting of the classification of the languages of Africa has been presented in Güldemann, 2018. but cf. n. 30. 7  In 1949–50 Greenberg in seven “Studies in African Linguistic Classification” with afterthoughts in 1954 (collected in Greenberg, 1955) gathered and systematized the information that was available by then (far surpassing what had been available to Schmidt a quarter-century earlier [1926, 79–116; based, per Greenberg, 1948, 28, on Drexel, 1921–1925]), proposing 16 separate language families, most of them small. 8  This was a far cry from standard historical linguistics, which operates by finding regular correspondences between the sounds of putatively related languages, working back through time, classifying the most closely related languages together, then comparing the proposed recent-ancestral languages with each other, and so on, eventually reaching something that may resemble what might have been spoken thousands of years ago. The method works because language is constantly changing, and if speech communities do not remain in constant contact, their languages change differently, and the longer languages have been growing apart, the less material they retain in common to be compared. A simple example may be taken from the Semitic family in the Afroasiatic phylum. Here are three words in the closely related Hebrew and Syriac languages: Heb. šēn, Syr. šennā ‘tooth’; Heb. báyit, Syr. baytā ‘house’; and Heb. šōr, Syr. tawrā ‘ox’. (Each pair stands for dozens of examples of the same correspondences š = š, t = t, and š = t.) Even if we did not know that the corresponding Arabic words are sinnun, baytun, and θawrun, we would assume that the three regular correspondences evidence three different phonemes in the “Proto-Semitic” language that is ancestral to all three known languages. (And θ, which stands for English th as in thin, would be a good guess for a sound that could become, over time, š in one language and t in another.) 6

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By the middle of the nineteenth century, individual authors were trying to gather all the information they could about as many African languages as they could squeeze into one publication. Well into the twentieth century, attempts at comprehensive works were still polluted with racialist9 and ethnological distortions, so it is well to disregard such efforts from the pre-Greenberg era, and to consider only those that are edited compilations. Each of the three phases of linguistic study of the languages of Africa has produced major reference works. The first was summed up in the Africa and Middle East volumes of Current Trends in Linguistics (Sebeok et al., 1970; Sebeok et al., 1971). The compact reference work Heine & Nurse, 2000 and the more focused Heine & Nurse, 2007 embody the four-phylum analysis. Hickey, 2017, 434–550, situates African languages in a more modern framework. Most recently, two comprehensive collections, Wolff, 2019a and Vossen & Dimmendaal, 2020, embody the post-Greenbergian approach, the former phylum by phylum, the latter with shorter chapters on families or individual lesser-known languages. A concise overview of the entire continent, taking into account ecological, archeological, anthropological, and linguistic approaches to the prehistory and history of African languages, is Dimmendaal, 2008, which can serve as a commendable introduction to the panorama. Dimmendaal, 2019 provides a clear exposition of how the genetic classification of languages has changed since the classic days of Indo-European and Semitic. Largely instead of comparing closely cognate words (see the very simple example in n. 8), what is compared is patterns in morphology –the formation of words from roots and affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes, tone changes) – because it is now supposed that such things are less easily borrowed from neighboring languages, or less likely to reflect general patterns of language typology, than are sound patterns. One result is that language family relationships are more reliably established than was possible with Greenberg’s method of “inspection”; the other is a list of “language isolates,” languages that cannot be shown to be related to any other known language.10 Peust (2012, 222), on the other hand, lists three reasons for not preferring the morphological approach.11 In addition, various components of Greenberg’s Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan phyla have been disconnected from the rest of them, and these alterations are indicated in Map 1 (“excluded”).  Racism: the belief that a member of one “race” is ipso facto superior or inferior to a member of another “race.” Racialism: the belief that race is a biological category with influence on behavior and/or culture. 10  It has long been historical-linguistic dogma that one cannot prove that two languages are not related (Bright, 1970). Dimmendaal, 2019 and 2020 each contains a list of language isolates, and the two lists are not identical. Blench, 2018 offers theoretical considerations and one to a few paragraphs on each of 16 languages, the list again not the same as either of Dimmendaal’s. 11  Namely: inflectional morphemes are often short, containing only a single consonant, increasing the risk of chance resemblance; inflectional morphology tends not to draw on a language’s entire phonemic inventory, but on only a few more common phonemes; and inflections are most often suffixes, and sounds at the ends of words have a tendency of being “eroded” by language change, removing the fodder for comparisons. 9

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25

C. F. Hockett introduced the notions of L-simplex and L-complex (1958, 323–27). The former designates a region in which all the people can understand each other’s speech without difficulty; the latter refers to an area where neighboring communities recognize differences between their language varieties, and the farther one goes, the more difficult intercommunication becomes. Hockett reports, unfortunately without a source (pp. 326–27): There are parts of West Africa where [a measure of dialect difference] is quite high, but all the [varieties] are supposed to belong to a single L-complex. It is said that in some of these regions overt recognition is given to the existence of varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. The inhabitants of village A describe the dialect of adjacent village B as a “two-day” dialect, that of the somewhat more remote village C as a “one-week” dialect, and so on. What is meant is that in the first case two days of working towards the goal are enough to establish a basis for easy intercommunication about practical matters,[12] whereas in the second case the adjustment requires a week.

3 Phonological Particulars Since our concern here is literacy, in what follows features of interest in African languages other than their phonology are mostly set aside: for literacy is interaction with written language, and written language relies ultimately on how the sound structures of language are represented. This subsection describes phenomena that are found widely across the continent. Those that are on the whole confined to one phylum are described in the respective subsections. A frequently cited overview of this topic is Clements & Rialland, 2007 (hereafter CR07).13 Their order for discussing the sounds that are more widespread is followed here.

3.1 Labial Flap Scarce but widespread in Africa (found in about threescore languages in three phyla  – Afroasiatic Chadic, Nilo-Saharan Central Sudanic, and Niger-Congo Adamawa and Benue-Congo, plus Ubanguian), the labial flap is so little known that even though Peter Ladefoged had encountered it in his work on West African languages (1968, 49), neither he nor Ian Maddieson mentions it in their standard reference books and chapter that are cited here.

 Recognizing that each community is likely to have its own variety of “elevated speech” appropriate to oratory, to annals, and so on. Note that villages A, B, and C probably have distinct names for their language varieties, helping to increase the count of languages (see n. 2). 13  CR07 provides considerable phonetic and historical detail, which is for the most part omitted here. 12

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Table 1  Minimal pairs for the labial phonemes of Ndogo (Ubanguian, Sudan)a stops

implosive fricative nasal flap approximant

labial pà bā mbà ɓá vā mà

‘to fetch’ ‘to burst’ ‘rail or beam’ ‘house, home’ ‘to scatter (seed)’ ‘to display’ ‘to fall’

labiovelar kpáà ɡbā ŋɡbā

‘leaf’ ‘chief’ ‘light (of something)’

wā

‘to weep’

After Olson & Hajek, 2003, 170

a

The labial flap “is produced by retracting the lower lip into the mouth well behind the upper teeth and then bringing it forward rapidly, striking the upper lip or teeth in passing” (Olson & Hajek, 2003, 157), resulting in a bilabial or a labiodental flap respectively. In most languages, it is labiodental. The labiodental flap, which received an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol [ ] only in 2005,14 has been shown to be a phoneme is just over 20 languages, with the help of word lists like the one in Table 1. It or its alternant [ ] has been identified in more than 40 additional languages, but analysts are leery about counting it as a phoneme in those languages because it occurs only in ideophones15 and animal names. Full dictionaries or vocabularies of the languages with labial flaps were not available to Olson and Hajek, but for the languages they discuss, they know of between 23 and 45 words containing them in each. Those seem like figures comparable to the count of words with the [ ] sound in English (such as beige and treasure), which has never had a letter of its own, so that when orthographies are created for such languages, the / / phoneme may not need to be provided for.

 From 1989, the IPA symbol had been [ v ]; earlier, [ ] had been used. The symbol [ ], presum ]) has been added to Unicode but not to the IPA – propably for the bilabial allophone (earlier [ w erly so, because in no language is it a phoneme distinct from / /. 15  Ideophones (Kilian-Hatz, 2020), first described in 1927  in African languages, named only in 1935, have since been identified in languages around the world. To an extent they fall into the “I know one when I see it” category. For Olson and Hajek, they are words that sound like or suggest what they denote. English examples include onomatopoeias like tinkle and ding-dong and nonsense coinages like bibbety-bobbety-boo; though in some languages they are much more widespread. For Kilian-Hatz, however, they are outside any syntactic or morphological structure, so that tinkle is not an ideophone, but ding-dong is. She also says, however, that for the most part they do not involve “phonetically aberrant” speech sounds. 14

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27

3.2 Labiovelar Stops Another category of phonemes found almost exclusively in African languages is the labiovelar16 stops: “doubly articulated sounds produced with overlapping labial and velar closures” (CR07, 42). The velar closure (the [ɡ], [k], or [ŋ] part) begins slightly before the labial closure (the [b], [p], or [m] part) and ends shortly before the latter ends, justifying the phonetic transcriptions [g͡b k͡ p ŋ͡m], rather than the reverse, such as [b͡ ɡ] (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996, 333–43). They are found in Niger-­Congo from Atlantic to Bantu, in Nilo-Saharan’s Central Sudanic, and in Afroasiatic’s Chadic. There are several reasons for not considering a labiovelar a sequence of two consonants. (a) Vowels cannot intervene within them. (b) When a syllable is repeated in word formation (reduplicated in derivational morphology), not just the [ɡ] or the [b] occurs. (c) Closed syllables (syllables ending with a consonant) are rare in these languages, so consonant clusters are unlikely to arise. Nonetheless, a sequence of phonemes /gb/ can occur.17 Is it, therefore, wise to continue to spell the phoneme with ‹gb›, as in the language name Igbo, inviting a mispronunciation as in the English word dogbane?

3.3 Vowels and Vowel Harmony (American) English has up to twelve distinct vowels, which can be arranged in a “vowel triangle” representing the physical shape and position of the tongue while making each of the vowels. Figure 1 shows the IPA symbols associated with those vowel sounds.

Fig. 1  The English vowel triangle

 Some writers insist on calling these sounds labial-velars, suggesting that labiovelar be taken as a cover term for labial-velars, labialized velars such as [kʷ], and velarized bilabials such as [pʷ], though a need for such a term is not immediately apparent. 17  Dave Roberts (pers. comm., 7 July 2021) offers examples from two Gur languages of Togo; Moba: /g͡ bḛ̀̀ŋ̀/ ‘to be fat’, /bɔ̀gbíg̀/ [bɔ̀gə̀bígə̀] ‘little bag’; Nawdm̰: /g͡ bùrá/ ‘hit-perfective’, /fɔ́ǵbá/ [fɔ́ɣə̀bá] woman, wife’. Observe that, phonetically, the consonant cluster /gb/ is broken up by inserting a vowel, leading to the spelling of /gb/ as g̈b with dieresis (compare Eng. naïve, Noël). 16

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Fig. 2  A typical generous vowel triangle

The pairs of similar vowels [i ɪ, e ɛ, u ʊ, o ɔ] in English are often described as “tense” and “lax,” because there seems to be more muscular tension in pronouncing the first member of each pair. The same symbols also fit the vowel sounds of a number of African languages from three phyla that also have an unusually high number of distinct vowel phonemes. up to ten (Fig. 2).18 Unfortunately, the “tense/lax” description is not a good fit for African languages. Only in 1967 was J.  M. Stewart able to determine the phonetic behavior when speakers spoke vowels that sounded like the tense/lax pairs of English or German.19 Correlating observations by Pike, 1947, 21–22, Hockett, 1958, 78–79, and himself as well as an X-ray study by Ladefoged, 1968 (p. 38 of the 1964 ed.), he suggested that the cause of the distinctive sound is not tongue height difference, or muscle tension, but a widening of the pharyngeal cavity caused by “advancing the tongue root,” and ever since, this has been known as “[+atr].” Casali, 2008 deals with the articulatory and acoustic phonetic properties of atr and scorns (p. 510) impressionistic terms as in n. 19. However difficult it is for the Euro-American linguist to hear the differences, they are real – phonemic – for the speakers of the languages, with a high functional load, and as such need to be accounted for in the orthography. Not unusual in languages of the world is vowel harmony, by which any one morpheme, or often any one word, can only have vowels from a set of about half the vowels. The most straightforward example – which is why it is offered here – is Turkish, whose 8 vowels are divided according to high/low, front/back, and rounded/ unrounded. The plural is marked by -lVr, where V is a in a back-vowel word, e in a front-vowel word: kız ‘girl’, kızlar ‘girls’; el ‘hand’, eller ‘hands’. Typical African vowel harmony can get much more complicated, but for dealing with orthography, the complications are not important.

 More usual counts of vowel phonemes are 7, 5, or even, as in Arabic, just 3, /a i u/ (Hockett, 1955).  Descriptions of the vowel quality difference had included breathy vs. creaky (Jack Berry) and fuller/deeper vs. choked (Stewart) for tense vs. lax respectively; Stewart uses raised/unraised, from the English analogy, as his general term, even though tongue height barely differs, if at all, within the pairs. 18 19

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3.4 Implosives Implosive stops (CR07, 55–60), characteristic of a variety of Niger-Congo (plus Mande) and Nilo-Saharan languages and of Cushitic and Omotic within Afroasiatic, involve closing the airway from the lungs at the back of the mouth and at the lips or tongue at the front of the mouth, so that air pressure within the mouth can be lowered for a moment and then audibly released. They are normally voiced, and function like the other stops in the language, so they need to be acknowledged in the orthography.

3.5 Tone In a large majority of African languages, the tone – the relative pitch on which syllables are spoken – can both differentiate different words (lexical tone) and communicate grammatical function (grammatical tone).20 The most common number of tones in African languages is two – designated simply H(igh) and L(ow) (Odden, 2020; CR07, 70–74). Many languages have three (adding M(id)), some have four, and at least one language, a variety of the Mande language Dan from Côte d’Ivoire, has a five-way tone contrast: gba1 ‘caterpillar’(highest pitch), gba2 ‘shelter’, gba3 ‘fine’, gba4 ‘roof’, and gba5 ‘antelope’ (lowest pitch). Tones can also be contour tones, with a pitch that rises, falls, or dips on a single syllable. A complication for analysts, but not for speakers or for orthography, is the phenomenon of downstep, by which a high tone is spoken at a slightly lower pitch when preceded by a low tone. This means that there appear to the analyst to be many more than two (or three or five) tones in the language, but the process is automatic and probably unconscious. A concise but clear description of African tone phenomena is provided by Schachter, 1971, 37–39.

4 “Khoisan” General treatments of African languages often proceed from north to south, but a phenomenon crucial throughout the continent  – the often profound influence of neighboring languages on deep-seated linguistic features – comes through clearly if instead we begin in the south. (In the following sections, selected families in the phyla are given some discussion.) In 1950 Greenberg wrote, “In phonology, the most important evidence of the basically Khoisan relationships of Hottentot is the frequency of the click sounds and the essential part they play in the economy of the language,” and this sentence was 20

 More familiar tone languages, such as Chinese, usually have lexical tone only.

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Map 3  Major Khoisan lineages and languages in the Kalahari Basin. (Reprinted with permission from Güldemann, 2014, 12)

carried over unaltered into the reworkings (e.g. Greenberg, 1963, 67).21 He displays over a hundred vocabulary items exhibiting some resemblance of sound and meaning among Khoi, San, and two languages of Tanzania that also have clicks. Only a few years later, but referring to decades of speculation, E. O. J. Westphal (1971) demolished the theory of a single phylum defined by the presence of clicks in a language’s phonological inventory. The modern view is that there are three families of languages using clicks (Map 3), the few languages that have survived into the twenty-first century, spoken by maybe 300,000 people total in and near Namibia (Map 4). The three families, formerly North, Central, and South Khoisan, are now known as Kx’a, Khoe-Kwadi, and Tuu respectively. Nama is used in education through the secondary level, so it has a standard written form, and the clicks are spelled with the symbols used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Güldemann, 2014, 3–5 (in the context of  Greenberg uses the derogatory term “Hottentot” for the Nama [or Khoekhoe] language and “Bushman” for San. 21

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Khwe ǃXuun Nama

ǁAni

Naro

Shua-Tshwa

Gǁana

Venda Tsonga

Taa ǂ‘Amkoe

Northern Sotho Swati

Tswana Southern Sotho

Nǁng

Zulu

Xhosa

0 0

400 km 400 miles

Kxoe-Kwadi

Bantu

Kx’a

Afrikaans

Tuu

English

Map 4  Present-day distribution of languages in southern Africa. (Compiled from numerous on-­ line sources)

standardizing the names of the click languages), lists a number of differences between the current standard orthography and earlier, somewhat haphazard, practice. The clicks are among the most ear-catching of all sound-elements found around the world (CR07, 62–64). Formerly known only from southern Africa; clicks have now also been found in Dahalo, a Cushitic language (Sect. 6). A click is a speech sound made by creating an air-tight space in the mouth, reducing the air pressure in it, and releasing it audibly (Ladefoged, 2005, 170–73; Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996, 246–80). There are five ways of making a noise with such a release, depending on where the closure is released. They can be used for other purposes by speakers of languages that don’t use them as speech sounds. For instance, in English they have the following associations: bilabial (ʘ, kiss-like  – rare as a speech sound), dental (ǀ, spelled tsk or tut, indicating disapproval), alveolar (ǃ, [not familiar in English]), lateral (ǁ, associated with communicating with horses), and palatal or

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retroflex (ǂ, “clucking” the tongue).22 In several languages, each click can have various additional features, including voicing, nasalization, aspiration, glottalization, and affrication. The speakers of the click languages have not fared well over history. As early as the first half of the first millennium ce, speakers of Bantu languages (Sect. 5.1) had arrived from the north. They encroached on the territory of, and eventually supplanted, the earlier inhabitants (Map 4) – who did not depart leaving no trace. Words containing clicks are surprisingly easy to borrow intact, and the major Bantu languages of South Africa, Xhosa and Zulu, and a few smaller ones, are well supplied with clicks (Maddieson, 2003, 31–37). These languages were encountered by Europeans with Roman alphabets long before there were phoneticians, and their clicks are spelled with c, q, and x for ǀ (dental), ǃ (alveolar), and ǁ (lateral), respectively. The last stage of the slow extinction of the click language families began in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company began encouraging settlers near their establishment at Cape Town. First by conquest and then by treaty, these Dutch settlers acquired much land that had been used for seasonal grazing by pastoral peoples – who retreated from the area. Largely cut off from the home of the Dutch language in Europe, the language of the settlers drifted away from what was spoken in Rotterdam. Two centuries later, the new language Afrikaans was codified into a written standard (Valkhoff, 1971, 465–74), which has lost some of the complications of Dutch. Some of the simplification resulted from contact with Bantu languages, and some from the Malay language(s) of enslaved people who had been imported from the Dutch East Indies across the Indian Ocean (Mesthrie, 2017). A comprehensive treatment of the “Khoesan” languages is provided by Vossen, 2013, The volume had taken 20 years to bring to completion and is, perhaps as a result, agnostic about the existence of a phylum embracing all the click languages.23

5 Niger-Congo Greenberg advocated the use of river names, where available, for labeling language groups. A widely cited subgrouping of Niger-Congo families is given by Williamson & Blench, 2000; see Fig. 3, which includes an outline surrounding the families that have been excluded from the phylum in recent decades. (Some analysts also exclude the Atlantic family; Kordofanian seems widely accepted.) Greenberg’s main criterion for including a language family in Niger-Congo was that it exhibited a system of noun class prefixes,24 rather than the phonological  Before the IPA symbols were codified, phoneticians had introduced symbols that were more letter-like (ɋ, ʇ, ʗ, ʖ, ψ respectively). It is not clear why they didn’t find general acceptance. 23  The spelling Khoesan used in Vossen, 2013 “is preferred to the traditional ‘Khoisan’ because it is more adequate to the pronunciation of the word” (p. viii) – but the pronunciation of the (made­up) word is nowhere specified. 24  In one analysis, 19 such prefixes have been postulated for the ancestor of the Bantu languages (Schadeberg, 2003, 149). Most have semantic content. Some are paired, marking singular and 22

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Fig. 3  “Traditional” subdivisions of Niger-Congo. (After simplification by Marten, 2020, 206, of Williamson & Blench, 2000)

correspondences that lay at the heart of traditional philology. The standard post-­ Greenberg, pre-Dimmendaal survey of Niger-Congo is Bendor-Samuel, 1989. This volume was explicitly intended to update Sebeok 1971; the chapters were written a good twenty years later, There are nearly three times as many, more fine-grained, as in the earlier volume (22 vs. 8), with almost no overlap in authorship.25 Each chapter includes a detailed map, a full (except for Bantu) list of the languages in its group, the usual overview of classification controversies, and a survey of phonological and grammatical features.

5.1 Bantu The Bantu group is the most widespread, and the best known,26 component of the Niger-Congo family. The only work on any Niger-Congo family that resembles comparative reconstruction of a proto-language27 is Guthrie, 1971. Even though the

plural. A simple example comes from Southern Sotho (/sutu/): Lesotho, ‘country of the Sotho’; as a British colony it was called Basutoland, ‘(land of) the Sotho people’ (mosotho ‘a Sotho person’); and the language is called Sesotho. 25  Many of the contributors to Bendor-Samuel 1989, though, recur in the later collections mentioned here. 26  The first grammar of an African language was of Kongo, in 1659, though individual Bantu words were recorded in Arabic and Portuguese sources in the 10th–12rh and early 16th centuries respectively (Cole, 1971; Wolff, 2019a, 59–136, condensed from Wolff, 2019b). 27  That is, a lexicon of formulas from which attested words can be derived by applying “rules” of historical changes specific to each language/group.

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author denied that he had made comparative reconstructions, his work has often been taken as such but should not be (Schadeberg, 2003, 144–45, 153–54). The Guthrie, 1948 catalog of the Bantu languages remains the framework for listing them. His subgroupings, identified by capital letters, are geographical, and again they have often been misinterpreted as identifying genetic groupings. The list of the Bantu languages in Nurse & Philippson, 2003, 639–51, notes only that it has some 200 more entries than Guthrie, 1971, where the count presumably exceeded the 241 of Guthrie, 1948. The latest list, in Van de Velde et al., 2019, 17–78, includes 555 items. The best-known Bantu languages are named on Maps 1, 2, 3, and 4. The language-family-tree groupings to which Bantu is said to belong are not universally accepted. Among the Bantoid languages are the Grassfields group and Tiv; and either Benue-Congo includes such widely spoken languages as Igbo and Yoruba and their relatives, or else they are an independent family known as Defoid, or else they are part of the Kwa family.

5.2 Kwa Both Ga and Akan are Kwa languages  – if Kwa is in fact really a family; Akan includes four varieties with standard orthographies, which together are also known as Twi. The Gbe languages include Ewe and Fon. Kwa languages typically have the five points of articulation b d ɖ j g or b d̪ d j g (that is, either apico-alveolar and retroflex, or dental and apico-alveolar). What should the orthography do about this?

5.3 Western Volta-Congo The most widespread Gur language is Mooré, and the Kru languages include Bassa. Gur languages typically have consonants from the five points of articulation b d j g gb, some adding ɖ as well. Some Gur languages have noun class suffixes instead of or as well as prefixes.

5.4 Atlantic Wolof and Temne are among the more widely spoken Atlantic languages – Wolof in Senegal, Temne in Guinea. The unity of the Atlantic group is questioned; some languages, including Wolof, are non-tonal.

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5.5 Adamawa Those who write about Adamawa seem to be at a loss as to why Greenberg made it a separate family, and they give the impression that Adamawa languages are more like Gur languages than like the Ubanguian languages they were (or had been) associated with.

5.6 Kordofanian Kordofanian is one of the more interesting members of Niger-Congo, in that its speakers are found scattered through the Nuba mountains, a small region in Sudan that provided refuge for speakers of languages from three unrelated families, whose communities are intermingled, so that it is not surprising that there are typological questions about membership in the phyla. These are the southernmost Nubian languages (Sect. 2) and the Kadu family, which has been excluded from Nilo-Saharan for undisclosed reasons.28

5.7 Dogon, Ijoid, Defoid, and Ubanguian When reasons are mentioned for excluding these families from Niger-Congo,29 they tend to be typological criteria such as basic word order (that is, the order in which Subject, Verb, and Object occur in ordinary sentences) and the absence of noun class affixes. Word order is known to be easily borrowed between languages, and if some feature is not found in a language, it cannot be determined by inspection whether it has been lost over history or whether the language never had it – unless its close relatives have been securely identified. Williamson, 1971, 294, notes that some Ijoid languages have human/non-human gender alongside sex gender.

 Detailed map in Dimmendaal, 2008, 850.  A typical statement: “The actual comparative evidence for a Niger-Congo affiliation is indeed rather slim, and no convincing evidence has been added over the past decades [since Greenberg, 1963]. Consequently, Mande and Ubangian are best treated as independent language families” (Dimmendaal, 2008, 842). 28 29

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5.8 Mande The Mande family, which Greenberg included in Niger-Congo even though it exhibits basically no noun class prefixing – presumably because Mande languages had borrowed a great deal of vocabulary from neighboring language families  – is of especial interest because a very large number of the indigenous writing systems of West Africa (see chapter “Non-Roman Scripts of Africa”) were devised by speakers of Mande languages.

6 Nilo-Saharan Nilo-Saharanists have apparently not created an edited overview of their phylum like those available for the other three African groupings. Bender, 199730 is routinely cited as serving that purpose. Even Sebeok, Berry, and Greenberg, 1971, alongside its 361 pages on most of the Niger-Congo families, has but one chapter on Nilo-Saharan – Greenberg, 1971.31 M. Lionel Bender worked continually on the classification and subclassification of the languages of the phylum, always taking Greenberg’s scheme as the basis (Fig. 4). The first of his several overviews includes an exemplary achievement in

Fig. 4  The components of Nilo-Saharan after Bender, 2000; superscripts, number of coordinate subdivisions; lightface, all languages with over 500,000 speakers according to Bender, 2000; italics, families subsequently excluded

 See n. 25.  This may not have been intentional. The General Editor’s preface (p. x) notes that there had been fewer disappointments from contributors to this volume than to previous ones, but Schachter (1971, 32) lists three controversial topics two of which he does not need to address because they are dealt with by specialists elsewhere in the volume. One of them is the question of Nilotic or “Nilo-Hamitic” within Nilo-Saharan. Greenberg (1971, 436–37) does mention critics but offers refutations without clearly stating what their objections were. 30 31

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classification method, a huge chart of 73 linguistic features marked for whether they occur or not in 25 Nilo-Saharan languages (and 8 “control” languages from other phyla) (Bender, 1976, 445–50). That chart is supplemented by the results of lexicostatistical investigation.32 The last general survey of even Ethiopian Nilo-Saharan, he notes, had been Bryan, 1945,33 some 30 years earlier.34 He created further surveys of the phylum at briefer intervals thereafter, including Bender, 1997, 2000. Despite words of high praise for Greenberg’s achievement in Dimmendaal, 2008, 843, the whittling down of Nilo-Saharan over the next decade has resulted in the tree shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5  Post-Greenbergian Nilo-Saharan (After Dimmendaal, 2017, Dimmendaal et al., 2019)

 Lexicostatistics assumes that the number of cognates (taken from a list of “basic vocabulary” believed to be resistant to borrowing) shared between pairs of languages is an indication of their degree of relatedness. Bender, 1971 uses 99-word lists from 103 languages to suggest classifications of all four language families of Ethiopia  – Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Nilo-Saharan. Lexicostatistics fell into rather bad odor when it began to be used to estimate the “time depth” of the language families arrived at, glottochronology, by assuming that the fewer cognates a pair of languages shared, the longer ago they had diverged. Difficulties include the unproven assumption that languages retain or change their vocabulary at a constant rate, and the fact that there are few languages in the world for which calibration from comparing early written records is available. 33  Bryan does not suggest any larger groupings of the languages she discusses, but she excludes those known to be “Hamitic” (i.e. Afroasiatic [Cushitic]), Nilotic, and “Nilo-Hamitic” (a category rooted in racial linguistics that Greenberg did away with). 34  Cf. Dimmendaal, preprint, with excellent map. 32

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6.1 Nubian Being so close to Egypt, one of the first African language groups to come to the attention of European philologists was the Nubian. Its five components approach a million speakers in southern Egypt and Sudan, including small numbers of “Hill Nubians” in the Nuba Mountains north of the South Sudan border. Its importance for philology, though, is that two premodern languages were preserved in writing: Meroitic – it supported a powerful kingdom around the turn of the era – and Old Nubian, used in a Christian kingdom some centuries later.

6.2 Nilotic Nilotic is the largest component of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, in both number of speakers and geographical extent. Many of the best-known peoples of East Africa are Nilotic-speakers.

7 Afroasiatic The only controversy as to the composition of the Afroasiatic phylum (formerly called “Hamito-Semitic,” a misleading term based on biblical genealogy) was whether the Omotic family should be considered separate, or a fifth subfamily within Cushitic (Greenberg’s “West Cushitic”), but that was settled toward the end of the twentieth century (Sect. 7.5). Afroasiaticists continue to disagree about the subgroupings within the phylum. Peust (2012) displays 27 published proposals (1853–2008), singling out Ehret’s (see Fig. 6) as the only one consistently invoking shared innovations; his own proposal, based on a somewhat new methodology, is in Fig. 7. An excellent recent survey of Afroasiatic is Frajzyngier & Shay, 2012, which, as a harbinger of subsequent approaches to African linguistics, adopts a typological approach. Many Afroasiatic languages have three sorts of consonant articulation that derive from a past era of glottalized consonants. Two kinds are found in Semitic languages. Many Ethiosemitic languages retain the glottalized articulation; Arabic includes pharyngealized consonants,35 often most easily audible to the outsider by the effect of throat constriction on adjacent vowels. Ejectives (Ladefoged, 2005, 147–49; Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996, 78–81; CR07, 60–61) contrast with implosives (Sect. 3.4): the airstream is closed off and pressure is increased in the oral cavity

 In Modern Aramaic languages and a few varieties of Arabic, pharyngealization is no longer confined to individual consonants; entire words are pronounced with either a “flat” (pharyngealized/ velarized) or a “plain” articulation, usually according to whether they had contained emphatic or pharyngeal consonants. 35

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Fig. 6  Afroasiatic subgrouping. (After Ehret, 2000, 291)

Fig. 7  Afroasiatic subgrouping. (Peust, 2012, 241)

and audibly released. Traditionally, phonemic transcriptions of all three varieties of emphatic sounds are done with a dot beneath the consonant, but is that an ideal element of an orthographic system?

7.1 Egyptian The oldest written records in Africa represent the Egyptian language, dating from ca. 3000 bce or a bit earlier. The hieroglyphic script and its relatives record only consonants; the vowels of Egyptian words can be recovered fairly reliably on the basis of words borrowed into other languages that did record vowels, and on the basis of the latest variety of Egyptian, the Coptic language, which was spoken into early modern times and is still the language of the liturgy and writings of Coptic Christianity. See Loprieno, 1995 and the language articles gathered in Atiya, 1991, vol. 8.

7.2 Semitic Most of the Semitic languages constitute the -asiatic part of Afroasiatic. The classical ones are Akkadian (attested between ca. 2500 bce and at least the first century ce), Hebrew (possibly ca. 1000 bce to the present),36 Aramaic (beginning ca.  Its close relative Phoenician more securely dates to 1000 bce. Their near relative Ugaritic survives from the thirteenth century bce. 36

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850 bce),37 and Arabic (attested early in the Common Era, becoming a literary language in the mid seventh century). Akkadian is East Semitic; all the others are West Semitic. Brockelmann, 1908–13, 1: 3 acknowledged the kinship of all the other components of Afroasiatic38 but noted that they were insufficiently known to help with the prehistory of Semitic. It used to be understood that the Semitic languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia  – some twenty of them, usually labeled Ethiosemitic – were closely related to, if not directly descended from, the Old South Arabian (OSA) languages whose inscriptions blanket Yemen and Oman, and thus also to the half-dozen Modern South Arabian (MSA) languages, and moreover to Arabic. The reason for grouping these four grouos together was that all continued all or nearly all the consonant phonemes of Proto-Semitic (again cf. n. 8). That the Ethiopic script developed from the OSA script was also taken into account. However, better knowledge of OSA, MSA, and Ethiosemitic has shown that the four groups do not constitute a node on the Semitic family tree. There are two groups of Ethiosemitic languages, Northern and Southern. North Ethiosemitic comprises the classical language Gəʿəz, still used in the Ethiopic church, and Tigre of northern Eritrea; and Tigrinya of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia (not direct descendants of Gəʿəz). The principal South Ethiosemitic language is Amharic, the most widely spoken language of Ethiopia and until 1975 the only official one. The others include the closely related Argobba, Harari of the city of Harar, and more than a dozen varieties grouped as Gurage. Hetzron, 1997 was the first handbook of Semitic to include all the Ethiosemitic languages (the editor’s specialty). It is not superseded by its ostensible second edition, Huehnergard & Pat-El, 2019, which differs from beginning to end. Weninger et al., 2012 covers contact phenomena extensively but slacks off in its treatment of the African languages.

7.3 Berber According to the whim of each Berberist, Berber is either a single language (an L-complex; Sect. 2) or a hundred languages scattered across North Africa. A millennium of inscriptions – beginning ca. 800 bce – from across North Africa and even the Canary Islands, but mainly from Tunisia, in a distinctive script are of almost no use for interpreting earlier stages of the language, because they comprise hardly anything but name and titles. In southern Morocco, Berber has been written in Arabic script since the eleventh century.  Its main literary varieties are Syriac (Christian) and two Jewish varieties, Babylonian and Palestinian. 38  Dimmendaal, 2008, 840, credits Greenberg with incorporating Chadic into Afroasiatic for the first time, but Pilszczikowa, 1960 explores the somewhat equivocal use of Hausa in the first comparative lexicon of the phylum, Cohen, 1947. 37

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The best-known form of Berber is that of the Tuareg peoples, with varieties stretching from Libya through Algeria and Mali to Niger and Burkina Faso. Morocco knows three main varieties, Tashelhiyt (south), Tamazight (middle), and Tarifiyt (north). The Berber intellectual center in northern Algeria uses Kabylie. Tunisia’s variety is Djerba, Libya has Djebel (“Mount”) Nefusa in the west, Awdjilah in the east, and Ghadames in the Sahara; and in Egypt, Berber is spoken at the Siwa oasis. The political status of Berber in Tunisia and Libya is fraught – but in Morocco, its use in education and publishing receives some encouragement. A hopeful sign is that a number of recent postage stamps from Algeria include a legend in Tifinagh script alongside Arabic and French.

7.4 Cushitic Among the thirty-plus Cushitic languages were some of the first African languages to be described by European linguists. Their evident kinship to, but clear difference from, the adjacent Ethiosemitic languages was intriguing. There are four groups: North (Beja, eastern Sudan); Central (Agaw, with three viable representatives, Awngi and Khamtanga in northwest Ethiopia and Bilin in northern Eritrea); East (the Highland group includes the thriving Kambaata, Hadiyya, and Sidamo of the northern Lake portion of the Rift Valley, and the Lowland group includes the lingua francas Oromo and Somali and the other national language Afar39); and South Cushitic (in Tanzania, where Iraqw alone may survive).

7.5 Omotic Fleming, 1969 pointed out how divergent the thirty-odd West Cushitic languages of southwestern Ethiopia were, and shortly thereafter named the Omotic family (from the Omo River). Almost immediately, controversy arose over its classification  – some saw it as Cushitic’s closest relative, others as barely even Afroasiatic (compare Fig. 7 with Fig. 6). Amha, 2012 devotes nearly ten pages to the history of the controversy. The Omotic language with the most speakers is Wolaitta.

7.6 Chadic The largest and most diverse family within Afroasiatic is Chadic, of northern Nigeria and several separate areas to the east. It is phonologically the “most African” of the Afroasiatic families, as can be seen from Sect. 3. This “Africanness” can be 39

 For a decade, Djibouti was the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

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attributed to long contact with the surrounding Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages. Of the 150-odd Chadic languages, the only one with more than 100,000 speakers is Hausa; many of the others are badly endangered, and many have not been studied by linguists.

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Mesthrie, R. (2019). Into and out of Africa: The sociolinguistics of European and Asian languages in Africa and of the African diaspora. In H. E. Wolff (pp. 442–67). Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2016). The long-run effects of the scramble for Africa. American Economic Review, 106(7), 1802–1848. Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (Eds.). (2003). The Bantu languages (Routledge language family descriptions). Routledge. Odden, D. (2020). Tone. In R. Vossen, & G. J. Dimmendaal (pp. 30–47).. Olson, K. S., & Hajek, J. (2003). Crosslinguistic insights on the labial flap. Linguistic Typology, 7, 157–186. Peust, C. (2012). On the subgrouping of Afroasiatic. Lingua Aegyptia, 20, 221–251. Pike, K. L. (1947). Phonemics: A technique for reducing languages to writing. Summer Institute of Linguistics. Pilszczikowa, N. (1960). Le haoussa et le chamito-sémitique à la lumière de l’Essai comparatif de Marcel Cohen. Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 24(1), 97–130. Schachter, P. (1971). The present state of African linguistics. In T.  A. Sebeok, J.  Berry, & J. H. Greenberg (pp. 30–44). Schadeberg, T. C. (2003). Historical linguistics. In D. Nurse, & G. Philippson (pp. 143–63). Schmidt, W. (1926). Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde mit einem Atlas von 14 Karten in Lithographie (Kulturgeschichtliche Bibliothek 1.5). Carl Winter. Sebeok, T. A., Ferguson, C. A., Hodge, C. T., & Paper, H. H. (Eds.). (1970). Current trends in linguistics, vol. 6: Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa. Mouton. Sebeok, T. A., Berry, J., & Greenberg, J. H. (Eds.). (1971). Current trends in linguistics, vol. 7: Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mouton. Stewart, J. M. (1967). Tongue root position in Akan vowel harmony. Phonetica, 16(4), 185–204. Tucker, A.  N. (1971). Orthographic systems and conventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. In T. A. Sebeok, J. Berry, & J. H. Greenberg (pp. 618–53). Valkhoff, M. F. (1971). Descriptive bibliography of the linguistics of Afrikaans: A survey of major works and authors. In T. A. Sebeok, J. Berry, & J. H. Greenberg (pp. 455–500). Van de Velde, M., Bostoen, K., Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (Eds.). (2019). The Bantu languages (Routledge Language Family Series) (2nd ed.). Vossen, R. (Ed.). (2013). The Khoesan languages (Routledge language family series). Routledge. Vossen, R., & Dimmendaal, G.  J. (Eds.). (2020). The Oxford handbook of African languages. Oxford University Press. Weninger, S., Khan, G., Streck, M.  P., & Watson, J.  C. (Eds.). (2012). The Semitic languages: An international handbook (Handbooks of linguistics and communication science 36). De Gruyter Mouton. Westphal, E.  O. (1971). The click languages of Southern and Eastern Africa. In T.  A. Sebeok, J. Berry, & J. H. Greenberg (pp. 367–420). Williamson, K. (1971). The Benue-Congo languages and Ijo. In Sebeok, Berry, & Greenberg (pp. 245–306). Williamson, K., & Blench, R. (2000). Niger-Congo. In B. Heine, & D. Nurse (pp. 11–42). Wolff, H.  E. (Ed.). (2019a). The Cambridge handbook of African linguistics. Cambridge University Press. Wolff, H. E. (Ed.). (2019b). A history of African linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

Non-Roman Scripts of Africa Peter T. Daniels

Abstract  The scripts used in Africa, other than the roman alphabet, are described in four groups: those used in ancient times; those imported in ancient times that remain in use until the present; those devised independently in modern times; and those devised in modern times by persons familiar with other scripts. Africa has hosted far more indigenous inventions of writing systems than any other continent, dating from remote antiquity nearly to the present. Table 1 probably represents a complete list. A number of them are discussed briefly in the following sections, which are for the most part historically organized.1

1 Scripts of the Ancient World 1.1 Egyptian Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared toward the end of the fourth millennium bce. Each pictogram represented one, two, or three consonants or identified the semantic field of the word it followed. (The one-consonant symbols were never used as an “alphabet.”) A script with shapes simplified from the hieroglyphs, known as hieratic, was written with pen and ink on papyrus, almost from the beginning of Egyptian writing; not until after 1000 bce was the demotic script devised, based on but not equivalent to the hieroglyphic or hieratic scripts. The earlier scripts wrote a classic, literary language; demotic was used for the considerably different spoken language.

 I thank Andrij Rovenchak (Lviv) and Piers Kelly (Jena) for help with indigenous scripts. Tables (some partial) are given for scripts that are (at least to some degree) in current use. 1

P. T. Daniels (*) Independent Scholar, Jersey City, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_3

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Table 1  African script creations Employed but now extinct (indigenous) Egyptian  ca. 3000 bce to fifth c. ce Proto-Sinaitic abjad  ca. 1800 bce Punic abjad  ca. ninth c. bce to fifth c. ce Numidian abjad  seventh c. bce to third c. ce Guanche abjad  sixth c. bce to fourteenth c. ce? Meroitic abugida  second c. bce to fifth c. ce Old Nubian alphabet  eighth to fifteenth c. ce Bassa syllabary  1836 Bagam syllabary  ca. 1910 Osmaniya alphabet  1922 Somali alphabet  1933 Employed but now extinct (imported) Aramaic abjad  sixth to third c. bce Sabaic abjad  sixth c. bce to fourth c. ce Hebrew abjad  seventh to twentieth c. ce Still in use (imported) Greek alphabet  fourth c. bce– Coptic alphabet  second c. ce– Ethiopic abugida  fourth c. ce– Arabic abjad  seventh c. ce–; ajami eleventh c.– Roman alphabet  first c. bce; fifteenth c. ce–

Still in use (indigenous) Tifinagh alphabet  continuing Numidian Vai syllabary  1832/33– Bamum syllabary  ca. 1896– Bassa alphabet  ca. 1910– Kpelle syllabary  ca. early 1930s– Loma/Toma syllabary  ca. late 1930s– N’ko alphabet  1949– Wolof alphabet  1961– Not (or not yet) adopted by society (indigenous) Aladura Holy alphabet  1927 Oberi-Okaime alphabet  ca. 1930 Bamana (or Masaba) syllabary  1930s Bete syllabary  1956 Oromo abugida  1956 Fula alphabet (Oumar Dembélé)  ca. 1958 Fula alphabet (Adama Ba)  ca. 1963 Kru alphabet  1972 Nwagu Aneke Igbo syllabary  ca. early 1960s Aka Umuagbara Igbo logosyllabary  1993 Esan oracle rainbow syllabary  ca. 1996

Adapted from Tuchscherer (2007, 38)

1.2 Northwest Semitic The second-oldest script in Africa may also have been created there. The shapes of the 28 or 29 letters known as Proto-Sinaitic (because they were first found on the Sinai Peninsula) almost certainly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, but the sound of each letter relates to the name in a Semitic language of the item depicted in the pictogram (Hamilton, 2006). The existing examples date to the XIIth Dynasty, ca. 1800 bce. Sporadic finds along the Levantine coast dating to the following 800 years or so show the developments in the shape of the letters, until by about 1000 they were representing the Phoenician language, as well as a number of other West Semitic languages, for each of which the shapes of the letters diverged from the ancestor and from each other (Naveh, 1987). The Phoenicians, traders and seafarers, settled all around the Mediterranean, and in their establishments along the African coast, most notably at Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia), the people and their language became known as Punic. They left hardly any written records other than funerary inscriptions.

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Like their Egyptian models, the Phoenician letters (which had been whittled down to a count of 22) recorded only consonants; anyone who could read the language already knew the language and so knew how to pronounce the words even with the vowels unindicated.2 A script comprising only letters for consonants is an abjad (not an alphabet). Aramaic was the main administrative language of the Persian Empire, and a number of administrative documents in it have survived, thanks to Egypt’s climate, showing both that administrators in the distant capitals and Jewish authorities in Jerusalem kept in touch with a Jewish community on Elephantine Island (Aswan), in the far south of Egypt. Over time, Jewish communities found refuge across North Africa. A storeroom for discarded written materials (which could not be destroyed, in case they bore the Name of God), the geniza of an ancient synagogue in Cairo, has yielded hundreds of thousands of pages and fragments in numerous languages of Jewish peoples (mostly dating to the early second millennium ce); and farther west, rabbinic scholars in medieval times wrote in both Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic (their native Arabic language in Hebrew script).

1.3 Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian Farther east in the Mediterranean (we do not know just where, but probably around 800 bce), Phoenicians encountered another seafaring people, the Greeks. By some means, the Greek language came to be written with the Phoenician letters – except that five of the letters for consonants not found in Greek became assigned to vowels, resulting in the first alphabet – a script with letters for both consonants and vowels. One of the great seats of post-Classical learning was Alexandria, Egypt, on the coast in the Nile Delta, where a great library was established – of which nothing survives. Where there were Christians in the early centuries ce there were Greek documents, and the Egyptian climate has preserved thousands of pages, even complete books (the Oxyrhynchus papyri). One of the greatest surviving libraries from earlier times is at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, where Greek is one of many languages represented in the manuscripts. Another alphabet emerged from the Greek alphabet early in the Common Era. Egyptian Christians spoke Egyptian (in its latest form, Coptic), and they wrote it with the Greek alphabet supplemented by half a dozen letters for consonants not found in the Greek language – and the shapes of those letters came from demotic characters. The Coptic alphabet in turn formed the basis for the Old Nubian alphabet, which was supplemented by a few letters from Meroitic (Rilly & de Voogt, 2012, 74–75).

 A sister language and script of Phoenician, Aramaic, went a different way, eventually using the letters for /w/ and /y/ for the vowels /ō, ū/ and /ē, ī/ respectively (Cross & Freedman, 1952). 2

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The earliest and latest dated texts are from 797 and 1484 ce, suggesting that knowledge of the Meroitic abugida (Sect. 1.5) persisted longer than durable texts were being written with it. An offshoot of the Greek alphabet devised in Italy in the eighth or seventh c. bce for the Latin language saw some use in North Africa during Roman rule, but began to be significant during the “Age of Exploration” at the end of the fifteenth century. It is now the most widely used writing system on the continent (chapter “Roman Script Orthography Development in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”, this volume).

1.4 Numidian (Libyco-Berber), Guanche, and Tifinagh The Tifinagh alphabet is typically used for Tuareg, a variety of Berber. Its development from the Libyco-Berber script, which is attested in a number of inscriptions in the Numidian language from Punic times (of which a variant, known as Guanche, developed in the Canary Islands), can be traced in inscriptions across the centuries. The ancient 24-letter abjad can almost entirely be read, but since almost nothing was written except names, there is no language to interpret (Farrujia de la Rosa et al., 2010). The modern alphabet, which includes vowels, has spread somewhat from Tuareg and has been adopted to an extent in Morocco as a compromise between Arabic and Roman script, and some Berber-language books have been published in it. Note from Table 2 that neither the Arabic nor the Roman equivalent captures all the distinctions recorded in Tifinagh.

Table 2  The Tifinagh alphabet of modern Berber

Source: After Wikipedia s.v. Tifinagh (accessed 25 May 2021) Second and third rows, official Arabic and Roman transliterations; fourth row, phonetic transcription

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1.5 Meroitic Another script possibly influenced by Egyptian was used in the kingdom of Meroë, south of Egypt in present-day Sudan, from about the third century bce to the early fifth century ce (Rilly & de Voogt, 2012). The readings of the characters were determined early in the twentieth century, but the language itself only became clear when it was realized that Meroitic was written with an abugida3 – the vowel /a/ is unexpressed, or is inherent in the consonant letters, while the other vowels /i e o u/ are written with their own letters. There were both linear (earlier) and hieroglyphic (later) varieties of Meroitic writing. The hieroglyphic letters resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs but similar pictograms do not have related readings. Unlike in other pictographic scripts, the animals and such that are depicted face not the beginnings of the lines but the ends.

2 Present-Day Scripts Imported in Ancient Times 2.1 Ethiopic In the last centuries bce, Sabaeans from South Arabia crossed the mouth of the Red Sea to what is now northern Ethiopia. By the fourth century ce, King Ezana of the kingdom of Aksum was erecting inscriptions in a development of the South Arabian consonantal script. But midway through his reign, the inscriptions began to exhibit Christian invocations, and they began to exhibit explicit notation of vowels. This was done not with separate letters, as in the Greek or Coptic alphabet, but by appendages or slight alterations to the shapes of the letters, a fairly consistent notation for each of six vowels – but one vowel was indicated by the absence of any special marking (Table 3).4 This abugida system is exactly how vowels are indicated in the scripts that had developed in India some 600 years earlier (Daniels, 2019), and it is unknown anywhere else but Meroitic. It is a reasonable assumption that both Christianity and this mode of indicating vowels came by ship across the Arabian Sea, after Indian sailors had discovered the monsoon winds and regular commercial exchange with East Africa began (Daniels, 1992a, 149–52). Ethiopic script was used first for the Gəʿəz language, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian church. Gəʿəz appears to have preserved almost all the consonants of Proto-Semitic (though nowadays several of them have merged in pronunciation though not in spelling) and has added a series of labialized velar consonants whose letters have distinctive forms for each of the vowels that can follow them. By the time it came to the attention of European scholars, in the mid sixteenth century,  A Gəʿəz and Amharic word for the Ethiopic script when it is used in the traditional alphabetical order rather than the usual order seen in Table 3A. 4  The seven columns of the traditional style of presentation are known as orders and are usually identified with Roman numerals. 3

P. T. Daniels

50 Table 3  The Ethiopic script and Amharic

Some additional letters for some other languages b c,c d

c e e

Letters for Amharic palatalized sounds indicated by indented transcriptions in the leftmost column; Tigrinya, Harari (Semitic); cAwngi; dBilin (Cushitic); eHamer (Omotic)

a

b

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Ethiopic script was also being used for Amharic. Several sets of letters are added for palatalized consonants, and further letters have been devised for other languages of Ethiopia with sufficient currency to have received Unicode representation (some shown in Table 3B).

2.2 Arabic The other main descendant of the script that gave rise to Phoenician was the Aramaic scripts. One variety was used by the Arab people known as the Nabataeans, who controlled many trade routes across the Arabian desert from their capital at Petra (in modern-day Jordan). They wrote a variety of Aramaic. Beginning, as far as we know, in the fourth century ce, they started to write their own Arabic language (Gruendler, 1993), and by the time of the Prophet in the seventh century, an Arabic literary language was available for recording the utterances that became the Qur’ān (Versteegh, 2014). The basic characteristics of the Arabic writing system (Table 4; Daniels, 2013b, Mitchell, 1958) are that, in addition to notating all the consonants with the 28 letters (22 inherited from Nabataean, 6 innovated for the phonemes that had been lost in Table 4  The traditional presentation of Arabic script (right half first)a

The traditional presentation of Arabic script is needlessly complicated. The “four forms” shown in the columns of the table can easily be derived from the simple forms in the first (rightmost) column (Daniels, 2013a). The dot • marks the letters with “etymological dotting” (see n. 5)

a

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Aramaic but preserved in Arabic5), it also notates all the long vowels ā ī ū with the letters that (had) stood for related consonants, ‹ʔ y w›. The letters within a word are for the most part joined together. In order to ensure the accurate preservation and reading of the text of the Qurʾān, marks (which are optional, and indeed rare, in other texts for literate readers, but standard for beginning readers) were soon devised to notate the short vowels and several morphophonemic properties of words. Arabs brought Islam to Africa beginning in the mid seventh century ce (Owens, 2020) but were uninterested in recording the local languages they encountered while spreading their faith across North Africa. There are slight differences in the Arabic script as used in the Maghreb (western North Africa). The Arabic script has been adapted to nearly 80 African languages throughout the continent (except among the click languages) (Mumin, 2014). The Introduction to Mumin and Versteegh (2014, 1–22), provides details of the script as adapted to modern African languages. Warren-Rothlin, 2014 deals primarily with contemporary Arabic-script usage in major West African languages. The Arabic term for the use of Arabic script for a non-Arabic language is ajami, which has been borrowed into multiple languages. Among the fourscore languages using ajami, the writing of the vowel points tends to be obligatory, in contrast to the practice in writing Arabic. Devices for writing tone have occasionally been devised, but are generally not used.

3 Modern Inventions of Scripts It was not only in ancient times that scripts were invented ex nihilo in Africa.6 The first known invention of a script in modern times by someone who was not able to read any language, but who observed writing being used to advantage, was by Sequoyah, a leader of the Cherokee nation within the United States. By 1821 he had devised a syllabary – a script with a distinct character for each Consonant + Vowel combination (or just Vowel) used in the language7  – for the Cherokee language. Sequoyah became a renowned celebrity, both in American political circles and in the missionary press: Protestant missionaries, mainly from the US and Britain, were  Dots on 8 of the letters merely distinguish letters whose shapes had become too similar for comfort. For the other 6, dots were assigned in a sophisticated way (Daniels, 2000). They reflect not mere phonetic similarity – or perhaps Arabic ṯ [θ] would have been based on the letter for f – but etymological considerations. They had no conception of an ancestral language from which both Nabataean and Arabic had developed, but they used the letters that spelled the “same words” – that is, words that were recognizably cognate – in the two languages. 6  Section 3 is adapted from Daniels (Unknown, ch 6). The fullest detail on the indigenous scripts of Africa was gathered by David Dalby (1967, 1968, 1969). Accessible treatments are provided by Rovenchak and Glavy (2011), Rovenchak and Buk (2020), and Mafundikwa (2004). Most valuable is Tuchscherer, 2007. 7  This differs from the abugida type of writing, where each consonant is modified in some consistent way to designate each vowel other than /a/. 5

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linked by a lively network of newspapers that brought information about each others’ accomplishments around the world. Sequoyah’s achievement received publicity that way.

3.1 Independently Devised Syllabaries It is possible (though it does not seem likely) that Mumɔlɔ Duwalu Bukɛlɛ learned of the Cherokee syllabary before commencing his own attempt at writing his language, Vai, a Mande language spoken in part of Liberia (Tuchscherer & Hair, 2002);8 he had created his script by 1833. Indeed, for more than a century European scholars tried, fruitlessly, to demonstrate that African inventors – some of whom they knew personally – could not have come up with a writing system on their own but must have either adapted (nonexistent?) ancient symbols or copied Roman or Arabic letters (Kelly, 2018, 199, cf. Dalby, 1968, 163–66).9 Whatever Mumɔlɔ may have learned in his own situation, or whatever he may have learned from accounts of Sequoyah, had little influence on his script: it is more complicated both in what it records and in the appearance of the characters (Table 5). By 1930, characters had been added to the Vai syllabary to accommodate English sounds such as [r ʃ ʒ θ ð], and a 1962 reform by the University of Liberia provided for all the phonemic details of Vai. In recent times, three scripts, the Roman alphabet, the Arabic abjad, and the Vai syllabary, have been found to function side by side for writing the language, in separate spheres of interest within the Vai community – administration and communicating with the outside world; their Islamic religion; and their private business, respectively (Scribner & Cole, 1981).10 Mende, Kpelle, and Loma (called Toma in neighboring Guinea) are three peoples of Liberia or Sierra Leone not distant from the Vai, also speaking Mande languages, and when they saw written communication in Vai, they came up with their own writings.11 In 1847, Liberia had become the only independent nation in West  The suggestion that Bukɛlɛ may have had some education in a missionary school in the nearby British-controlled territory of Sierra Leone may be the invention of the pioneering scholar of African languages S. W. Koelle, who could not credit a “native” with devising a writing system unaided (Kelly, 2018, 199 n. 11). 9  In those cases where the inventors could read Arabic or French or English, the influence does not need to be postulated: it is explicitly apparent (Sect. 3.2). 10  Schreiber (2020, 175), writes, “Mande writing systems … did not spread widely and are no longer used in current publications or in the press.” This is at best misleading. In most cases, they were not so used and they were not so intended, so “no longer used” is rather beside the point; in the case of Vai, Konrad Tuchscherer reports (pers. comm., 3 May 2021) that it remains in robust use alongside the other two scripts of the community. 11  Is it possible that not having the beginnings of words differing for number (singular/plural) or for other properties (such prefixes are characteristic of Niger-Congo languages but are not found in the Mande languages, which have been included in that language phylum) makes it easier for someone thinking of syllables to identify something that is invariant in the sound pattern of a word? 8

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Table 5  The Vai syllabary (first 49 characters)a

The order of the table is the English-alphabet-based order used by Momolu Massaquoi (1911), the first Vai person to describe the script in print. All that is known of the original order is the name Ajamana, from the first four characters. The character shapes are those in present-day use, as regularized in Unicode

a

Africa, colonized by formerly enslaved people from the United States, who, perhaps unwittingly, reproduced the social stratification they had experienced, with the native peoples in subsidiary conditions (Kelly, 2018, 191–92). In the later nineteenth century, Vai entrepreneurs who had been engaged in the slave trade turned to hiring out lower-class Vai people for menial labor, as far afield as Cameroon, 1000 miles east. Literacy rates in the Vai script were reportedly very high, so this may have been the avenue for the idea of writing to have come to a number of such communities. But again, as with the case of Vai vis-à-vis Cherokee, there is never more than coincidental visual resemblance between those syllabaries – whether near or far – and the Vai syllabary. These peoples need not have learned the script, or even anything about it, to try to come up with a script of their own, and creating a syllabary is, in the course of writing systems development, what comes naturally (Daniels, 2018; n. 12 below). Time and again, when inventors are asked where they got the idea to write their language, they report that it was brought to them in a dream. The inventor of the Masaba syllabary, Woyo Couloubayi, told a researcher, nearly 50 years on, that he had never heard of the Vai syllabary; the idea was “revealed” during a “night of reflection” (Galtier, 1987, 260). The Bamum script of Cameroon has been well documented (Schmitt, 1963). It was a royal enterprise; King Njoya himself is credited with the invention and its refinement, from logography to logosyllabary to syllabary. Its use gradually declined over the twentieth century – except that it was taken up by visual artists who incorporated Bamum characters and even texts into their work even though neither they nor their viewers could read them. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there was only one elder who read and wrote the script exclusively, but since then, Konrad Tuchscherer reports (pers. comm., 5 Sept. 2020), there has been a renaissance, with young people using it. With its incorporation into Unicode, it may find expanded use.

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3.2 Scripts Based on Learned Scripts Several of the scripts listed in Table 1 are identified as alphabets. An alphabet (Sect. 1.3) has comparable letters for both vowels and consonants; under ordinary circumstances, alphabets are not invented out of nowhere. The Bassa alphabet (called Vah) was devised in 1895 by Dr. Thomas N.  Lewis, who was studying in the United States and thus literate in English. He not only included letters for both vowels and consonants on an equal footing; he also required writing the tone of each syllable. A mark for each of the five tones (no tone was unindicated) was to be placed inside the letter for the vowel of the syllable (Table 6). He returned to Liberia in 1907, where his alphabet was enthusiastically received, and it has not been entirely displaced by the Roman alphabet. A far more successful script is the N’ko alphabet (Table 7). Written from right to left, the letters for vowels and consonants are joined at the base within each word. Diacritics are provided for vowel length and tones, and to mark “foreign” letters. Souleymane Kanté created it for his own Maninka language, but it is used over a wide tract of West Africa from Gambia to Nigeria, by probably millions of people, for at least three additional Manding languages (which are mutually intelligible) and even a few other languages (Wyrod, 2008). The most interesting West African script creation, from the point of view of writing systems studies, is the Mende syllabary (called Kikakui) (Table 8), because it confirms the hypothesis about the invention of syllabaries vs. alphabets (Daniels, 1992b, 2018).12 Kisimi Kamara knew about Vai writing, and in 1921 mentioned to some friends his intention to create a script for their Southern Mande language. They suggested using Arabic as a model, with consonant letters and vowel points, and that seems to be why the first 14 × 3 characters are an abugida – but the plain letters have the vowel i (not a). Perhaps, it is suggested (Dalby, 1968, 170), this was Table 6  The Bassa alphabet

 Briefly, the syllable, not the phoneme (consonant or vowel), is the shortest stretch of speech that can be identified by someone who has not been taught an alphabetic script, so when someone who is nonliterate sets out to devise a writing system for their language, they will devise symbols for syllables, not for phonemes. 12

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Table 7  The N’ko alphabeta

Read table from right to left

a

Table 8  The Mende syllabary (first 54 characters)

so that Kisimi Kamara could write his name with the simple letters. (Also, there is a character for ra, even though there is no /r/ phoneme in the Mende language; but his ancestry, and his name, are Mandinka, so he provided for his own name in that way as well.) Kisimi then went into seclusion and came up with about 150 more syllabic characters on his own  – he did not know the Arabic abjad model, so he reverted to characters for syllables. Just a few of them are derived from similar-­ sounding ones, but not with any regularity.

4 Conclusion To recapitulate, two non-Roman scripts of Africa introduced in early times thrive robustly; and two find marginal use, one increasing, one declining. The Ethiopic script expanded from secular to sacred use as Christian scriptures were translated; the Arabic script expanded, with the spread of Islam, from sacred to secular use.

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Both serve all purposes in their respective realms, save for the proviso that the written Arabic language (Modern Standard Arabic) differs significantly from the many varieties (dialects) used throughout Arabic-speaking territory, so that no one learning to read and write Arabic is doing so in their native tongue. The script that may not last into the twenty-second century is the Coptic alphabet. The Coptic language itself has been no one’s native language for centuries, surviving only in liturgy and church writings. The prognosis is favorable, though, for the Tifinagh alphabet, as Berber populations come to be acknowledged by the authorities of North African nations and their children are instructed in and taught to read in their native languages. Of the many scripts devised in modern times, one that parallels the Tifinagh is the N’ko alphabet, which is likewise used, apparently increasingly, for a cluster of mutually intelligible languages, of the Manding group. The other modern script that seems likely to continue to succeed within its own community, in private use, is Vai. Its coexistence with Roman and Arabic scripts for the language within their separate spheres represents a probably unique solution to a problem that seems to plague much of Africa: the predominance of the ex-colonial languages (English, French, Portuguese) and the Roman alphabet as the sole medium of instruction in schools (see chapter “Language of Instruction in the African Classroom: Key Issues, Challenges and Solutions”, this volume) – setting up a situation not all that different from that in the Arabic-speaking nations, with the language of instruction in these cases even more alien to the students. In short, where local literacy was long established, the colonial language and the Roman alphabet did not prevail; and the potential exists, when conditions are right, for local scripts to come again to the fore.

References Cross, F. M., & Freedman, D. N. (1952). Early Hebrew orthography: A study of the epigraphic evidence (American oriental series 36). American Oriental Society. Dalby, D. (1967). A survey of the indigenous scripts of Liberia and Sierra Leone: Vai, Mende, Loma, Kpelle and Bassa. African Language Studies, 8, 1–51. Dalby, D. (1968). The indigenous scripts of West Africa and Surinam: Their inspiration and design. African Language Studies, 9, 156–197. Dalby, D. (1969). Further indigenous scripts of West Africa: Manding, Wolof and Fula alphabets and Yoruba ‘holy writing’. African Language Studies, 10, 161–181. Daniels, P. T. (1992a). Contacts between Semitic and Indic scripts. In A. Harrak (Ed.), Contacts between cultures: Selected papers from the 33rd international congress of Asian and North African Studies, Toronto, August 15–25, 1990, vol. 1: West Asia and North Africa (pp. 146–152). Edwin Mellen. Daniels, P. T. (1992b). The syllabic origin of writing and the segmental origin of the alphabet. In P. Downing, S. D. Lima, & M. Noonan (Eds.), The linguistics of literacy (Typological studies in language 21) (pp. 83–110). John Benjamins. Daniels, P.  T. (2000). On writing syllables: Three episodes of script transfer. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 30, 73–86.

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Daniels, P. T. (2013a). Arabic letters do not have final forms. Paper presented at annual meeting, North American conference on Afroasiatic linguistics, New Haven. Daniels, P. T. (2013b). The Arabic writing system. In J. Owens (Ed.), Oxford handbook of Arabic linguistics (pp. 412–432). Oxford University Press. Daniels, P. T. (2018). An exploration of writing. Equinox. Daniels, P. T. (2019). Indic scripts: History, typology, study. In R. M. Joshi & C. McBride (Eds.), Handbook of literacy in akshara orthography (Literacy studies 17) (pp. 11–42). Springer. Daniels, P.  T. (Unknown). Writing: Its nature, origins, and development. Cambridge University Press. Farrujia de la Rosa, A. J., Pichler, W., Rodrigue, A., & Garcia Marin, S. (2010). The Libyco-Berber and Latino-Canarian scripts and the colonization of the Canary Islands. African Archaeological Review, 13, 13–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-­010-­9070-­4 Galtier, G. (1987). Un exemple d’écriture traditionnelle mandingue: le «Masaba» des Bambara-­ Masasi du Mali. Journal des Africanistes, 57(1–2), 255–266. Gruendler, B. (1993). The development of the Arabic scripts: From the Nabataean era to the first Islamic century according to dated texts (Harvard Semitic studies 43). Scholars Press. Hamilton, G.  J. (2006). The origins of the West Semitic alphabet in Egyptian scripts (Catholic biblical quarterly monograph series 40). Catholic Biblical Association of America. Kelly, P. (2018). The invention, transmission and evolution of writing: Insights from the new scripts of West Africa. In S. Ferrara & M. Valério (Eds.), Paths into script formation in the Ancient Mediterranean (Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici N.S.  Supp. 1) (pp.  189–210). Edizioni Quasar. Mafundikwa, S. (2004). Afrikan alphabets: The story of writing in Afrika. Mark Batty. Massaquoi, M. (1911). The Vai people and their syllabic writing. Journal of the Royal African Society, 10(40), 459–466. Mitchell, T.  F. (1958). Writing Arabic: A practical introduction to Ruq‘ah script. Oxford University Press. Mumin, M. (2014). The Arabic script in Africa: Understudied literacy. In M. Mumin & K. Versteegh (Eds.), The Arabic script in Africa (pp. 41–76). Brill. Mumin, M., & Versteegh, K. (Eds.). (2014). The Arabic script in Africa: Studies in the use of a writing system (Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics 71). Brill. Naveh, J. (1987). Early history of the alphabet (2nd ed.). Magnes. Owens, J. (2020). Arabic in Africa. In R. Vossen & G. J. Dimmendaal (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of African languages (pp. 905–916). Oxford University Press. Rilly, C., & de Voogt, A. (2012). The Meroitic language and writing system. Cambridge University Press. Rovenchak, A., & Buk, S. (2020). Indigenous African scripts. In R. Vossen & G. J. Dimmendaal (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of African languages (pp. 797–812). Oxford University Press. Rovenchak, A., & Glavy, J. (2011). African writing systems of the modern age. Athinkra. Schmitt, A. (1963). Die Bamum-Schrift (3 Vols.). Harrassowitz. Schreiber, H. (2020). Mande. In R. Vossen & G. J. Dimmendaal (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of African languages (pp. 172–183). Oxford University Press. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy. Harvard University Press. Tuchscherer, K. (2007). Recording, communicating and making visible: A history of writing and systems of graphic symbolism in Africa. In C.  M. Kreamer, M.  N. Roberts, E.  Harney, & A. Purpura (Eds.), Inscribing meaning: Writing and graphic systems in African art (pp. 37–53). 5Continents/Smithsonian/National Museum of African Art. Tuchscherer, K., & Hair, P. E. (2002). Cherokee and West Africa: Examining the origins of the Vai script. History in Africa, 29, 427–486. Versteegh, K. (2014). The Arabic language (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Warren-Rothlin, A. (2014). West African scripts and Arabic-script orthographies in socio-political context. In M. Mumin & K. Versteegh (Eds.), The Arabic script in Africa (pp. 261–289). Brill. Wyrod, C. (2008). A social orthography of identity: The N’ko literacy movement in West Africa. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 192, 27–44.

Roman Script Orthography Development in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives David Roberts

Abstract  The aim of this chapter is to provide an account of the movement to develop Roman script orthographies for African languages. The first part traces the history of this movement from its origins in the early nineteenth century to the development of the Unicode standard in the twenty-first century. Each stage includes an assessment, noting which initiatives have stood the test of time and which have been discarded. The second part draws attention to five of the most challenging issues facing contemporary orthography developers, which are identified as under-­ representation of vowels, grammatical tone marking, dialect issues, cross-border issues, and smartphone adaptations. These are illustrated with cases studies from DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, Benin and Togo.

1 Introduction There is an ongoing and sustained movement to develop Roman script orthographies for Africa’s previously unwritten minority languages. Although such languages are characterized by a diversity that is at least as great as the continent’s fauna and flora, it is still possible to identify a handful of common linguistic and social challenges that are common to orthography developers in most contexts; that is the aim of Sect. 3 of this chapter. But first, in Sect. 2, it will be helpful to trace the history of the orthography development movement from its tentative beginnings in the early nineteenth century, in order to glean from the successes and failures of previous generations.

D. Roberts (*) Independent Researcher, Cornwall, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_4

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2 Historical Orthography Development 2.1 Venn’s Rules (1848) The first half of the nineteenth century saw considerable advances in the development of written forms for some of Africa’s larger populations – by 1854, the British and Foreign Bible Society alone had published Bibles or Bible portions in 13 African languages (Lepsius, 1863: 27) – but efforts suffered from lack of any coordination or recognized authority. Early attempts to write African languages tended to vary according to national origin of the transcriber (Kemp, 1981, p. 17). Henry Venn, then Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, was the first to address this issue with his six-page pamphlet Rules for reducing unwritten language to alphabetic writing in Roman script, with reference especially to the languages spoken in Africa (CMS, 1848).1 Although Venn was not a linguist, he realized the importance of a standard alphabet and understood the principle of one-to-one correspondence (Lepsius, 1863: 40). He proposed avoiding digraphs, and using subscript dots to mark vowel quality, both of which survive in Crowther’s Yoruba orthography to this day (Tucker, 1971, p. 620). However, the rules never found widespread acceptance and “Koelle, for one, only followed them grudgingly, and with his own modifications”, in his Polyglotta Africana (Solleveld, 2020, p. 178).

2.2 Lepsius’ Standard Alphabet (1855, 1863) The CMS initiative was quickly overshadowed 7  years later by the Standard Alphabet, developed by the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, and although its intended scope was worldwide, in practice it was more frequently used for African languages than any others.2 In the eight years between the first and second editions (Lepsius, 1855, 1863), it was “applied successfully” to 14 African languages (Knight, 1863, p. xi) – Aoṅgla, Bornu, Ew̉e, Fula, Gã, Hausa, Herero, Ibo, Masai, Nama, Nubian, Nupe, Oǰi, and Zulu3 – although it is not immediately clear by what criteria success was measured, as mass literacy campaigns were unknown at the time (Foster, 1971, p. 589). The second edition goes on to list applications to a further 18 African languages (Lepsius, 1863, pp.  188–288): Amharic,  Beǰa, Coptic,

 Included in Spencer (1966). Bibliographical entries cite the author of this work variously as “Venn, Henry”, “CMS”, “Anonymous”, and “Schön, Friedrich & Lee, Samuel”, the latter referring to the linguistic advisers who worked under Venn’s leadership (Solleveld, 2020, p. 178). 2  Lepsius’ proposal competed with a less well-known alternative by Max Müller at an “Alphabetic Conference” in London in 1854 (Solleveld, 2020, pp. 178–179). 3  Here and elsewhere, language names are given as they appear. 1

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Fernand Po, Galla, Geʽez, Kafir,  Koṅǵára,  Makúa, Mandiṅga, Suáhili, Susu, Tamašeq, Temne, Tšuāna, Vei, Wolof, and Yórūba. Lepsius attempted a bold tabula rasa approach to two longstanding conventions. He recommended adopting a rhyming nomenclature for the whole alphabet, pronouncing every letter with a following a (ka, la, ma, pa…) (1863, pp. 15–16). He also suggested ordering the alphabet by keeping consonants and vowels apart and arranging the letters according to their place and manner of articulation (1863, pp. 16–17). Neither of these strategies was ever implemented. Lepsius demonstrated considerable foresight. He realized that the Standard Alphabet would only be acceptable and useable worldwide if he permitted a generous degree of flexibility. His aim was to furnish a common basis for the greatest possible agreement. He did not expect all users to agree with its every detail, and readily admitted that adjustments would be necessary to fit specific languages (Lepsius, 1863, pp. 45, 79). His prediction proved accurate. The German linguist Carl Meinhof subsequently enlarged and improved the Standard Alphabet for the particular needs of African languages (IIALC, 1930, p. 4; Tucker, 1971, p. 620), and the Austrian missionary-linguist Wilhelm Schmidt also adopted it as a basis for his Anthropos Alphabet (1907, revised 1924) which expanded the original inventory and changed the form and position of some diacritics (IIALC, 1930, p. 4; Kemp, 1981, p. 77). Any assessment of the Standard Alphabet must bear in mind that it was developed before the birth of modern linguistics. Lepsius was assigning symbols to articulatory phenomena that were as yet poorly understood, and feeling his way forward without the benefit of any reliable theory of phonology (Kemp, 1981, pp. 23, 51). He tends to use opaque terminology such as “faucal” and “cerebral” to describe places of articulation, and never provides a complete vowel chart – see Kemp (1981, p. 58) for a tentative reconstruction  – with the result that his intentions are not always entirely clear to the modern reader. Lepsius (1863, p. 76) does provide a consonant chart, but it too is difficult to interpret. Lepsius’ alphabet also predates the widespread commercialization of manual typewriters in the 1870s (Cortada, 2015, p. 38), so the challenges of reproduction would have been uppermost in his mind. Yet curiously he left himself very little wiggle room with his avoidance of special characters (1863, p. 49) and digraphs (p. 62). His preferred alternative was the liberal – one might even say cavalier – sprinkling of diacritics. He showed no aversion at all  to stacking and clustering them, with nasalization represented by a tilde (p. 58–59), length by a macron (p. 50, 59), vowel quality by a range of diacritics (p.  48–49), and tone by post-posed diacritics (e.g. Yoruba p.  276–278). One commentator was naively hopeful that “[...] many of the diacritical marks may be dispensed with, or will gradually drop off themselves” (Knight, 1863, p. xii). Including them all would require some 200 new type-heads (Solleveld, 2020, p. 179). With hindsight, it is generally agreed that the greatest weakness of the Standard Alphabet is its over-reliance on multiple diacritics  – all the subsequent initiatives would react against it  – and that this contributed to its eventual demise (Kemp, 1981, p. 72).

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2.3 Passy’s International Phonetic Alphabet (1888) In 1886, an unexpected new player emerged on the field with the formation in Paris of the International Phonetic Association (IPA, 2021) originally a group of language teachers led by the French linguist Paul Passy, which first developed the International Phonetic Alphabet in 1888 (IPA, 1999, pp. 194–196). The most obvious contrast with Lepsius’ Standard Alphabet is the wholehearted embrace of special characters and massive reduction of diacritics (Kemp, 1981, p. 76). To this day, the IPA remains a universal standard for phonetic notation, and undergoes regular revision, including, with particular regard to African languages, the inclusion of a new symbol to represent the labio-dental flap (IPA, 2005). It was never envisaged that the IPA would serve the needs of functional literacy, but its indirect influence on orthography development in Africa cannot be over-stated. Few linguists or language-­ assigned missionaries leave for the field without learning it, and many of its special characters have found their way into orthographies.

2.4 Westermann’s Africa Alphabet (1928, 1930) When the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures – now known as the International African Institute (IAI, 2021) – met in 1927 under the leadership of Dietrich Westermann to revise the system for transcribing African languages, they did so with all the benefits of recent advances in the nascent science of modern linguistics that began with Saussure (1916). At this meeting, the Lepsius and IPA systems found themselves in open competition (Kemp, 1981, p. 77). The gathering decided in favour of the IPA, embracing special characters and rejecting the extensive use of “makeshift” diacritics on the grounds that they are often overlooked in reading, omitted in writing, a strain on the eyes, and difficult to reproduce with the available technology (IIALC, 1930, pp. 4–6; Tucker, 1971, p. 622). The result was the Africa Alphabet, which is sometimes called the Westermann system. It does not entirely banish diacritics; they are maintained to represent central vowels, nasal vowels, and tone, but the memorandum considers that they may be unnecessary in some languages and reduced to a minimum in others (IIALC, 1930, pp. 6–7, 13). Between the publication of the first and second editions (IIALC, 1928, 1930), the Africa Alphabet was accepted for use in 20 languages: Bari, Dinka, Efik, Ewe, Fante, Ga, Hausa (partially), Ibo, Konno, Latuko,  Limba, Madi, Mende, Nuer, Shilluk, Soso, Temne, Twi, Yoruba, and Zande. However, according to Tucker (1971, p. 623) the claim that all these languages adopted the orthography successfully is over-optimistic, because it was rejected for Yoruba (who favored pointing over special characters), not wholly satisfactory for Temne, implemented only by Catholics, not Protestants, in Igbo, and augmented by the addition of hooked letters in Hausa. The Africa Alphabet was also proposed for uniting the written forms of

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five dialects of Shona in present-day Zimbabwe (IIALC, 1930, p. 3). In addition, the memorandum ends with short texts applying the Africa Alphabet in an additional 14 languages (IIALC, 1930): Akan, Bambara, Chwana, Duala, Ila, Kikuyu, Lohele, Mende, Nyanja, Pedi, Shilluk, Swahili, Xosa, and Zulu. Although certain characters proposed in IIALC (1930) such as and have never found favor (Tucker, 1971, pp.  626, 637), the document overall has had a major influence on orthography development on the continent. Sow and Abdulaziz’s (1993, p. 527) estimate of 60 languages that are based on it is far too low. In the four decades prior to this citation, SIL International alone was involved in the development of orthographies for several hundred African languages, many of which are indebted, to a greater or lesser extent, to Westermann’s Africa Alphabet. The Africa Alphabet is forward-thinking and contains the seeds of three ideas that were not taken up again until much later. First, it recommends that orthographers should take into consideration the grammar of the language as well as its sound system (p. 7), a principle espoused by Grenoble and Whaley (2006, p. 141). Second, IIALC (1930, p. 14) recommends marking tone only when it signals grammatical contrasts, a strategy that tested with success in a classroom experiment (Roberts & Walter, 2012). Third, IIALC (1930, p. 17) warns against writing a word in more than one way, long before the term “consistent word image” gained regular currency in the Africanist literature (e.g. Bird, 1999b, p.  107; Kutsch Lojenga, 2014, p. 63).

2.5 UNESCO’s African Reference Alphabet (1978) In the decades following independence, pan-Africanism and the eradication of illiteracy were both high aspirations of the continent’s new generation of leaders. It was in this optimistic atmosphere that UNESCO, recognizing the need for greater orthography harmonization and standardization, organized a series of meetings in Bamako (1966), Yaoundé (1970), Cotonou (1975) and Niamey (1978) (Anonymous, 2018). The final report of the latter meeting acknowledges that Westermann’s Africa Alphabet had received increasing support with the passage of time, but sought to address anomalies that it felt still needed improvement (UNESCO, 1978, p.  16). The report also places a much stronger emphasis than any of the preceding initiatives on deliberate language planning to ensure that governments and institutions conformed to the proposals, while recognizing that most governments had not, by that time, yet defined their linguistic policies (p. 21). The end product was the African Reference Alphabet, a proposed inventory of 50 characters that was intended to serve the entire continent; a subset may be chosen to reflect the phonemic inventory of a particular language. Diacritics are reduced to a minimum, on the grounds that they are often omitted or neglected, and that their presence makes a text harder to read. The subscript position is reserved for clicks

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and Arabic-type emphatics, and the superscript position for tone “if it has to be marked” (p. 18–19). As for digraphs, the report is rather ambiguous. It considers them to be “an unsatisfactory solution” that should only be “adopted in exceptional circumstances and where strictly necessary” (p. 18). But on the next page it permits them for a wide range of sounds, including labio-velars, laterals, prenasalised consonants, fricatives, and affricates (p. 19). Two of the participants at the Niamey meeting then went on to modify and extend the African Reference Alphabet (Mann & Dalby, 1987). Their version contains 60 letters, augmenting the Roman alphabet with 34 special characters (p.  207), and claiming that 22 of these have been incorporated into the national alphabets of one or more African countries (p. 218). They illustrate application of their revision in 22 African languages (p.  212–217): Afaan Oromoo, Bamana Koma, Ede Yoruba, Ewondo, Fulfulde, Hawsa, Ikiruundi, Isiλhosa, Isizulu, Kanuri, Kikongo, Kiswahili, Lingala, Oromo, Sango, Setswana, ʃona, Tamaʃeq, Tʃivenda, Wɔlɔf, and Zarma. They also propose a standardised keyboard layout, the international niamey keyboard (p. 217), but this has never been used (Constable, 2003; Osborn, 2010, p. 136). Mann and Dalby (1987) published the first document of its kind to articulate issues to do with allophony and morphophonology (p. 207). It is also the first to give advice on cursive script (p. 208, 211), and advocates linearization of diacritics, writing them on the line like alphabetic letters to prevent them from being omitted (p.  210; cf. the distinctive Ivorian tone marking tradition; Roberts et  al., 2019, pp. 294–295, 317–318). However, the most distinctive feature of Mann and Dalby’s revision of the African Reference Alphabet is its wholesale rejection of capitalization, on the grounds that it is a superfluous European convention that has no equivalent in Arabic, Amharic, or any of the indigenous African scripts (p. 210). Mann and Dalby cite application of this principle in Mali and Gambia, and famously published their own paper entirely in lower case to demonstrate the point. However, no matter how much such an audacious proposal might have simplified the writing process, it failed to anticipate the crucial importance that transfer to international languages would have in the formal education systems of all the newly independent countries, and has never found acceptance.

2.6 Unicode The Africa Alphabet and the Africa Reference Alphabet provided a range of characters from which individual language communities could assemble their own inventories, but accommodating these on manual typewriters always presented challenges. Then, from the 1980s onwards, issues of reproduction – one of Smalley’s (1963) five requirements for a maximally efficient orthography – took a different turn as users often grappled with the frequent mismatch between the chosen characters and the fonts available on early computer systems (Osborn, 2010, p. 37).

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In the digital age, this issue has essentially been solved through Unicode (ISO 10646), “the single encoding standard for all the world’s scripts […] which incorporates all the characters of previous standard encodings and is designed to facilitate the use and exchange of text in any writing form across all platforms and the internet.” (p. 50–51). It is, therefore now possible to display, transmit, store and retrieve all the special characters needed in most African orthographies. However, Unicode is not yet achieving its full potential on the continent, because most computer users do not know how to install the (freely available) fonts, or how to design and share keyboard layouts. Additionally, the lack of modern computers limits users from the benefits that can be derived from operating systems. Widespread planning, awareness-­raising, and training are needed if African users are to truly benefit from these advances (p. 52–54, 67–68).4

2.7 Discussion African languages contain many sounds that do not occur in European languages, so if the Roman alphabet is to be used at all, and if under-representation is to be avoided, it has to be amplified. As the preceding historical overview has shown, the choice has broadly been between the addition of diacritics, digraphs or special characters.5 With the exception of Lepsius, all the players voice strong objections to multiple diacritics. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Lepsius’ overuse of them, paradoxically, was to stimulate a sustained backlash against them. Diacritics are indeed suitable for some African languages, but most agree that they are best reduced to a minimum, and that a diacritic does its job best it if is not crowded out by a host of others. Attitudes to digraphs are more ambiguous. Most of the documents state that they want to avoid them, but none (even the IPA) manages to do away with them entirely. In practice, the judicious inclusion of a limited number of consonant digraphs usually meets with no great opposition. As for special characters, the uptake has been patchy at best. While some of the proposals have been widely adopted, others have never been used, and there is particularly strong resistance to them in anglophone countries (see Sect. 3.1). When assessing the historical trajectory of orthography development in Africa, it is also important to draw attention to what was absent. There was never any attempt on the part of colonizers to embrace alternative types of writing system, despite so many indigenous creations being either syllabaries (Vai, Mende, Loma, Kpelle, Bambara, Bamum, and Igbo) or abugidas (Amharic, Oromo, Mandombe, Bété, and  Osborn (2010, p. 58) suggests placing African orthographies on a five-category scale in terms of their relative IT compatibility. 5  For comparative tables of the various systems proposed see Mann and Dalby (1987, p. 219) and Tucker (1971, pp. 643–648). Tucker himself (p. 643) admits that exhaustive treatment is “virtually impossible”. 4

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Mwangwego) (Pasch, 2008, pp.  15–22; Rovenchak & Buk, 2021, pp.  798–810). This preference must say something about the psychological perceptions of mother-­ tongue speakers, and at least some of these languages do indeed have the kind of simple CV structures and short words for which syllabaries and abugidas are generally deemed appropriate. Lepsius (1863, p. 284) was certainly aware of the Vai syllabary, which had first been developed in 1832. Neither were there any initiatives to develop a single, shared morphographic writing system that would have been applicable across multiple languages with the aim of facilitating cross-border communication, promoting African unity and slashing the costs of book production. No, the European colonizers were raised on the Roman script alphabet, and viewed it as the emblem par excellence of their own “civilized societies” (cf. Lepsius, 1863, pp. 26–27). Then, by the time the independence era arrived, most educated Africans had so imbibed this worldview that they unquestioningly followed the model they had inherited.

3 Contemporary Orthography Development Against this historical backdrop, we are now in a position to identify some of the ongoing issues that still beset contemporary orthography developers in Africa. This section provides case studies for five of these in turn: Under-representation of vowels in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda (Sect. 3.1), representation of grammatical tone in Tanzania (Sect. 3.2), dialect issues in Ethiopia (Sect. 3.3), cross-border issues in Nigeria, Niger and Benin (Sect. 3.4), and smartphone adaptations in Togo (Sect. 3.5).

3.1 Under-Representation of Vowels Arguably the most pressing issue currently facing those engaged in developing orthographies for Africa’s minority languages is the widespread under-­representation of vowels, especially in anglophone countries.6 Admittedly, this may stem from a valid desire to avoid special characters and thereby ensure ease of reproduction (Banda, 2008, p. 44), or may occasionally be justified on the grounds that the functional load of a particular contrast is judged to be too light to warrant the introduction of an extra letter. But more often than not, vowel under-representation is a mere colonial artefact, inherited from missionaries who were either unaware of the contrasts, or who could not envisage an alphabet too different from their own.

 For a detailed account of practices in the early independence period, see Tucker (1971, pp. 629–637). 6

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Experience in numerous participatory workshops (Kutsch Lojenga, 1996) in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past thirty years has shown that language communities can find workable solutions to this challenge. Many languages in this region have seven vowels; in addition to /a, e, i, o, u/, two vowel phonemes sit at either the close /ɪ, ʊ/ or mid-close /ɛ, ɔ/ positions (cf. Casali, 2017). Nine-vowel systems containing all four “extra” vowels are also relatively common, and even systems with ten or twelve vowels – typically adding central vowels, front rounded vowels, or both – are attested. It should be understood that any orthography development in these remote, marginalized communities takes place against the backdrop of two more widely spoken national languages  – Swahili and the Kituba variety of Kikongo7  – both of  which have only five vowel phonemes. In particular, learning L2 Swahili at school tends to leave a residual literacy effect: Orthography stakeholders in the smaller language communities tend to imagine that no oral language can have more than five vowels, and that no alphabet can have more than five vowel symbols < a, e, i, o, u >. Yet proposing special characters to represent these additional vowels is readily accepted once workshop participants are brought to an awareness that vowel inventories can vary in size, that there are contrasts hidden in what they previously wrote with one symbol, and that under-representation can drastically impede fluency and comprehension. The outcome is that numerous Congolese orthographies that were previously representing multiple vowels with only five letters have now secured one-to-one correspondences (Table 1).8 Table 1  Congolese orthographies that have resolved vowel under-representation Language Bhele Zimba Bira Lese Ngiti Budu Mba Alur Kakwaa Dhongo Iyansi

Family Bantu D Bantu D Bantu D C. Sudanic C. Sudanic Bantu D Ubangian Nilotic Nilotic Ubangian Bantu B

# of vowels 7

Phonemes

Revised graphemes

/aeiouɛɔ/

7

/aeiouɪʊ/

9

/a e i o u ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ /

10

/aeiouɛɪɔʊə/

12

/aeiouɛɔəʏøœä/

Kakwa has yet to work with the revised orthography; in particular their acceptance of the letter is unsure a

 A third national language, Lingala, has seven vowel phonemes which used to be written with seven letters . However, the variety currently spoke in Kinshasa may have lost the two mid-vowel contrasts under the influence of L2 speakers who speak a five-vowel L1, so Lingala may also contribute to the literacy effect described here. 8  Lendu (Central Sudanic), which has eight contrastive vowels, has also opted to use special characters but the correspondences are less regular. 7

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This approach has also been successfully implemented in neighboring Uganda. In 2013–2014, the government-initiated orthography review workshops9 with the aim of improving the alphabets of twelve languages: Acholi, Ateso, Leblango, Ngakarimojong (Eastern Sudanic), Lugbarati (Central Sudanic), Luganda, Lugwere, Lhukonzo, Lumasaba, Lusoga, Runyankore /Rukiga and Runyoro/Rutoro (Bantu J). This was no mere academic exercise, as the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports was in the process of implementing a curriculum reform that mandated the use of local languages in the first three years of primary school (Trudell, 2016, p. 80). Prior to the workshops, all these seven, nine and ten vowel languages were under-representing vowels with only five symbols . In spite of some resistance from elite native speakers, workshop participants from all the languages decided to differentiate their vowels, either by introducing special characters as in Lugbarati, which has seven phonemic vowels /a, e, i, o, u, ɪ, ʊ/ now represented with the letters , or by the addition of a diaresis series as in Acholi, which has nine phonemic vowels /a, e, i, o, u, ɛ, ɪ, ɔ, ʊ/ now represented with the letters .10 The decision to secure one-to-one correspondences has contributed to program outcomes, as the published report testifies (RTI-­ International, 2021): Progress was […] significant in the Ngakarimojong language, with 71 percent of grade 4 learners reading more than 40 words per minute, compared to 30 percent of learners in control schools. Reading comprehension has also improved across all 12 languages.

Of course, not all the reported improvement can be credited to the decision to introduce additional vowel symbols – there were other important factors such as revised pedagogical methods and an enhanced print environment – but it can be confidently asserted that the additional vowels have helped to demystify the reading process and improve motivation. Experience has shown that, when special characters are introduced to represent vowels, they are easily assimilated by learners, they present no formidable barriers to reproduction in the digital age (see Sects. 2.6 and 3.5), and they do not inhibit transfer to international languages. Until decision makers recognize the need for a simple application of the time-honored phonemic principle of a one-to-one correspondence between grapheme and phoneme, literacy programs in Africa will continue to pay an unacceptably high price in oral reading fluency and comprehension for the worryingly widespread under-representation of vowels.  The workshops were organized by the Ministry within the framework of RTI International’s Uganda School Health and Reading Program which was funded by USAID in collaboration with SIL LEAD (RTI-International, 2021; SIL-LEAD, n.d.). 10  All other things being equal, special characters are probably preferable to diacritics, because the latter are often abandoned by writers. Setswana (Bantu S, Botswana) has seven phonemic vowels /a, e, i, o, u, ɛ, ɔ/ which are officially written with the letters , but in practice use of the circumflex tends to be restricted to dictionaries and some primary school textbooks (Lekgoko & Winskel, 2008, p.  5), leaving /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ under-represented in other publications and spontaneous writing as and respectively. 9

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3.2 Grammatical Tone Marking Almost all African languages are tonal; that is, distinctions in meaning are made by changing the musical pitch of the voice, either in conjunction with segmental changes or uniquely. Tone may have a lexical or a grammatical function, but in many (perhaps even most) languages its functional load is weighted towards the grammar. If a language relies uniquely on tone to distinguish such basic grammatical categories as singular vs plural number, or perfective vs imperfective aspect, under-representing these is likely to be much more disruptive to oral reading and comprehension than the under-representation of any mere lexical distinctions. In many such languages, then, the question to be asked is not so much “Should tone be marked?” as “How should grammatical tone be marked?” A strategy that has attracted considerable interest in recent years is to mark these grammatical contrasts rather than the tone patterns themselves, in other words with a meaning-based rather than a sound-based representation (Bird, 1999a, pp. 16–18; Kutsch Lojenga, 1993, p. 14; Roberts, 2013, pp. 86–89). The orthography of Bena, a Bantu-G language of Tanzania, illustrates this point. In this language, the affirmative anterior and affirmative far past are sometimes distinguished uniquely by tone (1; Eaton & Gray, 2021, p. 12). 1

a.

/vakʰútʰovile/

b.

/vakʰutʰovíle/

c.

/wâːtsile/

d.

/waːtsíle/

e.

/tʰíːtʰawuʷe/

f.

/tʰiːtʰawúʷe/

/va-kʰu-tʰov-ile/ 2sp-2sg.op-hit-pfv /va-a-kʰu-tʰov-ile/ 2sp-p2-2sg.op-hit-pfv /u-ats-ile/ 2sg.sp-come-pfv /u-a-ats-ile/ 2sg.sp-p2-come-pfv /tʰi-i-tʰawul-ile/ 1pl.sp-refl-offer-pfv /tʰi-a-i-tʰawul-ile/

they have hit you they hit you (far past) you have come you came (far past) we have offered ourselves we offered ourselves (far past)

1pl.sp-p2-refl-offer-pfv

The two tenses are not easily distinguished by context and the H tone on the anterior shifts according to whether or not there is an object. For these reasons, it was decided to mark the anterior with an acute accent on the first vowel of the word and to leave the far past unmarked. This decision has the advantage of disambiguating the anterior from some segmentally identical subjunctive forms (2; Eaton & Gray, 2021, p. 12) 2

a. b.



/áliʲe/ /alíʲe/

/a-li-ile/ /a-li-e/

1sp-eat-pfv 1sp-eat-subj

he has eaten he should eat

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It should be stressed that the accent signals “anterior” not “high tone”, and should be taught as such. Also, when such a strategy is used, it is important to consistently mark the entire grammatical paradigm even if some of the forms are unambiguous. Elsewhere in Tanzania, similar strategies have been adopted in the related languages of Malila (Eaton, 2020a) and Nyiha (Eaton, 2021), as well as, with respect to person marking, in Sangu (Eaton, 2020b). Further afield, meaning-based representations of grammatical tone have been proposed and/or adopted in Budu (Bamata, 1997, p. 8), Chumburung (Bird, 1999a, p. 26), Etung (Bird, 1999a, p. 21), Gaahmg (Stirtz, 2015), Gangam (Roberts, 2013, p.  88), Izi (Bird, 1999a, p.  24), Kako (Bird, 1999a, pp.  21–22), Karaboro (Roberts, 2013, p.  89), Komo (Bird, 1999a, p.  23), Kuce (Starwalt & Rueck, 2016), Moba (Yambame et  al., 2022), Sabaot (Kutsch Lojenga, 1993, p.  14), and Samburu (Dahlbacka, 2011) among others. The results of a classroom experiment testing meaning-based orthographic strategies in Kabiye suggests that writers are indeed more aware of the morphological structure of their language than they are of its tone system (Roberts & Walter, 2012). One advantage of marking grammatical tone as grammar is that orthography developers are not limited to using accents. Silent letters, double letters, punctuation and other symbols may equally well be pressed into service, and have the advantage that they are written on the same line as the letters so are less likely to be omitted (cf. Sect. 2.5).

3.3 Dialect Issues Practically all African languages, barring those of the smallest populations, have some dialect variation, and this can pose major challenges for orthography developers. If standardization is to be encouraged – itself a contested issue (for a discussion, see Joswig, 2020, pp. 84–85) – there are broadly two options: a unilectal approach in which a reference dialect is agreed on, or a multilectal approach which seeks to represent elements from several dialects (Cahill, 2014; Simons, 1994). To illustrate how this works in practice, this sub-section summarizes four of the six case studies in Joswig’s (2020) lucid account of the sociolinguistic, political, philosophical and practical dilemmas facing orthography developers in Ethiopia. WoGaGoDa was a failed attempt by the Ethiopian government in the 1990s to implement a multilectal standard for four languages that were purportedly mutually intelligible: Wolaytta, Gamo, Gofa, and Dawro. A previous attempt to impose Wolaytta as a unilectal standard had been opposed by the other three varieties, but the multilectal alternative under-estimated the sense of separate ethnic identity and was also rejected, to the point of physical violence. Eventually, three languages were recognized: Wolaytta, Gamo-Gofa, and Dawro. There has been little resistance to this compromise, even though the resulting orthographies are actually very similar to WoGaGoDa (Joswig, 2020, pp. 87–88, 95). The Gumuz language community have a strong sense of ethnic identity despite having at least two dialects that inhibit mutual intelligibility. Stakeholders had a

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strong motivation to standardize their orthography, but could not agree on a reference dialect for fear of fragmenting their sense of identity. In an effort to break the impasse, pilot classes were run in primary schools to test the feasibility of two parallel orthographies, but this initiative was unsuccessful and eventually led to mother-­tongue education being aborted, leaving the issue of standardization unsettled to this day (Joswig, 2020, pp. 89–90). The estimated 30 million speakers of Oromo have a strong sense of ethnic unity, although it is as yet unclear how much dialectal differences inhibit mutual intelligibility. Spelling in the sizeable body of Oromo literature tends to reflect the variety heard on mass media (West-Central Oromo), and this is becoming the de facto standard. However, this does not discourage speakers of other dialects occasionally spelling in ways that reflect their own varieties. The current strategy, then, is to let a standard emerge naturally over time with no deliberate intervention, a solution which, after all, has a long pedigree in the world’s languages (Joswig, 2020, pp. 91, 94–95). Among the different varieties of the Ale language there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility, a strong sense of ethnic unity, and no great resistance to standardization. It was understood that some dialects would have to make sacrifices for the greater good, and that the creation of a standard does not mean that all users have to adopt it when speaking. Stakeholders chose the Golango variety on the grounds that it was geographically central and easy to understand by others. The Gawwada variety was rejected because, even though it is larger and more prestigious, it is also linguistically more distinct (Joswig, 2020, pp. 91–93, 95). These four vignettes illustrate the variety and complexity of the Ethiopian sociolinguistic landscape. Such dynamics are replicated across Africa and no two contexts are identical, but three common threads can be identified. Firstly, social rather than linguistic issues almost always drive choices; secondly, the outside linguist can play a valid role by preparing the ground for decision-making with sensitive, timely interventions; thirdly, stakeholders within the language community must be engaged in the process in order to ensure the orthography’s acceptability and use.

3.4 Cross-Border Issues During the nineteenth century colonizers’ “scramble for Africa”, international borders were indiscriminately traced with scant knowledge of the continent’s linguistic geography. In any case, it was generally believed that the little-understood African “dialects” would conveniently die out under the relentless pressure of formal education in more powerful European languages. To this day, multiple artificially divided communities are an awkward legacy of this approach, and orthography development continues to be a challenge in such contexts. Hausa and Yoruba are noteworthy examples. These two languages share certain socio-political similarities. Both are among Africa’s biggest populations. Their

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homelands are both in anglophone Nigeria but with sizeable minorities in neighboring francophone countries (Hausa in Niger; Yoruba in Benin). Both languages also have extensive regional and international diasporas (Eberhard et al., 2023). On the EGIDS scale of language vitality (Lewis & Simons, 2010), both are categorized as level 2 “provincial languages” in their respective areas of Nigeria, but only as level 3 “languages of wider communication” in Niger and Benin. Both languages also have well-established Roman script orthographies that date back to the nineteenth century in Nigeria, and more recent, distinct orthographic traditions in Niger for Hausa and Benin for Yoruba.11 UNESCO’s proposed Hausa spelling in Niger (Gregersen, 1977) is characterized by: 1. marking vowel length with double letters as opposed to under-representing it (p. 426); 2. marking tone on some verb aspects as opposed to zero tone marking (p. 426); 3. spelling diphthongs as as opposed to (p. 433); 4. maintaining consistent word images as opposed to representing morphophonological processes (p. 436); 5. permitting dialect variation as opposed to representing only the Kano dialect (p. 437). Yoruba spelling in Benin (CENALA, 2011, pp. 44–46) is characterized by: 1. spelling the vowel phonemes /ɛ, ɔ/ with special characters as opposed to subscript pointing ; 2. spelling the consonant phonemes /ʃ, k͡p/ with digraphs as opposed to . At first sight, these two distinctive orthographic practices seem to be models of linguistic economy and good sense in comparison with their equivalents in Nigeria. However, the minority communities of Hausa in Niger and Yoruba in Benin have both been influenced by external realities that eventually pulled them in different directions. On the one hand, since 1980, the Hausa community in Niger has bowed to pressure and adopted the Nigerian spelling conventions (Wolff, 2000, p. 340) in order to better access the vast literature being published by their larger and more economically powerful neighbors across the border. From a linguistic point of view, too, learners in Niger struggled to master the vowel length distinction, which has a very light functional load in Hausa, and also felt that the proposed orthography permitted too many long words. On the other hand, the Beninese Yoruba community is constrained by the Beninese government’s requirement to have a single character stock for all national languages spoken on Beninese territory and a single alphabet for all languages of the Ede family to which Yoruba belongs. It has therefore continued to maintain its own distinctive spelling, though not without opposition in some

11

 Another similarity is that both languages have Ajami script orthographies (Warren-Rothlin, 2012).

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quarters (Bada, 2008). Investigating to what extent this practice impedes access to the Yoruba literature in Nigeria would make a fascinating study.

3.5 Smartphone Adaptations With the arrival of smartphones, writing in African languages has become more of a challenge than previously because few touch keyboards are specialized and streamlined for this purpose. On computer keyboards it is not uncommon to use combining keystrokes to obtain a modified letter, such as typing to obtain , but this is not easily replicated on miniature smartphone keyboards. Touch keyboards do offer additional options, such as “touch-and-hold” keys which can be used for special characters and diacritics. They also allow multiple layers – such as for capital letters, numbers, and special characters – on the same layout. But these options are cumbersome, especially when the orthography includes many non-­ standard characters, as they require multiple manipulations just to complete a few words. When chatting on messaging apps or digital media, speed and simplicity are of the essence, so users will simply abandon their language in written form if the barriers are too great. Clearly, Smalley’s (1963) requirement that an orthography should permit “maximum ease of reproduction” needs reinterpreting for the age of smartphones, and there are currently two solutions to this. Some developers are opting for internationalization. This is the case with Dominik M. Ramík’s African Keyboard (Ramík, 2020) which, following Dalby and Mann’s international niamey keyboard (see Sect. 2.5), aims to demonstrate capacity, providing a set of keyboards for typing any and all African languages, but now on smartphones rather than manual typewriters. Ramík’s app has had considerable success, with over 50,000 Android installations to date. Others are promoting localisation, developing individual smartphone keyboards which contain only the special characters and diacritics needed for a specific language. The rationale of these developers is that most users do not need a keyboard that can type every language in Africa; they just want a simple keyboard containing only the letters necessary to be able to quickly and easily type their own language without switching layers or grappling with time-consuming touch-and-hold keys. Such a keyboard has been developed by Andy Weathers of SIL International for Tem, a language of Togo (Fig. 1). Keys on the three middle rows are similar to the French AZERTY layout, but special characters and mid-word punctuation occupy the top row. Tem marks tone fully, so tone diacritics appear as separate keystrokes on the right-hand side. Thus, the acute accent is typed after each letter it modifies, and same principle applies for combining the diaresis. The most common punctuation marks are retained on the default layer, while numbers and less common punctuation marks are consigned to a separate layer. Text messagers frequently

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Fig. 1  The Tem touch keyboard demonstrated on WhatsApp. (A free translation of the message is, “Boss, good morning. How is everyone in Ouagadougou? May God watch over you”)

codeswitch between Tem, French and English, so the symbols are retained even though they do not occur in the Tem alphabet. The Tem touch keyboard layout was created with Keyman Developer (SIL, n.d.). It was launched in 2017 at a meeting of community leaders and literacy supervisors as an installable application file which was downloadable from the project website (CLTem, 2021) and shared via Bluetooth. In May 2020 a new version was launched on the Google Play Store (ABTem, 2021) which has the advantage of providing analytics so that the owner can track usage.12 The Tem keyboard is used in private WhatsApp messages, as well as by a small minority of the 20,000+ users on the Facebook group Parlons Tem (Anonymous, 2011). The next stage of the project will be to use SIL International’s new Keyboard App Builder (SIL, 2021) to build a lexicon into the Tem keyboard to enable predicative text typing. L1 literacy programs in Africa typically attract the older generation in rural communities who never had the chance to complete their schooling, or who did not attend school at all. If literacy promoters are serious about attracting a social media savvy younger generation, especially in the urban centers, it will require nothing short of a revolution in the way programs are designed and conducted. In the new model, lessons might take place in a cyber-café rather than a classroom, and learners would be expected to bring their own smartphones, which would replace pens and exercise books as the principal student resource (cf. Alidou, 2011, p. 251). The first lesson would consist of training learners to upload the local language keyboard, then subsequent lessons would focus not only on mastering the letters of the alphabet but also on practicing acquired literacy skills on a range of social media platforms.  For this reason, the download link on the project website has now been disabled and users are directed to the Google Play Store. Analytics show 118 unique daily users of whom 74 are in Togo, 7 in France, 6 in Benin, and 5 in Germany (accessed 27 May 2023). 12

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4 Conclusion Anyone participating in the development of an orthography for an African language should do so with an eye on two things. First, from a historical perspective, it is important to be familiar with the trajectory of the orthography development movement over almost two centuries and recognize its legacy. This chapter has sought to encapsulate this knowledge in an easily accessible summary of the most important chronological landmarks. Second, from a contemporary perspective, it is vital that we learn from experienced researchers currently operating elsewhere on the continent. The five case studies presented in this chapter are geographically delimited, but all of the concerns they illustrate are common to multiple contexts. Acknowledgments  I would like to thank Sue Hasselbring, Constance Kutsch Lojenga, Richard Nzogi (Sect. 3.1), Helen Eaton, Hazel Gray (Sect. 3.2), Andreas Joswig (Sect. 3.3), Bernard Caron (Sect. 3.4), Lorna Evans, Dominik M.  Ramík, Andy Weathers (Sect. 3.5), Peder Clark, Peter Daniels, and David Share for their help in preparing this chapter.

References ABTem. (2021). Google Play: Tem Kɩ́mankʊ́. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=com.ichter.android.keyboardtem. Accessed 30 July 2021. Alidou, H. (2011). Use of African languages for literacy: Conditions, factors and processes in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Tanzania and Zambia. In A. Ouane & C. Glanz (Eds.), Optimizing learning, education and publishing in Africa: The language factor. A review and analysis of theory and practice in mother-tongue and bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa (pp.  217–252). UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa. Anonymous. (2011). Parlons Tem Facebook group. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/ groups/105739646183052. Accessed 27 May 2023. Anonymous. (2018). Basic documents on language policy in Africa – Documents de base sur la politique linguistique en Afrique. Retrieved from http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/index. html. Accessed 27 May 2023. Bada, M.  D. (2008). Règlement de la question de l’orthographe du yoruba au Bénin compte tenu de la pratique nigériane [Resolving the question of the Yoruba orthography in Benin taking Nigerian practice into account]. Paper presented at the Atelier sur la révision des outils d’écritures des langues béninoises, Lokossa, Benin. Bamata, S. (1997). Manuel d’orthographe Budu. Document de travail. Unpublished manuscript. SIL Democratic Republic of Congo. Banda, F. (2008). Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa. Open Space, 2(3), 39–48. Bird, S. (1999a). Strategies for representing tone in African writing systems. Written Language and Literacy, 2(1), 1–44. Bird, S. (1999b). When marking tone reduces fluency: An orthography experiment in Cameroon. Language and Speech, 42, 83–115. Cahill, M. (2014). Non-linguistic factors in orthography development. In M.  Cahill & K.  Rice (Eds.), Developing orthographies for unwritten languages (pp. 9–26). SIL International.

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Knight, W. (1863). Advertisement to the second edition. In K. R. Lepsius (Ed.), Standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters (2nd ed., pp. xi–xiv). Wiliiams and Norgate, & Hertz. Kutsch Lojenga, C. (1993). The writing and reading of tone in Bantu languages. Notes on Literacy, 19, 1–19. Kutsch Lojenga, C. (1996). Participatory research in linguistics. Notes on Linguistics, 73, 13–27. Kutsch Lojenga, C. (2014). Orthography and tone: A tone system typology with implications for orthography development. In M. Cahill & K. Rice (Eds.), Developing orthographies for unwritten languages (pp. 49–72). SIL International. Lekgoko, O., & Winskel, H. (2008). Learning to read Setswana and English: Cross-language transference of letter knowledge, phonological awareness and reading skills. Perspectives in Education, 26(4), 1–18. Lepsius, K. R. (1855). Standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters (1st ed.). Seeleys. Lepsius, K. R. (1863). Standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters (2nd ed.). Wiliiams and Norgate & Hertz. Lewis, M. P., & Simons, G. F. (2010). Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, 55(2), 103–120. Retrieved from http://www.lingv.ro/RRL%20 2%202010%20art01Lewis.pdf (Accessed 29 May 2023). Mann, M., & Dalby, D. (1987). A thesaurus of African languages: A classified and annotated inventory of the spoken languages of Africa with an appendix on their written representation. Hans Zell Publishers. Osborn, D. (2010). African languages in a digital age: Challenges and opportunities for indigenous language computing. Human Sciences Research Council. Pasch, H. (2008). Competing scripts: The introduction of the Roman alphabet in Africa. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 191, 65–109. Ramík, D.  M. (2020). African keyboard. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=eu.dominicweb.africankeyboard. Accessed 30 Aug 2021. Roberts, D. (2013). A tone orthography typology. In S. R. Borgwaldt & T. Joyce (Eds.), Typology of writing systems (pp. 85–111). John Benjamins. Roberts, D., & Walter, S. L. (2012). Writing grammar rather than tone: An orthography experiment in Togo. Written Language & Literacy, 15(2), 226–253. Roberts, D., Basnight-Brown, D., & Vydrin, V. (2019). Marking tone with punctuation: An orthography experiment in Eastern Dan. In Y.  Haralambous (Ed.), Proceedings of the conference “Grafematik: Graphemics in the 21st century from graphemes to knowledge” (pp. 315–349). Fluxus. Rovenchak, A., & Buk, S. (2021). Indigenous African scripts. In R.  Vossen & G.  Dimmendaal (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of African languages (pp. 797–812). RTI-International. (2021). Impact: Supporting children’s literacy and health in Uganda. Retrieved from https://www.rti.org/impact/supporting-­child-­literacy-­and-­health-­uganda. Accessed 29 May 2023. Saussure, F. D. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. Payot. SIL. (2021). Keyboard app builder. Retrieved from https://software.sil.org/keyboardappbuilder/. Accessed 29 May 2023. SIL. (n.d.). Keyman: Create custom keyboards for desktop, web and touch devices. Retrieved from https://keyman.com/developer/. Accessed 29 May 2023. SIL-LEAD. (n.d.). Uganda school health and reading program. Retrieved from https://www.sil-­ lead.org/ugandashrp. Accessed 29 May 2023. Simons, G. F. (1994). Principles of multidialectal orthography design. Notes on Literacy, 20(2), 13–34. Originally published (1977) in R. Loving and G. Simons (eds.), Language variation and survey techniques, 1325–1942. Workpapers in Papua New Guinea languages, 1921. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

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Smalley, W.  A. (1963). How shall I write this language? In W.  A. Smalley (Ed.), Orthography studies: Articles on new writing systems (pp. 31–52). United Bible Societies. Solleveld, F. (2020). Language gathering and philological expertise: Sigismund Koelle, Wilhelm Bleek, and the languages of Africa. In F. Jacques (Ed.), Les linguistes allemands du XIXème siècle et leurs interlocuteurs étrangers (pp. 169–200). Sow, A. I., & Abdulaziz, M. H. (1993). Language and social change. In A. A. Mazrui (Ed.), Africa since 1935 (UNESCO general history of Africa, Vol. 8). University of California Press. Spencer, J. (1966). S. W. Koelle and the problem of notation for African languages, 1847–1855. Sierra Leone Language Review, 5, 83–105. Starwalt, C., & Rueck, M. (2016). Proposals for the tone orthography of Kuce [ruk]. Report from the tone orthography workshop, Jos, Nigeria, 18 May - 12 June 2015. Unpublished ms, SIL Nigeria. Stirtz, T. (2015). Grammatical marking for tone distinctions in the Gaahmg orthography. Paper presented at the 12th Nilo-Saharan Colloquium, University of Nairobi. Trudell, B. (2016). The impact of language policy and practice on children’s learning: Evidence from eastern and southern Africa. UNICEF. Tucker, A.  N. (1971). Orthographic systems and conventions in sub-Saharan Africa. In T. A. Sebeok, J. Berry, & J. Greenberg (Eds.), Linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa. Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 7, pp. 587–653). Mouton. UNESCO. (1978). African languages: Proceedings of the meeting of experts on the transcription and harmonization of African languages, Niamey (Niger), 17–21 July 1978. Retrieved from http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/Niamey78en.htm (Accessed 29 May 2023). Warren-Rothlin, A. (2012). Arabic script in modern Nigeria. In R.  Blench & M.  Stuart (Eds.), Advances in minority language research in Nigeria Vol. 1. Kay Williamson educational foundation African languages monographs (Vol. 5, pp. 105–121). Rüdiger Köppe. Wolff, E. (2000). Language and society. In B. Heine & D. Nurse (Eds.), African languages: An introduction (pp. 298–347). Cambridge University Press. Yambame, P., Nakane, M., & Boone, C. (2022). Vers une orthographe appropriée du ton pour le moba: Rapport issu de l’atelier sur la graphie tonale, tenu à SIL Kara du 19 novembre au 6 décembre 2019. Série électronique des documents de travail, 16. SIL Togo-Bénin.

Language of Instruction in the African Classroom: Key Issues, Challenges and Solutions Barbara Trudell, Benjamin Piper, and Wendi Ralaingita

Abstract  Language of instruction is a topic of great interest in current international education and development discourse, particularly as it applies to early-grade reading. As a result, African language-medium instruction has received increased attention from international education donors and stakeholders in the last 10+ years. This chapter examines some of the complexities of local language-medium education programming, particularly in African contexts. It provides an overview of key program features, identifies the most common challenges that arise in developing such programs, and suggests some tested ways of meeting those challenges.

1 Introduction: Language and Learning in Sub-Saharan Africa In current international education and development discourse, language of instruction is a topic of great interest. Particularly in the area of early-grade reading, the role of language in learning has taken on special focus. Learning assessments in classrooms of the global South have revealed drastically poor learning outcomes, especially among The production of this paper was supported by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of the Science of Teaching grant. (An adapted, abridged version of this paper has been published as Practical Language Choices for Improving Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, by W. Ralaingita, B. Trudell, B. Piper and M. Dubeck (2021))

B. Trudell (*) SIL Africa Learning & Development, Nairobi, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] B. Piper RTI, Nairobi, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] W. Ralaingita RTI, Evanston, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_5

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children living in the multi-language contexts of low- and middle-­income African nations. The typical use of international languages of instruction from the early grades is not giving children the skills that will allow them to be successful learners. In response, African language-medium instruction has received new attention from international education donors and stakeholders in the last 10  years. Early grade reading programming in  local languages has become a regular feature of large-scale education projects, and it is featuring more frequently in smaller, more local education projects as well. Much has been learned about best practice in local language-medium programming, and the learning is still going on. This chapter examines some of the complexities of local language-medium education programming in African contexts. It provides an overview of key program features, identifies the most common challenges that arise in developing such a program, and suggests some tested ways of meeting those challenges.

1.1 Relevant Language Terminology The rich linguistic environment of African contexts, and of the global South in general, has given rise to a range of terms related to how various types of languages are used in educational programming. Not all of these terms have the same meanings in every African context, so it is important to understand how they are used. Table 1 below describes some of the more common terms related to multi-language environments, and the African contexts in which they are found.1 It can be seen from the table above that descriptors of language span the political, geographical and personal, and that many of them are subject to the perspective of the speaker.2 The notion of first, second, or more languages can be quite fluid in the life of a multilingual person; similarly, the geographical identification of particular languages as “local”, “regional” or “national” may depend on where the speaker is standing. This subjectivity of terms does not imply that the distinctions are not real, but it does indicate that such terms must be carefully defined for the context in which they are used.

1.2 The Education Context Where language and learning are concerned, the greatest challenge facing African nations is the relatively low fluency of their populations in the language(s) of the formal education system. Table  2 below presents current Ethnologue (Eberhard  Note that the terms ‘native’, ‘dialect’ and ‘indigenous’ are not included in this chart. They have specific linguistic and cultural meanings, but – used out of context – can be considered demeaning. Thus, their use in this discussion of language and learning is limited to specific definitions. 2  For example, the statement that is commonly heard in urban anglophone African contexts: “I do not speak my mother tongue.” 1

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Table 1  Language terms and their meaning in African contextsa Term National language

Meaning Official language (anglophone contexts) African language (francophone contexts) Mother tongue, home Language that a person learns language, first language first and speaks best as a child (L1) Local language, Language of the geographical language of the community immediate environment Regional language African language spoken widely, but not across the entire country Second/third (etc.) Language which is not spoken language (L2, L3 etc.) as the first language of a given person or group Foreign language Language which is not fluently spoken by a given person or group a

Additional information Contrasts with ‘local’ or ‘regional’ language Contrasts with ‘international’ language Over time, people’s fluencies in other languages may equal or surpass their fluency in the home language Contrasts with regional or official/ national languages Contrasts with language(s) recognized as official/national May (or may not) be an officially recognized language of the nation Not usually an official language of the country

An adapted version of this table appears in Ralaingita et al. (2021)

et al., 2020) figures on fluency in the official international language of the education system, for a sample of sub-Saharan African nations. These numbers are almost certainly high compared to actual language fluencies in the primary classroom, for reasons including the self-reported data on which such figures are typically based, the practice of counting speakers whose fluency in the language is very limited, and the lack of social or classroom opportunities that schoolaged children will have had to learn the international language. This last feature is far more pronounced among children in rural and low-resource environments. With this sample range of 5–54% (at the very most, in each case) of populations speaking the international language of formal schooling, and given that the international-­language fluency rates of school-aged children are even lower, it is clear that language of instruction is a significant factor in education quality and learning outcomes. In these contexts, national formal education policy in Africa typically gives one of two common curriculum responses: 1. Use of a limited number of local languages of instruction in lower primary, with a transition to the international official language as language of instruction in upper primary. UNESCO (2016: 5) reports that, as of 2015, 38 African nations out of 47 had a policy in place permitting the use of local languages in the primary grades. 2. Use of the official international language of education, from lower primary through tertiary education. In a few countries, such as Ethiopia and Tanzania, African languages are used as the medium of instruction through the primary grades (Trudell, 2016).

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Table 2 Populations speaking the official international language: sample African nations (Ethnologue 2020, with dates of the population counts in parentheses)a

Country Burkina Faso Central African Republic Cote d’Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo Ethiopia

Percentage of population speaking the official international language 21%

Population in millions 19.7 (2018) 4.7 (2017)

Official international language French

Population speaking the official international language in millions 4.2 (2016)

French

1.3 (2016)

28%

24.3 (2017) 84.0 (2018)

French

8.1 (2017)

33%

French

31.9 (2017)

38%

108.4 (2018)

Amharic (Amharic is not an ‘international’ language as such; but it has been the national language of instruction for many decades and so is included here) English English

Ghana

28.8 (2017)

Liberia

4.8 (2018)

English

Malawi

17.6 (2018) 19.4 (2018) 29.7 (2017) 21.5 (2017) 195.9 (2019)

English

52% 56.9 (2018) 0.17 (2010) (likely 0.01% to be higher today, given that the English fluency rates are based on a 2010 national census.) 9.8 (2010) 34% (likely to be higher today, given that the English fluency rates are based on a 2010 national census.) 2.6 (2004) 54% (Not very reliable, given that the English fluency rates are based on 2004 figures) 0.88 (2016) 5%

French

3.0 (2018)

15%

Portuguese

10.2 (2016)

34%

French

2.5 (2016)

12%

English

104.0 (2018)

53%

Mali Mozambique Niger Nigeria

(continued)

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Table 2 (continued)

Country Rwanda

Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa

Tanzania Zambia a

French

4.4 (2017)

Percentage of population speaking the official international language 12% (Likely to be higher today, given that the English fluency rates are based on a 2010 national census) 28%

English English Afrikaans (Afrikaans is not an ‘international’ language such as English, French and Portuguese are; however, its history in the education system of South Africa merits its inclusion here. These numbers do not indicate speakers who only speak one language or the other; bilingualism in the two languages is high, especially among the Afrikaaner and ‘British’ South African populations) English

0.9 (2017) 15.9 (2013) 17.1 (2013)

12% 28% 30%

6.0 (2016)

11%

English

3.0 (2017)

18%

Population Official international in millions language 12.2 English (2017)

15.9 (2017) 7.6 (2017) 57.7 (2018)

55.4 (2018) 17.1 (2017)

Population speaking the official international language in millions 1.5 (2010)

An adapted version of this table appears in Ralaingita et al. (2021)

1.3 Models of Language Use in the Classroom In African contexts, several models can be found for the use of more than one language of instruction in the formal curriculum. These models revolve around three themes: (1) the numbers and types of languages in the curriculum; (2) the use that is made of the L1  in the curriculum; and (3) the year at which the L1-medium instruction is transitioned to L2-medium instruction. See Table 3 below.

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Table 3  Models of L1 use in formal education contexts in Africaa

Model Meaning Multi-language education Bilingual education (BE) The use of two languages in an education program

Comments May include one L1 and one L2, or two non-L1 languages

Multilingual education (MLE)

The use of two or more May or may not languages in an include an L1; may education program include two or more non-L1 languages

Mother tongue-based MLE (MTB-MLE)

The use of two or more L1 is always one of languages in an the languages education program, one of which is the L1 of the pupil

Use of the L1 L1 as subject

Teaching L1 language arts as a subject in the curriculum Reading (in L1) as subject Reading instruction in the L1

This is how most MTB-MLE is framed in the curriculum Rare to find ‘reading’ as a subject in African curricula

L1 across the curriculum

L1 as medium of instruction for all subjects (except L2) L1-L2 transition models (other models exist of dual language use in primary schools; however, they are rare in African contexts and are not included here) Early-exit BE or MLE Transition from L1 to The most common L2 as medium of MTB-MLE model instruction in grade 4 or found in African earlier national language policy Late-exit BE or MLE Transition from L1 to L2 as medium of instruction at the end of primary (grade 5 or higher)

Country examples of where this model is found Cameroon (French and English) Kenya (English and Kiswahili) Ethiopia (local language, English, Amharic) Nigeria (English, regional Nigerian language, Arabic) Ethiopia (local language, English, Amharic) Uganda (local language, English) Kenya (“mother tongue subject”) Nigeria Uganda (literacy I and II in local language) Ethiopia

Senegal Mozambique Niger

Ethiopia

An adapted version of this table appears in Ralaingita et al. (2021)

a

These models interact in MTB-MLE program implementation, particularly the two transition models and the two models for L1 use in the classroom. Table  4 describes the features of the four possible MTB-MLE program types, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. At this time, the most common L1-medium

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Table 4  Four MTB-MLE program typesa L1 as reading instruction only

L1 across curriculum

Early exit (grade 3 or 4) Advantages: Good reading skills gained Good affective outcomes in early grades Disadvantages: No evidence of strong long-term academic outcomes No impact on L2 learning Advantages: Good early-grades content learning Good affective outcomes in early grades Disadvantages: Not enough L2 learning for strong transition Research evidence: Learning gains diminish by grade 5

Late exit (end of primary) Advantages: Good reading skills gained Long-term L1 language arts development is possible Disadvantages: Comprehension does not necessarily transfer to L2 subjects Advantages: Good content learning Time for strong L2 learning Research evidence: Leads to successful transition to L2-medium secondary school Disadvantages: Substantial policy and curricular support needed

An adapted version of this table appears in Ralaingita et al. (2021)

a

education programming being supported by government and international non-government organizations in sub-Saharan Africa is early-exit MTB-MLE, consisting of early grade reading instruction in the L1 of the pupils. In some cases, L2 subject learning and L1-L2 transition are supported with specific teaching and learning materials.

2 Challenges to L1-Medium Programming in African Contexts A substantial number of African states have implemented one or more of the L1-medium program models described above, sometimes independently but often with support from international education stakeholders such as those mentioned in Sect. 2.2 below. The high value that African nations place on their own languages and cultures, along with clear evidence that the international language-medium education system is not serving African children well, are strong motivators for the ongoing engagement that is taking place across the continent with a wide range of L1-medium programs. However, L1-medium programs are vulnerable to a range of significant challenges. Understanding the bases and the features of these challenges is important if they are to be addressed effectively. Four types of challenges are described below, along with brief suggestions as to how they can be effectively addressed.

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2.1 Challenge: Lack of Buy-in from Local Stakeholders One of the most pervasive challenges to L1-medium program implementation is a lack of support for, and sometimes actual resistance to, such programming on the part of parents, teachers, and local education authorities. Even in communities where the L1 is used and valued, the belief that the entirety of formal education should be carried out in international languages rather than the local language can be significant. This perspective has its basis in two related sources: the origins of schooling with the colonial powers, in which their powerful ‘outside’ knowledge was mediated in an ‘outside’ language; and the ongoing identification of modernity and economic achievement with non-local languages. The instrumental attraction of international languages is extensive and powerful; English, French and Portuguese are seen as the languages of development and socioeconomic advancement (Higgins, 2009), “a warrant for success in professional life” (Ngomo, 2011: 140) and world citizenship. These perceptions are themselves challenged by empirical evidence to the contrary (Arcand & Grin, 2013: 262; Global Education Monitoring Report, 2016; Romaine, 2015). Ricento (2015) observes that, for African learners and their families, the notion that English fluency will lead to higher income holds true only when such fluency is combined with the skills that are attained in higher education. Since access to higher education is generally accessible only to the elite, for both economic and sociopolitical reasons, this link between international language use and socioeconomic gains does not actually benefit lower-resourced populations. Nevertheless, since colonial times non-elite African parents have been determined that their children should have the same curriculum, mediated in the same language as is provided for the children of the national and international elites (Gifford & Weiskel, 1971:664). African languages, on the other hand, may be perceived by their own speakers as inadequate to mediate either academic endeavors (Breton, 2003: 209) or development activities (Okafor & Noah, 2014). Djité (2008: 62) observes that “lay people, as well as the so-called elite, have been so much taken in by the myths about African languages that they no longer believe their own language capable of intellectualization”. The prospect of the child learner gaining a new and deeper understanding of curriculum content, and validating his or her culture and identity as a learner, does not even enter into the discussion when  – as noted above  – that child’s ultimate economic success is perceived to be at stake. These beliefs about the inappropriateness of using local languages in the classroom are further buttressed by a range of inaccurate myths about language and learning, such as: • the certainty that the most effective way to build fluency in a language the learner does not speak is to “maximise the time spent using that language as the medium of instruction, without building fluency in that language first and without using the learner’s first language as a resource” (Trudell et al., 2015: 142).

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• the belief that knowledge related to ‘developed’ global contexts must be communicated in a global language, a myth that is supported to some extent by the lack of vocabulary development in  local languages for the technological and development domains. Mweri (2020) notes an over-reliance on foreign languages in the development sphere, based on “the false belief that English (read foreign) language education equals development” (p. 15). • the belief that local-language medium education is prohibitively expensive (Orwenjo, 2012: 304), based partly on the belief that multiplying language of instruction will multiply the associated costs as well. See Sect. 2.3 (below) for further discussion of this issue. It must also be recognized that, for local education stakeholders in Africa, experience with effective education alternatives that prominently feature L1-medium learning is rare to nonexistent. These stakeholders have rarely if ever seen textbooks in their L1, or heard a teacher use that language to teach a proper lesson, or seen their child bring home an examination paper written in the language of their home. Teachers themselves may be unable to read or write fluently in the L1, without specific training in those skills. Asked to risk their children’s future school success on a ‘non-school’ language, few local education stakeholders are ready to take that risk. It should also be noted that this resistance does not necessarily end with the first years of implementation of L1-medium reading programming; such programming runs counter to long-held beliefs about the purpose and nature of formal education, and those beliefs are not easily set aside. However, these very features that hinder local stakeholder buy-in also point the way for dealing with this challenge. Respectful, evidence-based engagement with community stakeholders can broaden their understanding and acceptance of the use of local languages for learning. Ensuring that classroom teachers gain reading and writing skills in the local language, and subsequent demonstrations of successful L1-medium learning by their children can also have significant impact on local perspective. Ultimately, these stakeholders are seeking the most successful education experience possible for their children; they need evidence that L1-medum learning will yield that. Assisting government education bodies that are tasked with implementation of such programs, with evidence generation and advocacy activities, can be a productive and valued demonstration of collaboration. Engagement with local education stakeholders was a central feature of an L1-medium early grade reading project carried out by Concern Worldwide and SIL Africa in Marsabit, Kenya from 2014 to 2016. Using Concern’s community conversations model,3 project staff held on-site discussions on L1-medium education with county education officials, local political leaders and other community stakeholders, with a view to building support for L1-based learning. A language mapping activity was carried out in the 32 schools of Marsabit Central zone in Marsabit county, investigating not only children’s language fluencies but also the perspectives of community stakeholders about language of instruction. Based on this  https://www.concernusa.org/project-profile/community-conversations/

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engagement with both the local government and the local community, a Borana-­ language reading pilot program was implemented.

2.2 Challenge: A Non-conducive Policy Environment Language policy environment also has substantial impact on the acceptance and success of L1-medium educational programming. Where national policy, or local appropriation of that policy, are not conducive to the use of local languages in the classroom, long-term support for L1-medium programming can be a serious challenge. In recognition of both the linguistic diversity and the limited international-­ language fluency of their populations, most African states have national language policies that support the use of one or more indigenous African languages in education and governance. Typically, African languages are designated a role in the early primary grades, with the former colonial language taking a greater role in upper primary and beyond. A 2016 study of language policy in eastern and southern Africa found that 20 of 21 states had language policies in place that permitted the use of African languages in some way in the education system (Trudell, 2016: 96). Central and west African nations are also generally supportive of a similar use of indigenous languages in the classroom. The challenges in nearly every one of these African states lie not in the language policy itself, but in its alignment with other education policies and the degree to which its implementation is resourced. National language policy is typically sited in national governance documents such as the constitution, and/or in national education policy documents. For example, Ethiopia’s current core language policy is found in the 1994 Constitution, with further policy content in the National Education and Training Policy (Nakamura et  al., 2020: 5). South Africa’s post-apartheid language policy is outlined in its Constitution of 1996, and further specified in the 1997 language in education policy (Trudell, 2016: 64). However, in many African nations the language policy is primarily an education-related document, and is held within the Ministry of Education. Such ministerial-level policy statements tend to be more vulnerable to frequent, politically-motivated changes than are policies that are grounded in a constitution-­ level legal framework.4 A close examination of language policy formulation and change across Africa indicates that national language policy, no matter what its content, receives strong implementational support under certain conditions (Shohamy, 2006; Trudell, 2021; Trudell & Piper, 2014): • Where the policy is seen as reflecting a radical new national direction; • Where the policy reflects a strong stance related to national identity;  For example, Ansah (2014) records nine significant language of instruction policy changes taking place in Ghana between 1951 and 2014; in 2019, the policy changed yet again. 4

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• Where the state is strong enough to provide resourcing for the policy, and to align other policies to support it; • Where local appropriation of the policy aligns with national policy, even where the national policy is not locally enforced. Language policy that is not reflective of the real aspirations and identity of the nation’s leaders can be vulnerable to frequent changes and inadequate implementation. In addition, where language policy does not resonate with local aspirations and beliefs about language, local support and implementation will not be automatic (Trudell et al., 2015: 139; Trudell & Piper, 2014). The evidence is that the pedagogical implications of language of instruction choices do not carry nearly the weight for stakeholders as do these larger issues. Given the key role of language in shaping education outcomes, certain international education organizations are particularly concerned with national language policy content (Kymlicka and Grin 2003:19). Documents published and disseminated in the last decade by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the African Union promote the use of African languages in formal learning, though some are more specific about it than others. For example, the African Union’s Agenda 2063, initiated in 2013, includes among its aspirations that “African languages will be the basis for administration and integration”5; however, the role of African languages of instruction in attaining this aspiration is not specified. At the other end of the spectrum, a joint 2010 publication by UIL and ADEA, entitled Why and How Africa Should Invest in African Languages and Multilingual Education (Ouane & Glanz, 2010), is both explicit and insistent on the issue. International education donors are another source of influence on national language policy. In the last decade, four of the largest donors to education in African nations have expressed significant support for the use of African languages of instruction in primary classrooms. • USAID’s education policy statement of November 20186 argues that the prevalent language mismatch between learning materials, teachers and pupils is a significant educational obstacle. In an effort to help overcome it, the 2019–2020 US Government report to the US Congress on international basic education7 highlights the provision of • more than 34.7 million primary and secondary students in 53 countries with opportunities to learn literacy, numeracy, and other basic skills, in formal and non-formal settings, including in local languages (p. 4, author’s emphasis).

 https://nepad.org/agenda-2063/aspirations/336  https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/2018_Education_Policy_ FINAL_WEB.pdf 7  https://www.edulinks.org/sites/default/files/media/file/USG%20International%20Basic%20 ED%20Strategy%20FY19%20Report%20to%20Congress%20FINAL.pdf 5 6

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• The World Bank’s publication on effective language of instruction policies (World Bank, 2021) is its clearest statement in favor of the use of local languages for learning, and builds on earlier reports on inclusion A (World Bank, 2019a: 29–34) and poverty reduction (World Bank, 2019b: 27). • A 2018 education policy statement by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID)8 (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, FCDO), advocates “developing the teaching workforce so that it reflects the diverse cultural and linguistic groups present in a country, enabling children to be taught in a familiar language” (p. 17). • The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) cites the need for language-­inclusive education policy and programming, as part of its overall advocacy for the inclusion of children who are disadvantaged in current education systems (Global Partnership for Education, 2019: 17). In 2021, the GPE helped to fund the Read@ Home program, focusing on the development of easy-reading books in local languages of several African countries, for distribution to homes affected by the COVID-19-induced education crisis.9 However, it should be noted that this pro-local language messaging from well-­ resourced donors may or may not exert significant influence on national decisions regarding language of instruction. Issues of identity, diversity, inclusion and national aspiration all make the formulation and implementation of national language in education policy highly complex. One example of the complex relationship between language of instruction projects and national interests is Rwanda. As noted in Table 2 above, an estimated 12% of Rwandans speak English; in contrast, Kinyarwanda is spoken by 95% of the nation’s population.10 For this reason, the USAID-funded early grade reading project Literacy, Learning and Language [L3] Initiative,11 taking place between 2012 and 2017, prominently featured and supported the use of Kinyarwanda as a medium of reading instruction – in alignment with the national language policy at the time. The USAID-funded Soma Umenye project, in operation from 2016 to 2021, has aimed at increasing children’s reading skills in Kinyarwanda as well.12 The L3 program resulted in good learning gains in mathematics and reading13; early results from Soma Umenye showed a statistically significant gains in reading skills.14 However, despite these learning gains, and notwithstanding extensive materials development, training and classroom implementation, in 2019 the Rwandan  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/685536/DFID-Education-Policy-2018a.pdf 9  Read@Home (worldbank.org). 10  https://www.ethnologue.com/country/RW/languages 11  https://www.edc.org/literacy-language-and-learning-l3-initiative 12  https://chemonics.com/projects/paving-path-literacy-rwanda/ 13  L3 Education | Rwanda | U.S.  Agency for International Development (usaid.gov)Executive Summary.pdf (edc.org). 14  PA00T13Z.pdf (usaid.gov). 8

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government moved to make English the sole language of instruction from the early grades.15 Interestingly, USAID has maintained overt promotion of Kinyarwandamedium learning in the early grades16; whether this is likely to effect policy change is unclear. A contrasting example is provided by Uganda, where a bilaterally-funded early grade reading program has strengthened the government’s ability to implement its language of instruction policy. The USAID-funded School Health and Reading Program (SHRP), carried out from 2012 to 2017, focused on early-grade reading instruction programming in 12 Ugandan languages as chosen by the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES). This program supported the official thematic curriculum that has been in place since 2007, and which calls for L1-medium instruction through P3 as well as the inclusion of literacy as a curriculum subject. Evaluation of the program indicated that SHRP had a statistically significant positive impact on literacy achievement in nine of the 12 languages (Brunette et al., 2019). Three years after the formal end of SHRP, GPE-funded literacy support, the USAID LARA program, and smaller education projects all continued to support the MoES’s thematic curriculum’s focus on Ugandan languages with materials and programming. Thus, the indications are that donors’ language of instruction interests may or may not have a long-term influence on national language policy choices. It could be argued that where donor interests align with one or more of the four national policy conditions noted above, they are more likely to have long-term impact on language policy and practice. Where development institutions’ early-grade reading interventions in  local languages do not get the real language-based concerns of national education policymakers, the proposed learning outcomes of such interventions may not be enough to drive sustained change. Advocacy engagement at the policy level thus must be carefully strategized. It needs to begin with an understanding of the underlying issues of identity and aspirations, along with a clear perspective on how local language-medium learning can support them. Opportunities for policy dialogue at both national and local levels can be very useful, as can exposure to policy solutions that have been effective elsewhere in the world.

2.3 Challenge: Alignment and Involvement of Education Systems Language in education policies and practices are embedded in, and supported by, a range of formal education structures and systems. Where changes in language of instruction practice are implemented, the potential for conflict with existing ‘ways

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/24/third-time-11-years-rwanda-changedlanguage-used-primary-schools/; In Rwanda, Language Change in Schools Leaves Students and Teachers Struggling (worldpoliticsreview.com). 16  Education | Rwanda | U.S. Agency for International Development (usaid.gov). 15

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of doing things’ is very real. This lack of alignment can pose a significant threat to successful implementation of the desired language practices in the classrooms. Systems with impact on the L1-medium classroom itself include those related to teachers, curriculum and teaching and learning materials (TLMs). These systems are generally overseen centrally in a national Ministry of Education. The systems and structures that provide teacher provision and support are generally substantial. Units linked to the Ministry of Education are responsible for teacher certification, capacity-building, allocation, supervision, salaries and other aspects of teacher functioning. These will all be highly relevant to any attempts to sustainably provide competent L1-speaking teachers to a project, especially where teacher allocation policies do not support matching teachers to school assignments based on teachers’ language fluency. Teacher training institutions are also clearly relevant to appropriate capacity-building for teaching new subjects in the new language of instruction. Some of the greatest challenges to successful L1-medium programming have to do with the language attitudes and teacher language practices that are conveyed in these contexts. In addition, the relative independence of these teacher-­support institutions from other government education units can make them exceptionally challenging to bring on board with new L1-medium program initiatives. Where the curriculum is concerned, the systems that oversee curriculum content (including that related to language) and examinations have a substantial influence on language attitudes and language of instruction practices. One particular challenge to L1-medium instruction is the widespread practice of using the official language for subject examinations, regardless of the language in which the subject is taught. This one policy choice is the source of extreme reluctance on the part of teachers and learners to use any other language as the medium of instruction, given the weight that examination results carry at the individual and school level. TLMs are under the control of the curriculum-setting system as well. Its approval of materials for classroom use is required, based on national standards related to the format and content of pedagogical materials. Any materials to be used in L1-medium classroom teaching must conform to these standards as well, although sometimes ‘pilot’ or experimental L1-medium programs may be permitted to use non-­ approved TLMs. A higher-level system that strongly influences L1-medium education programming is government education financing. Probably the single most frequent objection made to MTB-MLE at the policy level is its supposedly ‘prohibitive’ cost (Orwenjo, 2012: 304); indeed, this perception can shut down even the discussion of including multiple local languages in a national education system. The ‘commonsense’ belief is that multiplying languages in the curriculum will mean multiplying the associated costs as well. This concern has been demonstrated to be an overstatement of the actual facts. Kymlicka and Grin (2003: 18) calculate that moving from a monolingual to a bilingual education system adds less than 5% to the national education budget. Heugh (2011) estimates a less than 10% budget increase for multilingual education, and demonstrates that the higher repetition and drop-out rates that characterize monolingual classroom instruction make such education more expensive than bilingual education. Thus, while  the  costs of learning materials

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production may indeed increase with more languages, given the realities of smaller print runs, research comparing  the long-term, overall costs of these language of instruction options suggests a different picture. It is also important to consider that, beyond the number of languages being proposed, L1-medium program interventions nearly always assume investment in a generally higher quality of education programming: an adequate number and quality of teaching and learning materials, teachers who are appropriately trained and supported, and a classroom context that is conducive to learning. Good-quality education, characterized by these features, inevitably requires more investment than does poor-quality education. Language choice is itself a feature of educational quality, but is by no means the single feature that increases program costs. These points of potential system non-alignment may be addressed by (1) understanding the systems and how they work, (2) giving real effort to advocacy engagement with those who control the systems, and (3) engaging openly and appreciatively in problem-solving with this group. System changes typically require high-level involvement by the Ministry of Education and its associated institutions, so it is important to provide these decision-makers with the best evidence available on why changes are needed, and  support them to consider how best to implement such changes in their particular country and language context. The importance of ensuring systems alignment is evidenced by the fact that large, donor-funded early grade reading interventions in the last decade have dedicated significant effort and resourcing towards exactly this outcome. One recent example is the USAID Ghana Partnership for Education: Learning activity, implemented by a consortium led by FHI360. A multi-language early grade reading program was the centerpiece of this project; it took place from 2014 to 2019, targeting learners speaking 11 Ghanaian languages in 100 (out of 216 total) districts of the country. The scale of this program required substantial systems alignment and involvement for its success. To that end, the Learning activity prioritized extensive cooperation with Ministry of Education/Ghana Education Service (GES) staff at national, regional and district levels. Learning staff were co-located in the regional education offices of the GES in all 10 regions of the country, enhancing the potential for collaboration and alignment between project and existing education support systems as they implemented the 11-language program across the country.17

2.4 Challenge: A Language-Diverse Environment With few exceptions, the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are linguistically very rich. Table 5 below provides language counts for a few sample countries (Eberhard et al., 2020). The languages in the counts given below are actively spoken by ethnic

 https://www.fhi360.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/resource-ghana-learning-brochure.pdf 17

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Table 5  Living, indigenous language counts in a sample of African countries (Ethnologue 2020)a Country # Living indigenous languages a

Niger Tanzania Nigeria Kenya Cameroon Mali Senegal Ethiopia Botswana 19 117 508 60 270 63 31 86 26

An adapted version of this table appears in Ralaingita et al. (2021)

communities indigenous to their respective countries. A number of these languages lack a stable writing system, and are used primarily orally; however, many hundreds of Africa’s languages are written, even if  they are not used in the  formal education  system. In such language-rich environments, multilingualism in neighboring languages and languages of wider communication is often high; this multilingualism does not, however, imply fluency in any international language. The potential challenges to L1-medium education programming in such linguistically rich environments are both linguistic (related to the languages themselves) and sociolinguistic (related to stakeholders’ attitudes and perspectives on the languages). The linguistic challenges have primarily to do with (1) the geographical and demographic spread of the languages in focus, and (2) whether established orthographies (writing systems) and pedagogical materials exist for those languages. The processes for addressing these questions are well established; they include language mapping, community-based orthography review, language analysis for reading instruction and materials development activities. However, the more difficult challenges that the language-diverse African environment poses for L1-medium education programming stem not from the number and variety of languages spoken, but, rather from the level of readiness to consider the possibilities that exist for their use in education and society. This lack of readiness is based partly on a poor understanding of the language ecology in the region or communities in focus, but also on a view of educational programming that is biased in the direction of recognizing just one language per nation. One particular problem is the perception that the number of recognized languages in a country correlates with the degree of political fragmentation and disunity present in the country. The ‘one language, one nation’ argument assumes, incorrectly, that suppressing all but one language somehow draws a population together and promotes national unity (Bamgbose, 1991). The case of Rwanda’s political upheaval, in which two  ethnic communities which spoke the same language experienced violent conflict between 1959 and 1994 (Prunier, 1995), is one example of the inaccuracy of this argument. Another perspective that hinders effective classroom language practices is the notion that, with so many languages in the mix, an international language of instruction is the ‘neutral choice’ that provides the same advantage (or disadvantage) to all learners (Opoku-Amankwa & Aba Brew-Hammond, 2011). In fact, there are no such ‘neutral’ languages of instruction; whichever language is chosen, those who are more fluent in it will have a learning advantage. In the case of international

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languages, those Africans who speak them also tend to be wealthier and more socially privileged; choosing these languages of instruction serves to widen the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ (Trudell, 2010: 344). One common approach that African states take to the language diversity and learning dilemma has been the designation of a limited number of African languages as permissible for early-primary education, along with the international language of choice. This approach offers the possibility of L1- or L2-medium learning for those who speak the designated languages; when the population of L1 or L2 speakers is large, this can make a significant difference to education access. In addition, children who speak languages that are in the same language family as the designated language of instruction find it easier to manage than an international language. Examples of this limited-language of instruction policy approach include Malawi’s policy of Chichewa and English as languages of education, Nigeria’s policy (until 2013; see Trudell, 2018) of giving special emphasis to Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba as regional languages of instruction, and Mali’s policy of using Bamanankan, Songhay, Fulfulde, Senoufo/Minyanka and Dogon as languages of instruction (along with Arabic and French) in primary schools (Eberhard et al., 2020b). In other countries, prioritization of particular languages of instruction over others is practiced without explicit policies that support that practice, such as Kiswahili in Kenya, Mooré in Burkina Faso, and Hausa, Zarma and Tamacheq in Niger (Eberhard et al., 2020c). As of 2017, Niger’s multilingual education initiative was using three more of the nation’s ten official languages  – Gourmanchéma, Boudouma (also called Yedina) and Dazaga (also called Tubu), − along with French.18 It must be said that this promotion of a limited number of languages rarely satisfies the entire citizenry of the country; indeed, the rich linguistic diversity across Africa virtually guarantees that any choice of African languages of instruction will inevitably sideline many other languages. Only policies such as that of South Africa, which leave the language choice up to the community (Trudell, 2016: 64), are able to evade this accusation to some extent; and even in the South African  case, the policy names 11 languages from which the communities can choose out of 20 indigenous South African languages and 10 non-indigenous languages (Eberhard et al., 2020a). It is thus not uncommon for community members, offered education programming for their children in an African language that is not their own, to reject it in favor of international language-medium alternatives. Where they might be ready to consider learning opportunities for their children in their own language, asking those children to learn another African language of no more prestige than their home language is seen as culturally insulting and educationally pointless. This truly is a challenge, given the logistical impossibility of offering instruction in every language spoken on the continent. Examples of this dilemma include ongoing resistance to the use of Swahili as medium of instruction in Luo-speaking Nyanza

 https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/piloting-mother-tongue-curriculum-improveliteracy-niger 18

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Province, Kenya19; the extensive language mismatch that exists between designated Ghanaian languages of instruction and the language fluencies of the pupils, in schools in some regions of Ghana (USAID Partnership for Education: Learning, 2018: 21); and the reluctance of South African parents to have their children learn in another South African language than their home language (Trudell, 2016: 64–65.) These thorny sociolinguistic challenges are best met with a range of data-­ gathering activities on the languages in question, and engagement with the stakeholder communities regarding what practical solutions might be possible. Where such discussions are taking place on a provisional or nation level, finding ‘wins’ in certain communities and moving ahead there is also a good strategy. Where multilingualism extends into a community and its school system, strategies for dealing with multiple languages in the formal learning context have also been developed and can be brought to bear (see Trudell & Young, 2016).

3 Where Local Language-Medium Learning Is Not an Option It is rare in African education contexts to encounter a complete lack of opportunity for implementing local language-medium learning programs. Where this does happen, it is generally related to a prohibitive national policy. As long as such programs are not actually against the law, support for, and implementation of, local-language learning programs can and does take place at many levels, carried out by many different actors. In the cases where national policy completely rules out the inclusion of local language-medium learning in the formal education system, however, it is important to understand the reasons for this policy choice. As noted above, national language policy that reflects a strong stance related to national identity, or expresses a new political direction, tends not to be open to modification. Where that stance or direction involves limiting language of instruction choices, options for change are severely constrained. Some African examples include: • Tanzania. With the establishment of the political philosophy of Ujamaa in the early 1960s, Nyerere’s government chose to use only one African language  – Kiswahili – to convey this new political direction. It is said that Nyerere recognized and sympathized with the large number of language communities in the country, but he intentionally sacrificed their formal recognition in the interests of consolidating and spreading his vision for Tanzania as a nation. This approach was so powerful that it has only been in recent years that conversation about indigenous Tanzanian languages has been perceived as allowable. In fact, Kiswahili’s primary competitor for linguistic priority in Tanzania today is English. 19

 Author’s personal experience.

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• Rwanda. As noted above, in 2019 the government ofEducation | Rwanda | U.S. Agency for International Development (usaid.gov) declared English as the sole language of instruction in Rwandan primary schools. This decision was the latest in a 20 plus-year trend for replacing French – and eventually Kinyarwanda as well – with English as the language of formal education. The lengthy and deep political factors involved in this language policy move contribute to its current non-negotiability. • Côte d’Ivoire. Throughout its history, Côte d’Ivoire has been known as the ‘most French’ of francophone African nations. The use of French as the sole language of formal education has been the law since 1944, and was unchanged upon the country gaining independence from France in 1958. Although a national commission created in 1972 aimed to integrate Ivorian languages into the education system, it was sidelined by the Ivorian government and its primary aid donors (Djité, 2007: 168). Over the years, the strategic location of the country in West Africa, and its leaders’ close relationships with the French government, has cemented its ‘francophone’ identity and language policy. What these three examples have in common is the embedding of language of instruction policy in significant political intention that has little to do with pedagogical considerations per se. This unwillingness to take pedagogical realities  into account can take a severe toll on the quality of learning experienced by the pupils in such systems. It important to understand, however, that the current language policies in most African states have not developed in this way. More often, language policy reflects a long and complex relationship between the national language ecology and formal learning systems; it is often dependent on individual ministerial inclination, or the responses of the political party in power to social, cultural and economic influences. This is why language policy is so often vulnerable to change; and it is why a lack policy support for the implementation of local language-medium learning can be equally vulnerable to the next round of ministerial appointments or the next elected government. In contexts such as this, advocacy measures such as research evidence, pilot programming and community engagement can be very important. Where programming is intended to provide convincing evidence of the positive outcomes of local-­ language medium learning, it should: • be based on solid attention to both the international language AND the local language as languages of oral and written fluency; • bear in mind the long-term educational goal of success in secondary and higher education, which requires academic competency in the non-local (usually international) language of instruction; • attend to the other long-term valued outcomes of L1-medium learning such as parent and community engagement in children’s learning, acquisition of strong literacy skills, and decreased school attrition. The importance of such advocacy on behalf of L1-medium policy in African nations is highlighted by the damage often done by an L2 immersion approach to the

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vitality of the pupils’ L1, and their own sense of personal and community value, when its potential as a language of formal learning is denied. Immersion bilingual education programs have long been in operation in Canada, with French-medium instruction for L1 English speakers (Lambert & Tucker, 1972; Swain & Johnson, 1997); however, this particular single-language immersion approach does not put the political, educational, economic or social status of either language in danger. The same cannot be said of marginalized African languages, whose communities of speakers struggle with a limited tradition of writing and precarious perceived national value. And, while immersion (or, as critics term it, “submersion”; see Nakamura et al. 2020:20) describes the de facto classroom situation in the great majority of African states, intentional funded programmatic support for such an approach seems unhelpful. Where the education policy does not permit use of local languages in the formal classroom, other programmatic measures can be taken to support children’s learning in a language that they speak. One effective strategy is a programmatic focus on nonformal, community-oriented reading and learning activities. Out-of-school programming such as Save the Children’s Literacy Boost20 focuses on reading camps and other community-based reading activities. When storybooks and other reading materials are produced in the local language, using community-based literature development strategies, the nonformal reading camp environment can be an effective way to build children’s skills of reading comprehension (Trudell & Ndunde, 2015). Other strategies include the establishment of community libraries and study centers, and provision of a teacher or mentor who speaks the local language and can help children with their school assignments. Where policy change is out of the question, support for L2 learning in the classroom can help children to face the language barrier. L2-medium classrooms in Africa often assume pupil fluency in the L2, which creates substantial obstacles to students’ learning of both content and the L2. Support for L2-medium learning could include not only explicit instruction in the L2 as a second or foreign language, but also building teachers’ ability to use the L1 in a structured way to scaffold L2 curriculum content. It must be said, however, that explicit L2 support of this kind is uncommon in African classrooms. More informal code-switching in the classroom is far more common, but it is generally regarded as poor teaching practice (see for example Trudell, 2018: 25).

4 Conclusion and Thoughts on Further Research Though a great deal of research has been carried out on the role of language in learning and the impact of using local languages of instruction in the formal education system, much still remains to be studied in the field. Research in this field is

20

 https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-we-do/global-programs/education/literacy-boost

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important both for its role in problem-solving and for the provision of evidence that supports advocacy endeavors. Some useful research directions that remain include: • A comparative study of the outcomes of early-exit L1-medium instructional programming in two or more African contexts, focusing on non-academic outcomes as well as the impact on learning outcomes through the upper primary grades. Evidence exists that use of the L1 in the early grades, and particularly teaching pupils to read with understanding, has impact on pupil attendance, dropout rates, community involvement in the school, and the overall experience of the child in school. A rigorous examination of these and other non-academic outcomes, as well as any extended academic impact, would be a meaningful addition to our understanding of how MTB-MLE works and what it can do. • A comprehensive study of code-switching in the primary classroom in Africa. Code-switching is a common practice in African classrooms, but the evidence is mixed as to whether it is beneficial to children’s learning or not (e.g. Trudell, 2018). The terminology related to this phenomenon (e.g. translanguaging, code-­ mixing) is similarly mixed in use and definition. Clarifying the nature and impact of code-switching in the classroom is important for understanding the extent to which it should be encouraged or discouraged. • A study of the linguistic and social features that affect how broadly a given language of instruction will be acceptable and useful in multilingual African community contexts. Given the impossibility of developing every African language for use as a medium of instruction, such a study would help enhance the success of the African-language educational programming that is being developed. • A year-by-year longitudinal comparison of the impact of the L1 across the curriculum model and that of L1 as reading subject only. Most bilingual education programs in Africa use L1 as the medium of instruction only for teaching reading in the early grades, even though many more benefits of L1-medium learning accrue when a program uses the L1 across the curriculum. What are the relative benefits of each approach from where learning outcomes, language transition and program cost are concerned? • A study of the most effective methods for supporting children through the language transition period. Whether an early-exit or late-exit approach is chosen, there is limited empirical research regarding how to effectively help children through the language transition (Piper & Miksic, 2011). In particular, understanding how to most effectively help teachers manage the early-exit transition year of Grade 3 or 4 successfully is essential. • Rigorous cost analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis of the language options described in this chapter. Few large-scale cost analyses have been carried out that investigate the policy options that we describe here; filling this research gap is critical. • Studies of the ability of African countries to implement various language policy options at scale. Small scale studies exist on this topic, but few of the large scale implementation interventions have included rigorous analysis of whether and how the language options work at scale within complex government systems,

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especially where various levels of language diversity are concerned. Assessment of the PRIMR early grade reading program, as it has operated within Kenya’s complex language ecology (Piper et al., 2016, 2018) demonstrates the need for such studies elsewhere as well. • Research on specific sociolinguistic contexts that are currently of particular interest, such as language of instruction choices for refugee learners, language choice and overage learners, and language choices for early childhood care and education. Despite the complexity of local language-medium education programming, the long history of bilingual and multilingual learning programs in Africa indicates that they can have significant impact on learning outcomes. Many resources are available to support such programming, the products of years of experience in implementing local language-medium learning programs in Africa. MTB-MLE is not a short-term program solution to the challenges of Africa’s formal education systems; but, when implemented with care, taking into account the complexities of large and national scale and in collaboration with local and national stakeholders, it can contribute substantially to the long-term effectiveness of primary and secondary education on the continent.

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Romaine, S. (2015). Linguistic diversity and global English: The Pushmi-Pullyu of language policy and political economy. In T. Ricento (Ed.), Language policy and political economy: English in a global context (pp. 252–275). Oxford University Press. Shohamy, E. (2006). Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. Routledge. Swain, M., & Johnson, R. (1997). Immersion education: A category within bilingual education. In Johnson & Swain (Eds.), Immersion education: International perspectives (pp.  1–16). Cambridge University Press. Trudell, B. (2010). When ‘Prof’ speaks, who listens? The African elite and the use of African languages for education and development in African communities. Language and Education, 24(4), 337–352. Trudell, B. (2016). The impact of language policy and practice on children’s learning: Evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa. UNICEF.  Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/esaro/ UNICEF(2016)LanguageandLearning-­FullReport(SingleView).pdf Trudell, B. (2018). Language and education in Nigeria: A review of policy and practice. British Council and UNICEF.  Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org.ng/sites/default/files/ j149_language_and_education_nigeria_final_web.pdf Trudell, B. (2021). The mythic and the authentic value of English in the African classroom: A policy perspective. In K. Raza, C. Coombe, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), Policy development in TESOL and multilingualism: Past, present and the way forward (pp. 77–88). Springer. Trudell, B., & J. Ndunde. (2015). Making space for local knowledge: Community-based literature and internationalized education. SIL Language and Culture Archives. Retrieved from http:// www.sil.org/resources/archives/63680 Trudell, B., & Piper, B. (2014). Whatever the law says: Language policy implementation and early-grade literacy achievement in Kenya. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1), 4–21. Trudell, B., & Young, C. (Eds.). (2016). Good answers to tough questions in mother tongue-based multilingual education. SIL International. https://www.sil.org/sites/default/files/files/sil_2016_ good_answers_to_tough_questions_0.pdf Trudell, B., Young, C., & Nyaga, S. (2015). Language, education and development: Implications of language choice for learning. In S. McGrath & G. Qing (Eds.), Routledge handbook of international education and development (pp. 133–149). Routledge. UNESCO. (2016). If you don’t understand, how can you learn? (Global education monitoring report policy paper 24). UNESCO. USAID Partnership for Education: Learning. (2018). Language mapping study: Analysis report. USAID. World Bank. (2019a). Equity and inclusion in education in World Bank projects: Persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and sexual and gender minorities. World Bank Group. Retrieved from http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/590781562905434693/pdf/Equity-­and-­ Inclusion-­i n-­E ducation-­i n-­World-­B ank-­P rojects-­P ersons-­w ith-­D isabilities-­I ndigenous-­ Peoples-­and-­Sexual-­and-­Gender-­Minorities.pdf World Bank. (2019b). Ending learning poverty: What will it take? World Bank Group. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/32553/142659.pdf?seque nce=7&isAllowed=y World Bank. (2021). Loud and clear: Effective language of instruction policies for learning. World Bank. Retrieved from World Bank Document

Literacy in Egypt Gad Elbeheri

Abstract  This chapter explains the current situation regarding literacy in Egypt. It starts by providing some basic demographic information about Egypt including its location, educational system and literacy. It also includes background information regarding the linguistic nature of the Arabic language. The chapter contains a number of research studies conducted to understand how literacy develops among Arabic speakers with a focus on literacy in Egypt. The chapter concludes with implications for further research and in particular the need to understand how young Egyptian children develop their reading abilities and how best to support them.

1 Introduction Egypt has one of the oldest civilizations in the world; it enjoys a rich history and a vibrant culture. Although situated in the north-east of Africa, a small part of Egypt (the Sinai peninsula) is in fact a part of Asia. Throughout its history, Egypt has become a melting pot of civilizations and people, which is reflected in its personality, history, and culture. The love of learning, educational collaboration and cultural influence that Egypt has with the rest of the world is evident now as it has always been throughout history with the French, the Greeks, and the Romans before them. The current education and literacy scene in Egypt, however, is not as glorious as it had once been. Education and literacy are always linked to other factors such as economy, sustainable development, governance and prosperity. Egypt’s human development position has advanced; indeed, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2019 Human Development Index, Egypt has achieved 70%, and Egypt currently ranks 116th out of 160. Although this reflects efforts made by the state to improve the lives of citizens, it is in fact less than the 111th place that Egypt achieved in 2017. According to the Global Competitiveness G. Elbeheri (*) New Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_6

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Report, Egypt ranks 93 out of 140 countries (World Economic Forum Global Index). A study by the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization & Statistics (CAPMAS) published in 2017 places illiteracy rate in Egypt at 20.1%, or an equivalent of 14.3 million individuals (with women forming 9.1 million of the total number). That is why eradication of illiteracy is a national duty in Egypt, necessitating the mobilization of all to realize it as indeed reflected in Article 21 of the Egyptian Constitution. Women in Egypt, according to one study constitute almost 64% of the total number of Egyptians above the age of nine who cannot read or write. With the world transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, the Egyptian education system needs to become a source providing highly skilled graduates required for the workforce as well as strengthening the principle of lifelong learning through the provision of high quality education and training systems.

1.1 Educational System in Egypt In 2020/21, the total enrolment in Egypt at the K-12 level amounted to 24 million, while total enrolment at the Higher Education level amounted to 2.6 million students (Matwaya, 2020). Egypt has the largest education system in the Middle East and North Africa region. Education in Egypt is governed by two constitutional principles, namely, equal opportunity and equality, according to Article 8 of the Egyptian Constitution. Further, Article 19 of the Egyptian Constitution also states that every Egyptian citizen has the right to education, and the goals of education are to build the Egyptian character, preserve the national identity, consolidate the scientific method of thinking, develop talents and promote innovation, establish cultural and spiritual values, and lay foundations of citizenship, tolerance and non-­discrimination. There are two government bodies that oversee education in Egypt. These are the Ministry of Education and Technical Education and the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research. The educational system in Egypt is organized into the following stages: A. Pre-school education, (kindergarten) which is an independent educational stage lasting two years for children aged 4–5 years. B. Primary education, which is a compulsory basic education starting at the age of 6 and includes primary and preparatory education. It lasts for 9 years (age group 6–15) and covers the 6-year primary education cycle and the 3-year preparatory cycle. C. Secondary education, which lasts for 3 years. Students who pass the exams at the end of general secondary education are awarded a General Secondary Education Certificate. D. Higher education, which is available at universities or non-university higher education institutes and accessible to all students holding the General Secondary Education Certification and those technical education students with high scores. The school year consists of 34 working weeks. The academic year is divided into two terms separated by a mid-year vacation lasting 2 weeks.

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Overpopulation in Egypt represents the most pressing challenge to the education sector and the country as a whole if not properly utilized as a source of strength for Egypt. Its population has exceeded 100 million in 2020 with 43% of individuals living in urban areas and 57% rural dwellers. The ratio of males to females is 51.1–48.9% according to a 2013 census. The census also noted that one third of Egyptian society is under 15 years of age. Despite the economic progress of Egypt over the last few years, its limited resources once distributed among the number of inhabitants create a persistent challenge and a constraint on the financing of education in Egypt. This has in turn created challenges in the quality of education in Egypt as a whole. While basic education in Egypt is free, classrooms are overcrowded and teachers are poorly paid and ill prepared, often prompting middle class and upper class families to seek private and international education rather than the free education provided by the state (OECD, 2015). In addition, the mismatch between the outputs of the education system and the needs of the job market is one of the key reasons behind the persistently high level of unemployment in Egypt which is officially estimated at over 10% (Loveluck, 2012). Although the Ministry of Education in Egypt allocates nearly 90% of its budget to salaries, teachers are still poorly paid and rely on secondary income. Nearly 30% of teachers lack proper training, and professional development programmes are lacking (Loveluck, 2012). Additional challenges to the Egyptian educational system and provisions are: Strains on infrastructure; poor teaching quality and dependence on private tutors; a focus on rote learning for examinations; negative attitudes towards vocational training and inadequate university access, lack of funding and research capacity. Pedagogical methods and approaches to teaching in Egypt are problematic. Rather than encouraging students to engage critically with the subject matter at hand, the curriculum and teachers in most schools tend to steer students towards memorization and rote-learning. This focus on passive learning is made worse by a lack of learning materials, library books, facilities and equipment (Loveluck, 2012). In many cases, students therefore have neither academic nor physical stimulus to engage in learning. The quality of education inside schools in Egypt remains a major challenge preventing children from developing to their full potential and contributing to their society in the long term. Teaching styles can sometimes be rigid with pupil participation not encouraged enough. Based on the Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS, 2015) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS, 2016) results, more than half of the students in Egypt do not meet the low benchmark in international learning assessments – 69% of grade-4 students in reading, 53% of grade-8 students in mathematics, and 58% of grade-8 students in science. Egypt ranks at the bottom of the participating countries – #49 out of 50 countries of grade-4 students in reading, #34 out of 39 countries of grade-8 students in mathematics, and #38 out of 39 countries of grade-8 students in science. While the above situation has been developing in Egypt; i.e., slow economic progress and human development compared to the overpopulation situation as well as the transition to a knowledge-based economy, Egyptian nationals increasingly

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depend on education to achieve social change and well-being and their value of the role of education in society has never stopped. This led to the plethora of private international education at all levels in Egypt, which is although costly for most families, still highly sought after. The perception among Egyptians is that such educational provisions in private educational institutions are more likely to guarantee jobs and employment for their children upon graduation. However, since 2014, Egypt’s focus on improving the private and public education sector has increased significantly. The Egypt Vision Strategy 2030 (MPED, 2016) was a national agenda launched in 2016 and called for an overhaul of the current educational system and looks ambitious and promising. Serious efforts to modernize the education sector from elementary schools to universities are being followed with wide implementation of assistive technology in education. Such a modernization of the educational system which started in 2018 is expected to take 14 years to execute.

1.2 Medium of Instruction The Egyptian Constitution pays a special interest to the Arabic Language as well as religious education and national history in all its stages as clearly stated in its Article number 24. Article 25 of the constitution reaffirms Egypt’s commitment to developing a comprehensive plan to eradicate alphabetical and digital illiteracy among citizens of all ages. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language of the Arab Republic of Egypt as well as being the language of education and instruction. A large proportion of Egyptian students, if not all, now have a formative exposure to MSA at school, since school materials and the curriculum are all written in MSA (Elbeheri, 2004). MSA is also used in modern literary production and in almost all other publications media, both written and broadcast, as well as in formal communications. Egyptians do not speak Modern Standard Arabic in their everyday situations but speak colloquial Arabic, referred to as the ‘Egyptian national dialect’. Despite the fact that the Egyptian national dialect has a slight variation from the Modern Standard Arabic, such a variation in not huge enough to impede literacy learning and the effect size of such a disparity has not been studied nor replicated on Egyptian monolingual Arabic speakers as it has been reported in other contexts in the research literature (e.g., Saiegh-Haddad, 2003). Due to the prolific production of Egyptian films, television programmes and music industries, Cairene Arabic has become an almost second lingua franca in the Arab world. To make the situation more complicated, Egyptian colloquial Arabic is also widely used as the medium of instruction within educational settings. To appreciate the difference between Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian colloquial Arabic and other forms of Arabic, let us first examine the nature of the Arabic language.

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1.3 Nature of the Arabic Language Arabic, the sole or joint official language of around 20 independent countries with over 200 million native Arabic speakers, is a Southern-Central Semitic language. This is a family of genetically related languages that is thought to have developed from a common parent language ‘Proto-Semitic’, which presumably existed about the 6th/8th millennia BC and was perhaps located in the present-day Sahara. The term “Semitic” designates a group of languages with some dead and others still alive while the rest have a marginal status today as liturgical languages. They all show a sufficient degree of similarity of structure in their phonology and morphology. Arabic belongs to this Semitic group of languages as spoken in a large area, including North Africa, most of the Arabian Peninsula and other parts of the Middle East. Other living languages of this group are Modern Hebrew, Amharic and other spoken languages of Ethiopia, Aramaic dialects current in parts of Syria and Iraq, and Maltese (Haywood & Nahmad, 1993). Arabic is a widely used alphabetic language. The Arabic alphabet is also widely used as it is adapted to various other diverse orthographies such as Farsi, Urdu, Swahili, Somali, and Ethiopian, to name but few. It is the language of Islam’s holy book, the Qur’an, and is therefore the religious and liturgical language of all Muslims, regardless of their origin or mother tongue. Although linguistic literature generally describes Arabic-speakers as reserving a ‘high’ form of Arabic for formal usage and using a ‘low’ form in domestic and casual settings; Holes (1995) argues that, in effect, more than two separate and distinct forms of the Arabic language are currently in use by each group of speakers as follows; 1. Classical Arabic: Used almost exclusively for liturgical purposes, with some further decreasing use in classical literature. It is a highly formalized language that is virtually immune to the pressures of linguistic evolution, and is accepted as the definitive linguistic reference across the Arab world. 2. Modern Standard Arabic which derives its syntax, morphology and phonology from Classical Arabic, but is thoroughly infused with terminology and usage inspired and/or adapted from Common European (notably English and French). MSA varies slightly from one Arab locale to another but serves as a pan-Arab communication tool. 3. National dialects are used in the local media, in the performing arts, and in semi-­ formal settings. The national dialect of each Arab state is a polished version of its most prestigious sociolect, typically the capital city’s elite dialect. While being informed by MSA, the national dialect usually exhibits considerable departure from the Classical Arabic- inspired syntax and phonology. Arabic-­ speakers are usually capable of understanding the national dialects of adjacent states. Intelligibility, however, decreases with distance. 4. Local dialects used in regional and familial settings. Local dialects vary extensively, in all linguistic features, both within each Arab state and across the Arab world. Strung together, they form a horizontal continuum of short-range intelligibility. Cairene Arabic is one of those local dialects.

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1.4 Arabic Script The Arabic script evolved probably by the sixth century AD from Nabataean, a dialect of Aramaic current in northern Arabia. It has existed without change since the seventh century AD. Like other Semitic languages, Arabic is written from right to left. The Arabic script is defective which means that short vowels are not included as independent graphemes in the script but as extra diacritical markings, which are largely neglected, in un-vowelled texts. The script is cursive which means that letters are joined to each other by means of ligatures. The Arabic alphabet is phonemic and it consists of predominantly consonants with the exception of three letters which are used as long vowels or diphthongs. The Arabic script itself consists of 17 characters only which, with the addition of dots placed above or below certain characters, provide the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet. Arabic, with its 28-letter alphabet, might seem easy enough to learn since it is a phonemic alphabet. But the fact that the script is defective in that short vowels do not appear graphemically in the Arabic script gives rise to different pronunciations of the same grapheme In order to compensate for this lack of vowels in the script, Arabic makes full use of diacritical marks. However, such diacritical marks are not used in everyday Arabic, leaving the reader vulnerable to their own interpretation and understanding of the semantic connotation derived from a given context. This means that ‘words with quite different meanings like /darasa/, he studied, /durisa/, it was studied, /dars/ lesson, /darrasa/, he taught and /durrisa/ it was taught, are homographic in normal handwriting or print’ (Holes, 1995, p. 73). Moreover, letters modify their graphic shape according to their position within the word ‘initial, medial, final or isolated from’. The cursive nature of the Arabic orthography means that words are written joined up and, as such, spaces in a continuous line of written Arabic should indicate spaces between different words. However, the six non-connecting letters ( ‫ ز‬، ‫ ر‬، ‫ ذ‬، ‫ د‬، ‫ و‬، ‫) ا‬ create spaces within words. For example, the Arabic word for student (‫ )طالب‬contains a space that should not be interpreted as the end of one word and the beginning of another. Therefore, word boundaries may be unclear, particularly for inexperienced readers. The cursive nature of the Arabic orthography (Arabic characters cannot be handwritten or typed in an independent typeface as their European counterparts), the high number of inflectional morphemes, the irregularity of the Arabic conjugation of verbs and the elaborate use of dots to differentiate between different graphemes (different graphemes assume various shapes depending on their position in the word: initial, medial, final, isolation) are all partially responsible for representing challenges for young readers of Arabic.

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1.5 Arabic Morphology The characteristic feature of Semitic languages is their basis of consonantal roots, which are mostly trilateral. Variations in meaning are obtained by either varying the vowelling of the simple root or by the addition of prefixes, suffixes and infixes. Arabic shows the fullest development of typical Semitic word structure, and therefore should be described with reference to its very complex and productive morphology. Wightwick and Gaafar (1998) argue that the key to understanding how Arabic grammar works is in its system of roots. Once learners understand how roots work, they can start to identify which are the root letters of a word and understand the patterns they produce. They also argue that the learners will then be able to form the different structures following the patterns and use their knowledge to pronounce words correctly and even to guess the meaning of new vocabulary. The Arabic root system is the key to understanding how Arabic grammar works. Once learners understand how roots work, they can start to identify which are the root letters of a word. They can also understand the patterns these roots produce, which in turn enables them to form different structures following these patterns. Such knowledge can then be utilized to pronounce words correctly and guess the meaning of new vocabulary. Although Arabic has a complex morphology, it is largely predictable. The root generally constitutes the semantic core of the Arabic word. Arabic roots, primarily consonantal, are embedded into morpho-phonological vocalic infixes and syllabic prefixes and suffixes. Variations in these patterns bring about variations in meaning. However, consonantal roots remain in exactly the same order in any word derived from this root; variations in meaning result from changes in either internal vowels, from doubling one of the consonants, from specific additional letters or affixes or from any combinations of these. Number, gender, tense and case (definite or indefinite) are all achieved by inflecting roots. Moreover, affixed and suffixed pronouns, possessives, prepositions and conjunctions are also frequently used in Arabic. In other words, Arabic roots represent the conceptual content of the word and, as such, its semantic function while the patterns represent their grammatical functions. Thus, in general, Arabic words can be decomposed into two abstract morphemes, the consonantal root and the phonological pattern. Roots and phonological patterns are abstract structures and only following their combination (after the application of phonological and phonetic rules) are specific words formed. Because of the productive nature of Arabic morphology, Arabic writing was designed mainly to convey root information and, hence, the Arabic writing system primarily represents consonants. Arabic is a highly agglutinative language (i.e., one word can correspond to a whole English sentence) because negative suffixes, tense suffixes, person prefixes can all be added to the word base in Arabic. This results in a highly derivational and dense morphology, which although helpful in communicating the core semantic meaning of the root embedded in various patterns, demands a lot of unpacking on the part of the reader in order to arrive at the exact meaning of an Arabic word. The predictability of the morphology again can be used to support this unpacking.

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Morphological knowledge is very important when learning to read Arabic as knowledge of related words (derivations) and knowledge of different forms of the same words (inflections) tend to provide clues to correct spelling (Mahfoudhi et  al., 2010). A good example of this specific linguistic feature of Arabic is the overriding tendency of written Arabic to preserve morphological clues over phonological transparency. The above description of the specific linguistic features of Arabic shows that even in a language which possesses relatively regular phoneme-grapheme correspondence, there are other complexities that are likely to pose challenges to Arabic speaking learners (Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007; Mahfoudhi et al., 2012). The shallow nature of the Arabic orthography and the relative consistency with which orthographic representations are expected to be mapped in Arabic may mean that vowelized Arabic will result in greater reading accuracy than that attained by speakers of opaque orthographies. However, its highly inflected and derivational morphology might be expected to pose challenges to learning and, as such, morphological/orthographic knowledge may be an important contributor to the reading development of Arabic speaking children (Elbeheri et al., 2011). Such knowledge is likely, therefore, to be an additional source of individual differences in the reading ability of Arabic speaking children (Everatt & Elbeheri, 2008) and may affect the relationship between literacy ability and phonological skills found in other languages, particularly as Arabic roots are phonologically highly opaque and manifest at the surface level in a variety of syllable forms. Thus, although the transparent nature of the Arabic orthography may be expected to support the acquisition of word reading amongst Arabic speaking children, the high number of homographs and the highly inflected and derivational nature of Arabic morphology may have a negative impact on acquisition.

1.6 Highlights of Reading & Writing Research on the Arabic Language Although there are academic research studies on the reading and writing abilities, difficulties and their predictors among Egyptian native Arabic speakers, most of those studies are published in Arabic and very few are published in peer reviewed international journals in English. Therefore the majority of our knowledge regarding literacy in Egypt and its acquisition and development are distilled from very few studies conducted on Arabic speaking children elsewhere in the Arab World or those living abroad in the West. In a literature review of basic Arabic reading and literacy skills report commissioned by the Arab League Education, Cultural and Scientific organization, Elbeheri et  al. (2014) identified basic Arabic reading and literacy skills, stages of basic reading and literacy skills development in Arabic, and the required and associated sub-skills. Interesting findings of that report include: The existence of internal language components effect in the acquisition of reading and

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literacy skills such as phonological awareness, decoding, reading fluency and spelling. Below are some examples of those studies because of their importance and contribution to our understanding of literacy development in Arabic generally and in Egypt in particular. There are a number of studies that concentrated on phonological development (e.g., Amayreh & Dyson, 1998; Hamdan & Amayreh, 2007), reading development stages/models (e. g., Azzam, 1993; Taouk & Coltheart, 2004) or correlates of reading and spelling (e.g., Abu-Rabia, 1995, 1997a, b, c, 1998, 2007; Abu-Rabia et al., 2003; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 1995; Al-Mannai & Everatt, 2005; Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007; Ibrahim et al., 2007; Salim, 2005, Saiegh-Haddad & Joshi, 2014) and although the results highlight the importance of phonological, morphological and orthographic processing in Arabic reading and spelling development, further studies are required to understand the underlying skills needed to become a skilled Arabic reader/speller, as well as to understand at what stages of development such skills become critical (For example: Gove et al., 2017). Given the significance of these three factors; i.e., phonology, morphology and orthography, the following overview will consider these as the basis of the discussion of the work undertaken.

1.7 Phonological Processing Many Arabic studies confirmed that phonological awareness (the ability to identify and understand the internal sound components of words) is a basic skill that is statistically related to the ability to decode sounds and letters at the word level during the early years of primary education stage (e.g.; Barakah et al., 2015; Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007; Gharaibeh et  al., 2021; Ihbour et  al., 2019; Layes et  al., 2015). Previous studies investigating the role of phonological processing in Arabic have been consistent in concluding that such processes are predictive of reading levels among Arabic children and that poor Arabic readers show weak phonological decoding and low levels of phonological awareness in comparison to matched normal readers (Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007). The pattern of interrelationships between literacy and phonological awareness is consistent with conclusions derived from English speaking cohorts, suggesting that models of literacy and specific literacy difficulties based on English language data may be appropriate for application to an Arabic context. (e.g., Abu-Rabia et al., 2003; Al-Mannai & Everatt, 2005; Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007). However, the level of prediction of Arabic literacy provided by phonological processing skills has been less than expected from previous research in other languages (Elbeheri et  al., 2006). Abu-Rabia (1995) found that dyslexic Arabic readers (aged 8–11), diagnosed on the basis of their performance in measures of isolated word reading, performed significantly worse than normal readers in various language tests, but not in terms of visual-based task scores. Such findings led Abu-Rabia (1995) to conclude that phonological processing, syntactic awareness and working memory were highly related to reading ability; a conclusion similar to that proposed for English (e.g., Siegel & Ryan, 1988). Somewhat similar

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findings were reported by Salim (2005), who compared the reading performance of 60 typical readers with 60 reading disabled learners (ages 9–11) in Amman, Jordan. This study identified significant differences between the two groups in all 12 subtests of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, but the difference was greatest in the subtests of sound blending, auditory completion, visual sequential memory and grammar completion, again implicating phonological processes as well as memory and syntactic awareness. Abu-Rabia et al. (2003) compared the performance of reading disabled Arabic learners with both age matched and reading level matched peers in tests of phonological and orthographic processing as well as measures of syntax, morphological awareness, working memory and visual memory. Results of this study showed that the reading disabled group did worse than both control groups on phonological awareness tasks. Indeed, the most severe deficiencies amongst the reading disabled group were found for measures of phonological awareness, in contrast to their relative strengths in orthographic processing. Similar evidence for dyslexics performing worse than reading level matched controls was identified by Abu-Rabia (1995) in a spelling and reading error analysis. The large number of errors made of a semantic dys-phonetic type amongst the dyslexics was attributed by Abu-Rabia to problems with phoneme to grapheme conversion, which leads the dyslexic to guessing pronunciations and/or spellings. Such effects have been found amongst English language dyslexics and have been interpreted as due to weak phonological skills leading to problems with conversion between letters and sounds (see Snowling, 2000). The importance of appropriate grapheme-phoneme relationships for learning Arabic was also identified in the work of Azzam (1993) who examined the reading and spelling errors of Arabic children in a primary school in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This study found evidence of incorrect sound-symbol associations amongst young learners  – which may be consistent with the conclusions above. However, this work also identified omissions and additions of letters as major errors in the word level literacy work of these children, and there was evidence of inappropriate sound-symbol associations involving context sensitive rules amongst the spelling errors. In a cross-sectional study examining the spelling errors of Arabic native learners in Israel (grades 1–9) who were learning Arabic in addition to Hebrew from grade 3, Abu-Rabia and Taha (2006) found that phonetic spelling errors (as defined by Snowling et al., 1996) stay with the child till grade 9. Unlike Azzam (1993) who found a developmental pattern in the number of errors, Abu-Rabia and Taha (2006) found that these phonemic errors were fairly stable across grades leading them to argue that this is different from theories of spelling development based on Latin orthographic systems (e.g., Frith, 1985) in which children are thought to move to an orthographic stage after initial learning via an alphabetic phase. Abu-Rabia and Taha interpret the large number of phonological errors as evidence that the Arabic learner tends to rely on their phonological/decoding/alphabetic skills for longer than would be predicted based on the Frith (and related) model (although contrast this with the conclusions of Taouk & Coltheart, 2004, for similarities between Arabic and English in reading acquisition stages). Abu-Rabia and Taha explained that this

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might be a specific effect within Arabic, due to the complex phonology and orthography of Arabic. However, an alternative reason that the authors propose is the interference of the phonology of the spoken variety with literary Arabic (see also Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004 and Saiegh-Haddad, 2003). The Abu-Rabia et al. (2003) study also identified phonological awareness as the strongest predictor of the variation in reading levels, with morphological awareness as a close second. The importance of phonological processing measures as predictors of Arabic literacy levels was also noted by Al-Mannai and Everatt (2005) who examined predictors of literacy development (word reading aloud and spelling) among grade 1 through grade 3 Arabic speaking learners in Bahrain. Regression analysis indicated that pseudo-word reading was the best predictor of variability, with a rhyme awareness task also strongly predicting variation in literacy levels – again consistent with the need to use phonological and letter-sound decoding processing skills. The importance of phonological measures as a potential predictor of reading ability levels amongst fourth and fifth graders in Egypt led Elbeheri and Everatt (2007) to conclude that reading Arabic, like English, depends to a large extent on phonological processing skills. Such evidence was used by Elbeheri et al. (2006) to propose that models of English literacy acquisition, and literacy learning difficulties (particularly the phonological deficit viewpoint), could be applicable to understanding the same processes in Arabic. However, these authors also argue that further research is necessary to allow firm conclusions to be made given that variations from predictions based on English language models were identified. These issues were reasoned as potentially related to specific orthographic and/or morphological features of Arabic.

1.8 Orthographic/Morphological Factors The Arabic written form may be described as complex for the beginning reader/ writer. The seemingly arbitrary combination of shapes, dots and marks, with the positioning of dots or marks distinguishing different letters or grammatical rules, can make for a difficult spatial recognition process. However, the Arabic orthography is further complicated by the feature that letter shapes can vary dependent on their positioning at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Potentially consistent with this complexity argument, Ibrahim et  al. (2002) found that when biliterate children were given a trail making task, in which participants had to serially order letters while matching them with numbers, the Arabic orthography condition was significantly slower than a Hebrew orthography condition, even though Arabic was the first language, and Hebrew a second language, of the individuals tested, and both orthographies being derived from the same Semitic background. These findings led the authors to argue that the complexity of the Arabic orthography makes it difficult to process. Additionally, Elbeheri and Everatt (2007) found that a word chains task (in which participants had to indicate word boundaries in a random series of Arabic written words from which the spaces between words had been

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removed) was highly related to reading levels amongst Egyptian primary school children, and this relationship was larger than the analogous correlations for the phonological and decoding measures in the study. Mohamed and her colleagues (Mohamed et al., 2011) conducted a study on Egyptian children and suggested that in Arabic orthography, both alphabetic and orthographic skills are being used by Egyptian Arabic speaking children for their spelling despite the fact that developing orthographic strategies in their spelling does not in fact warrant the same transition to the desired fluent reading. This may be because children, in the first 3 years of learning Arabic, are not yet exposed to un-vowelized Arabic which may force them to depend on their orthographic strategies in achieve fluency in reading. Clearly, orthographic complexity may be a second explanation for the problems experienced by Arabic children in reading tasks, and may explain the decoding problems amongst poor readers covered in the previous section. Such problems may not be due to phonological deficits, but rather to problems processing the Arabic orthography. However, the relationship between literacy and phonology found when using verbal phonological tasks seems to argue for a phonological effect and, hence, any influence of orthographic complexity may be an additional hurdle for the Arabic-reading child when learning letter-sound decoding. This may be particularly the case when the transition between vowelized and non-vowelized forms is encountered. For example, Abu-Rabia (1999, 2001) investigated the influence of using vowelized and non-vowelized variations of the Arabic script among second and sixth grade children and adults and found that the vowelized form of the Arabic script tended to increase the levels of reading comprehension shown by these Arabic readers. Making the link between letters and sounds simple may improve reading skills, even for skilled/adult readers. Although, in a later study, Abu-Rabia (2007) examined the reading skills of typical and dyslexic Arabic native readers (grades 3, 6, 9 and 12) and found that vowelization (either within words or at the end of words as a measure of syntactic knowledge) was not a predictor of reading accuracy or reading comprehension. Further research is needed to determine the effects of orthographic complexity and vowelization on literacy skills, potentially involving additional letter identification or discrimination tasks. Also it would be surprising to find that experience did not affect the influence of vowelization on reading comprehension levels – and whether text comprehension is assessed by reading aloud versus silent reading may be a further factor to consider. Whereas Abu-Rabia (2007) did not find vowelization predictive of Arabic reading amongst dyslexic and control children, there was an effect of morphology. Along with spelling ability, the identification and/or production of morphological units was generally predictive of reading (both accuracy and comprehension) in both groups across the grade range studied. Therefore, morphology, rather than orthographic effects, may be the reason why studies have found differing effects from that predicted by English language data. Indeed, studies contrasting Arabic orthography and morphology and their influence on reading (particularly word processing) among typically achieving Arabic speakers are reasonably numerous. For example, a number of studies have investigated whether the effects of orthography in lexical processing are distinct from morphology. Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson

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(2004) examined whether vowels had a priming role and, therefore, a morphemic status as proposed in McCarthy’s (1981) prosodic morphology. However, this work did not find any facilitation of word recognition due to vocalic overlap between primes and targets. Additionally, Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson (2001) examined the effect of morphemic root and pattern, as well as semantic and orthographic factors, in different stages of the recognition process using two masked priming lexical decision experiments. The results indicated that morphological priming was distinct from orthographic and semantic factors. Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson (2005), as well as Mahfoudhi (2007), found that, in contrast to morphology and semantics effects, orthographic priming seems to emerge at a different processing point (based on the time between prime and target presentation, referred to as stimulus onset asynchrony or SOA). Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson (2001, 2005) also found that priming by morphological units was significantly different from that of orthographic/phonological controls. Overall, these data argue for morphology and orthographic influences on word processing to be treated somewhat independently in models of Arabic reading ability. It is therefore strange that reading textbooks in Egypt do not in fact introduce morphology until grade six which is a bit late to introduce Egyptian children to the important aspect of morphology and deprive them of its importance in enhancing their reading ability and their reading comprehension. As for diglossia and its effect on the acquisition of reading and literacy skills in Arabic, a number of research studies indicated that the difference between students’ local vernaculars and form of Arabic officially used in their school surroundings and curriculum books may limit the ability of students to develop phonological awareness skills which might adversely affect their early reading ability skills. As for external factors contributing to the development of Arabic reading and literacy acquisition, the following results has been observed: Methods of teaching Arabic reading and literacy skills are one of the most important external factors affecting Arabic reading and literacy skills acquisition. Both whole word reading approach (analytic phonics) and bottom up programmes (synthetic phonics) methods are used in teaching Arabic reading and literacy skills. Teachers of Arabic constitute an important external factor affecting the acquisition of Arabic reading and literacy skills. To enable teachers of Arabic to perform their duties diligently and appropriately, there needs to be a detailed and focused approach on the essential abilities and competencies required from teachers of Arabic. Family and family influence is another important external factor contributing the acquisition of Arabic reading and literacy skills. Both Arabic and foreign studies confirmed that students from well off social backgrounds and those who have better chances of follow up at home regarding their reading and literacy development are at an advantage from their peers who are not being followed up at home or those from less off social and cultural backgrounds.

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1.9 Implications for Research Much of the research evidence suggests that many of the processes that support the acquisition of reading amongst Arabic speaking children are similar to those identified in other languages, particularly English, the most researched language (Elbeheri, & Everatt, 2007; Elbeheri et.al., 2011, 2014). These findings seem to indicate the importance of phonological processing in both Arabic and English literacy acquisition and, therefore, provide the potential for a cross-language framework on which to distinguish those with literacy acquisition problems (e.g., dyslexics) from those who are likely to progress at normal rates in literacy classes. However, the data on Arabic also diverges, in certain respects, from predictions based on English language models. The effects of diglossia, the complexity of the orthography and its variation between vowelized and non-vowelized forms, as well as the potential importance of morphology, all seem to show some evidence of unique effects in Arabic that are worthy of further investigation and explanation. It is therefore extremely important to find out how such factors affect the reading acquisition of Egyptian monolingual Arabic speaking children so that literacy can be enhanced and literacy development can be increased in Egypt. There is a need for further studies on younger populations, particularly those with reading difficulties, to determine whether the findings from typical adult readers (on whom much of the work on word recognition processes has been conducted) can be used to inform models of Arabic reading acquisition and dyslexia – longitudinal studies from pre-school would be highly informative as they can shed light on the important predictors of reading and literacy development among Egyptian children and eventually adults. Similarly, the focus on word processing has meant that reading comprehension research seems to be somewhat neglected in Arabic, and studies investigating sentence parsing as a subcomponent of reading comprehension would be most welcome. As for the studies on text comprehension that have been conducted so far in Arabic, most are concerned with what has been understood of the text, while processes the readers utilizes when building an understanding, or mental image, of the text (e.g., Kintsch, 1998; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983) have been rarely attempted in Arabic. Moreover, the role of syntax in reading Arabic has not been studied, which is surprising given its potential relationship to morphology and that this may play an important role in sentence level processing. Reading comprehension depends on syntax in Arabic to a great extent because of the fluidity of Arabic sentence structure. Sentences in Arabic can start with a noun or a verb or even a preposition so long as the meaning is clear and complete. This is an interesting way of building sentences but also adds a layer of difficulty for the reader as they have to figure out for themselves where and who is the subject (be-er /do-er) or who is the object/predicate of the sentence. The fact that syntax can be represented by marks attached to letter shapes in Arabic also makes it an interesting feature to consider when investigating orthographic complexity. Indeed, the interaction between orthography, morphology and syntactic awareness in comprehension processes and how these might influence

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single word processing during text reading seems a highly profitable area of research. Reading in context would seem to be an important feature of skill development in Arabic and, therefore, the processes that need to be acquired for this to happen smoothly require further investigation. How this might be supported by appropriate teaching programmes would also be a useful line of research. In addition to the above, there is a need for fundamental research that is relevant for reading /dyslexia work; namely, the linguistic development (lexical, phonological, and syntactic) of children in their local varieties. There is a need to investigate the various types of difficulties Arabic speaking monolingual individuals face, and it would seem beneficial to compare reading development amongst bilingual/multilingual Arabic populations to further investigate the effects of diglossia.

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Haywood, J., & Nahmad, H. (1993). A new Arabic grammar of the written language. Lund Humphries. Holes, C. (1995). Modern Arabic: Structures, functions and varieties. Longman Group. Ibrahim, R., Eviatar, Z., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2002). The characteristics of Arabic orthography slow its processing. Neuropsychology, 16, 322–326. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/089 4-­4105.16.3.322 Ibrahim, R., Eviatar, Z., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2007). Metalinguistic awareness and reading performance: A cross language comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 297–317. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s10936-­006-­9046-­3 Ihbour, S., Hnini, R., Anarghou, H., Ahami, A., Chigar, F., & Najimim, M. (2019). Diagnosis of dyslexic disorders and identification of factors associated with reading learning disabilities within the Moroccan context. Acta Neuropsychologica, 17(3), 261–281. Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge University Press. Layes, S., Lalonde, R., & Rebaï, M. (2015). Reading speed and phonological awareness deficits among Arabic-speaking children with dyslexia. Dyslexia, 21(1), 80–95. https://psycnet.apa. org/doi/10.1002/dys.1491 Loveluck, L. (2012). Education in Egypt: Key challenges. Chatham House. Mahfoudhi, A. (2007). Roots and patterns in Arabic lexical processing. In E. Benmamoun (Ed.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XIX, (Benjamins Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science series 4, 289, 123). https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.289. Mahfoudhi, A., Al Elbeheri, G., Rashidi, M., & Everatt, J. (2010). The role of morphological awareness among typical and learning disabled native Arabic speakers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43, 500–514. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1177/0022219409355478 Mahfoudhi, A., Elbeheri, G., & Everatt, J. (2012). Reading and dyslexia in Arabic. In G.  Reid (Ed.), The Routledge companion to dyslexia (pp. 333–342). Routledge. Matwaya. (2020). Statistical summary for education in Egypt. Ministry of Education & Technical Education. Retrieved from http://www.emoe.org McCarthy, J. J. (1981). A prosodic theory of non-concatenative morphology. Linguistic Inquiry, 12, 373–418. Mohamed, W., Elbert, T., & Landerl, K. (2011). The development of reading and spelling abilities in the first 3 years of learning Arabic. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 24(9), 1043–1060. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s11145-­010-­9249-­8 OCED. (2015). Schools for skills: A new learning Agenda for Egypt. Report by OECD published in 2015. https://www.oecd.org/countries/egypt/Schools-for-skills-a-new-learning-agenda-forEgypt.pdf Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. (2016). (PIRLS). Retrieved from www.timssandpirls.bc.edu Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 24, 431–451. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1017/ S0142716403000225 Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Joshi, M. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of Arabic literacy. Springer. Salim, S. (2005, April 26–27). Diagnosing dyslexia in a sample in the Capital district in Jordan (in Arabic). Paper presented at the ‘Special Education Conference’, Jordon. Siegel, L.  S., & Ryan, E.  B. (1988). Development of grammatical sensitivity, phonological, and short-term memory skills in normally achieving and learning children. Developmental Psychology, 24, 28–37. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0012-­1649.24.1.28 Snowling, M. (2000). Dyslexia (2nd ed.). Blackwell. Snowling, M. J., Goulandris, N., & Defty, N. (1996). A longitudinal study of reading development in dyslexic children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 653–669. https://psycnet.apa.org/ doi/10.1037/0022-­0663.88.4.653 Taouk, M., & Coltheart, M. (2004). The cognitive processes involved in learning to read Arabic. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 27–57. https://psycnet.apa.org/ doi/10.1023/B:READ.0000013831.91795.ec

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Literacy Practices in Basic Education at Libyan Schools Youssif Zaghwani Omar

Abstract  Throughout history, illiteracy is considered as one of the concerns the world had continuously suffered. Several strategic plans had been set up to vanish this concern, which is called illiteracy. Of course, Libya as a Developing Country had already passed a bitter experience regarding illiteracy, where illiterates reached 90% in the 1940s. The situation, unfortunately, has changed but not to the standard required, where few illiterate people are still existing in the country. The reason as some studies and research indicate is that the education system in Libya is still poor in quantity and quality in addition to the lack of facilities and equipment. Schools in Libya, moreover, suffer from the  lack of the good infrastructure that might help eradicate illiteracy from its roots. Despite the fact that various attempts had been made to eradicate, or at least to decrease, the number of illiterates among Libyans, specifically children, the results are still unsatisfactory based on the nature of the new era, the era of technology and globalization. The changes in the education system in Libya after 2011 might hopefully improve the situation of the education system in Libya and help in eradicating illiteracy in the country. Hence, this chapter focuses mainly on literacy practices in basic education at Libyan school. Keywords  Illiteracy · Educational system · School system · Principles · Parameters

1 Introduction We are living in the twenty-first century, the era of globalization and the Internet. The world has become a global village, in which individuals contact each other with no barriers or limitations – except the barrier of language. This, of course, requires using an international language, which is called the lingua franca, as a means for Y. Z. Omar (*) Benghazi Language Center, University of Benghazi, Benghazi, Libya e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_7

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interacting with people who use different languages. Yet people naturally use their native language for communities from similar ethnic groups and cultures. For instance, Arabic is a medium of communication among over 400 million people in the Arabic-speaking regions. Yet, some Arabs find challenges in communicating with other Arabs, namely in reading and writing, due to their ignorance of reading and writing in their native language. Those peopleare called illiterate, which is the opposite of literate. Based on the definition of the concept ‘literacy’, it is “the ability of reading and writing” (Omar, 2018a, p. 183). “Hence, one is considered literate if he or she can read and write” (Omar, 2018a, p. 183). Moreover, when we talk about language, we necessarily talk about the  four primary skills, which are speaking, listening, reading, and writing that constitute the level of the language use and the language knowledge. All people can speak and listen naturally in their native tongue as these skills are acquired from the community, but not all people can read and write because these skilled are learned at school. In this regard, Hanemann and Krolak (2017), emphasize that “the motivation of young people and adults to enroll and remain in literacy programmes that improve their reading, writing, numeracy and language skills is often taken for granted and not seen as a major issue” (p. 9). In contrast to listening and speaking, which are skills acquired mainly in informal settings through community, reading and writing are skills learned in formal settings in classroom. Literacy, accordingly, is specified mainly not by speaking or listening but by reading and writing in the native language. Based on this definition, the ratio of illiterate people who were not able to read and write in Arabic in Libya was frightening before the 1970s with a percentage exceeding 90%. Though the rate of illiteracy in Libya decreased remarkably in the following decades, still there are illiterate people in Libya in the twenty-first century. Hence, this paper discusses the history of literacy in Libya, focusing mainly on the reasons or challenges that have led to illiteracy in the country.

2 Principles and Parameters of Language Language, in general, derives its communicative power from two main principles: arbitrary word lexical meaning and a distinct combinatorial system of grammatical meaning. The lexical meaning provides a word with its content in a specific situation; the grammatical meaning provides a word with its syntactic structure and class at the level of the sentence (Omar, 2018b). Overall, language involves mainly five interrelated levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. These two principles also involve different yet interrelated cognitive systems of associative memory and symbol manipulating rules. For instance, the word ‘fast’ has a specific meaning based on the context in which it is used and has different classes based on its position in the sentence. Thus, ‘fast’ in ‘I fast in Ramadan’ is a verb with the meaning of ‘refraining from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset’ for Muslims. ‘Fast’ as in ‘I run fast’ indicates an adverb that is functioning as

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an adverb of manner. ‘Fast’ in ‘I am a fast runner’ serves as an adjective to describe the subject (Omar, 2012). So, the meaning of the same word (semantics) changes because of the change of the function of the word based on its location in the sentence (syntax) (Omar, 2021b). In his universal grammar theory, Chomsky (1957) presents his concepts of: principles and parameters, in which he specifies principles of language  to the common aspects and parts of speech in languages. In contrast, parameters indicate the syntactic structures of languages that differentiate one language from another. For instance, English is an analytical language, in which the position or order of a word determines its function and class. Thus, the English sentence ‘The girl killed the cat’ has just only one unmarked syntactical structure in active with no marked syntactical structures in active. What determines the subject from the object is the position of the subject and the object in the sentence as sentences are nominal in English. Arabic, in contrast, is a synthetic language, in which the position of a word has no role in determining the function or the class of the word (Arabic, 2019). Therefore, the unmarked syntactical structure of the above sentence in active is (‫قَتَلَ ِت‬ ‫ )ال َفتَا ُة ال ِق ِّط َة‬/qatalati alfatatu alketta / with another two marked verbal structures as: (‫قَتَلَ ِت‬ ‫ )ال ِق ِّط َة ال َفتَا ُة‬/qatalati alketta alfatatu/ and (ُ‫ )ال ِق ِّط َة قَتَلَ ِت ال َفتَاة‬/alketta qatalati alfatatu/, and one marked nominal syntactical structure as: (‫ )ال َفتَا ُة قَتَلَ ِت ال ِق ِّط َة‬/alfatatu qatalati alketta/. The doer of the action ‘killed’ in the four Arabic sentences is ‘the girl’ (ُ‫ )ال َفتَاة‬/alfatatu/ with different functions in the nominal and verbal sentences. Moreover, the object is ‘the cat’ (‫ )ال ِق ِّط َة‬/alketta/ regardless their positions in the sentence. What distinguishes the subject from the object is the vocalization located on the last letter of the word. The word (ُ‫ )ال َفتَاة‬/alfatatu/ ‘the girl’ is a subject because it is nominative with dhama /u/, and the word (‫ )ال ِق ِّط َة‬/alketta/ ‘the cat’ is an object because it is accusative with fatha /a/ (Omar, 2021a).

3 Realities in Languages Used in Libya Due to its long history with colonists, people in Libya use several varieties of languages and dialects in various settings. These languages include the follows: Modern Standard Arabic is spoken in official situations, media, and school; whereas, Libyan dialects are used in day-to-day activities. Berber is also used in some cities in the west and south parts in Libya; whereas, Amazigh is spoken in the south and west parts of Libya. Italian is used by elderly people for daily business and at home; whereas, French is spoken by immigrant Libyans from African countries (Omar, 2014). Importantly, Arabic is considered as the most commonly used language, the official language, and the lingua franca among Libyans. Accordingly, we can consider Arabic to be the native or first language used in Libya, though Libyans speak different dialects derived originally from Classical Arabic. Before the 1970s, Libyans used to interact with each other in Italian as a second language. At that time, people used Italian in street, media, and daily-life

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activities. Currently, English is used as a foreign language in the Libyan community as a class subject inside school only. Yet, English is used as a lingua franca, a mediator language, between the Libyans who live in the coastal cities and people from different cultures that do not speak Arabic. Because of the immigration to southern parts in Libya from neighboring African nations, namely Chad, Niger, and Mali, French is also commonly used both as a native language and a lingua franca.

4 General Facts about Libya Libya is an Arabic country located in North Africa, taking its name ‘Libya’ from the name of a Berber tribe called ‘Lebu.’ Libya, along with nine Arab countries in Africa: Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia and twelve other Arab countries in Asia: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen constitute what is called the Arab world, ethnically gathered by Arabic language as a standard language side by side with various colloquial Arabic dialects. Based on the United Nations data from 2020, the population of Libya is roughly 6,871,292, which is equivalent to 0.09% of the total world population, scattered across a total area of 1,759,540  km2 (679,362 sq. miles), most of it is desert (Worldometer, 2020). Almost half of Libyans are students in private and public schools, technical and vocational institutes, mid and high institutes, and private and public universities. The number of schools, institutes, and universities, accordingly, has increased remarkably due to the move gradually to the private sector, namely after the 2011 uprising in the country. This dramatic shift to the private schooling system has negatively affected the level of literacy in general and the level of education in the system specifically, as a number of students from both public and private schools come to the university with low levels of literacy, both reading and writing. In addition to the low level of education in some private schools, namely in upper grades, teachers in public schools sometimes ignore their educational duties in order to seek additional money by teaching in private schools. For example, Abushafa (2014) describes the poor quality and quantity of the educational system in Libya in this way as: teachers are forced to give private lessons to supplement their earnings; however, the reason so many students need extra lessons is because they are not being taught satisfactorily in the schools. This is because the teachers are not delivering lessons which meet the needs of their students as they do not have the time nor motivation to do so. (p. 28)

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5 History of Illiteracy in Libya The history of Libya indicates that illiteracy has been a problem historically. For instance, in 1921, only 600 Libyan students joined schools in the western part of Libya, with no students in other parts in the country. As a result, illiteracy was characteristic of up to 98% of the Libyans by the end of the Italian colonist rule in 1942. The situation had not changed a lot even within the British and French mandate, where the number of the students in all parts and levels in Libya was roughly 3200 students, including 14 students with university qualification, so that illiteracy in the country exceeded 90% (The Libyan National Report on Adult Learning and Literacy Education, n.d.). A report by the Libyan Organization of Policies & Strategies (2016) regarding school systems in Libya before the 1960s noted that “Libyans preferred to send their children to traditional religious schools and Sufi small mosques rather than sending them to Italian schools. They had justified fear from sending their children to these schools which basically used the Italian language in education and ideologized school subjects such as history and geography” (p. 2). Before the Fatah Revolution on September 1, 1969, illiteracy was dominant in almost all Libyan sectors because of the effect of the Italian language and the poor conditions of Libyans that hindered them from sending their children to school. Most Libyans before 1970 were using Italian in their daily-life activities and routines, and school was offered to only a minority of Libyans (5%), using Italian as the medium of instruction and Arabic as a second language. In addition, students were allowed to study only up to 4th grade in primary school. To encounter the miserable situation of illiteracy in Libya, the Libyan government announced free education in 1970, imposing obligatory schooling for all children at the age of six through 9th grade. Due to the increasing number of illiterate Libyans in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the Libyan government used various motivating techniques for improving the Libyans’ levels of education in general and literacy in specific. Though the various attempts to improve the education system and literacy in Libya, the regime failed to obliterate illiteracy completely,  and the situation improved albeit not to the level required. In the late 1970s, Libya made the first steps towards enhancing literacy and eradicating illiteracy in the country. The Libyan Ministry of Education started a process of thoroughly evaluating and assessing previous reports conducted by international organizations, such as UNESCO, ISESCO, and ALESCO in this vein. Such reports revealed that the extent of illiteracy among Libyans in the mid of 1970s reached more than 70% of the total population. This figure, of course, is frightening, particularly given that this ratio included all categories of the Libyan society even children, and illiteracy in this context included ignorance of the Arabic alphabet (The Libyan National Report on Adult Learning and Literacy Education, n.d.). The year 1978 witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of the students enrolled in Libyan schools, when the number reached 819,012 students, amongst

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of which roughly 2.3% (18,956) were enrolled in private schools. Though private schools before the 1980s had a good reputation with a high level of education including teaching foreign languages, the Libyan Ministry of Education shut these schools and replaced them with religious schools. As a result, 59,779 students were enrolled in religious schools, and more than 1.3  million students, including 49% were female students, were enrolled in primary public schools in all cities in Libya in 1994 (Clark, 2004). In the middle of the 1990s, the Libyan Ministry of Education reopened private schools. In one hand, the government sought to take on the burden of the cost of the increased number of students in primary schools that required building new schools with up-to-date facilities. On the other hand, the government has been trying to be part of the globalized world by moving to the private sector in education (Nationwide School Assessment Report, 2012). Yet, these private schools have been under full control of the Ministry of Education through working to: –– –– –– –– –– –– –– ––

Support participatory education institutions; Consider them as parts of the education system; Develop and assist them; Identify their school fees; Adopt their curricula and certificates; Follow-up on their work to conform to the institutions of public education; Subject them to the same controls and standards; and Urge them to provide new areas of education that do not go against the principle of equal educational opportunities (General People’s Committee of Education, 2008, pp. 3–4).

For increasing the level of literacy in the country, the Libyan government with the collaboration of the UN, UNESCO, and ALESCO quickly instituted initiatives to using Arabic as the medium of instruction in school systems, preserving teaching of English and French as foreign languages. The Libyan government, hence, set general principles for the education system in the country, based mainly on the followings: –– Enabling students to comprehend Islamic values from the Quran and the Sunnah [the actions and speech of the Prophet Mohammed]; –– Helping students to use the Arabic language in all areas of daily life, with additional interest in learning foreign languages to communicate with the world; –– Developing students’ sense of national belonging, and deepening their pride in the Arabic Nation and the Islamic world civilization; –– Developing students’ sense of belonging geographically and historically to the African continent; –– Enabling students to acquire the appropriate knowledge of skills and positive attitudes and cultural and social values appropriate to their needs and the needs of the society;

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–– Enabling students to represent the spiritual and moral values and the development of artistic taste and sensory aesthetic; –– Providing educational opportunities for all and assisting students to choose the specialization based on their interest and abilities, and meeting the needs of the society to achieve sustainable human development; –– Providing and supporting new types of education and enabling students to discover their abilities and acquiring knowledge through self-learning; –– Enabling students to acquire the critical thinking to keep pace with science and technical developments in the contemporary world; –– Helping students be aware of the development of their local, national, regional and global levels, including the development of their feelings and sense of vital important spaces surrounding the Libyan society, such as the Arabic space, the African space, and the Mediterranean space, as well as global spaces; –– Helping students comprehend and recognize the world as a global human society; and –– Developing students’ capacity to interact with other cultures and open up to the world, qualifying them as citizens able to live positively and jointly in the global community (General People’s Committee of Education, 2008, pp. 4–5). The targets above show that the interest of the Libyan government was to eliminate or at least to decrease the ratio of illiteracy in the country, to improve the education system in Libya in general, as well as to enhance and motivate the use of the Arabic language to be the official language used in the country in specific in addition to being the indicator of literacy in the country. In addition to such targets, the Libyan government emphasized a general policy of education, which included the following points: –– Freedom of learning is guaranteed for all, through the institutions of public education, participatory and free education. –– Basic education is compulsory for all, free at public education institutions. –– Secondary education is optional, and it will pave the way for the involvement of outstanding students in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. –– All educational institutions of various types and patterns are subject to uniform standards. –– Participatory education at different stages is not free and non-profit. –– Local kindergarten education is encouraged, though it is not included within the educational structure. –– The society ensures the meeting of students’ wide-ranging special needs. –– It is important to provide educational services to students who excel in their studies, according to the disciplines the society needs. –– Educational institutions should be run by qualified educational officials who are able to interact and harmonize with the social environment. –– The distribution of educational institutions should be in accordance with a national map that responds to the requirements of quality. –– Encouraging and developing open and free education systems, techniques and programs, as well as creating new patterns of teaching and learning.

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–– Continuous curriculum development, with a review of its objectives, teaching methods, and systems for assessment and measurement, to ensure the quality of outputs of the educational institutions. –– Enhancement of the performances of all official employees, teachers, educators and inspectors, social workers, and administrators, through periodic and continuing special training and upgrading of programs and courses. –– Development of regulations of the educational process to ensure discipline and commitment within the educational institution and achieve the sector’s targets in human development. –– Educational financing, which is the responsibility of the state and participatory educational institutions in order to ease the burden on the society budget, and achieve free education for those who cannot make use of national service (General People’s Committee of Education, 2008, pp. 3–4). According to such principles and educational policies, the ratio of illiteracy decreased by the end of the 1980s. Hence, the Ministry of Education in 1990 distributed the responsibility of higher education among local educational committees based on their geographical sites (Rhema and Miliszewska, 2010). So, the local committee of education in Benghazi covers schools and universities in the area of the eastern part of Libya. By the end of 1990, more than 1000 private schools and more than 30 private universities all over the country were established with no or little quality bases. In fact, the above general policy of education in Libya went mainly with the United Nations’ aims to defeat illiteracy all over the world. For instance, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2017) emphasizes that access to education is a basic human right. The Sustainable Development Goals aim to ensure women and girls enjoy equal access to quality education, to fulfil their individual potential and for the wider benefits to society. Moreover, in conflict-affected states, schools provide stability, structure and a protective environment for children. (p. 41)

6 School System in Libya School in Libya is compulsory from first grade to 9th grade; this is termed basic education. This stage includes primary school from 1st grade to 6th grade with authentic assessment in 4th grade and 6th grade and preparatory school from 7th grade to 9th grade with authentic assessment in the 9th grade. Thus, a student obtains a basic education certificate after successfully passing the 6th grade and a preparatory certificate after successfully passing the 9th grade. According to the Libyan National Report on Adult Learning and Literacy Education presented to the UNESCO Education for All Programs, 98% of Libyan children aged 6 years are enrolled in 1st grade in 2017, conversely indicating that almost 2% are not joining school yet.

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In 2006, the Libyan Ministry of Education set up general objectives for the school system in high school in Libya to make them four years instead of three in two main divisions: scientific, which includes basic sciences, engineering sciences, and life sciences; and literary, which includes social sciences, economic sciences, and languages. The idea behind this division is to qualify students based on their interest majors before joining university. This system, however, changed in 2012 to return to the old system with only three years of study in high school with no majors, where students in the scientific major study all subjects in this area, and students in the literary major study all subjects in this area. Though the high emphasis of the Libyan government to vanish illiteracy, there was still a small percentage, almost 2%, of Libyans had still been illiterate explicitly.

7 Challenges Education System in Libya Encounter Despite the strong emphasis on education and concentrating attempts at raising the level of literacy in Libya, there have been various challenges and obstacles, where almost all, if not all, Libyan schools lack facilities that aid in both teaching and learning. In this vein, Ibrahim (2020) highlights the fact that “the unavailability of facilities, as it is common in our schools, hinders learning” (p.  7). Omar (2014) presents other challenges that Libyan schools encounter, including lack of visual aids, lack of technology, lack of educational environment, and crowding of students in small classrooms. Fouzi (Cited in Omar, 2014) describes classrooms in Libyan schools as “having big numbers of students and lacking any kind of technology”. Younis (Cited in Omar, 2014) explains that “most of the classrooms in Libya are not very flexible. I mean a very large number of students, few spaces, so you can’t move. For example, you can’t divide your students into groups and move seats. So, it’s organized in a way that a bit suitable for lecturing, not activities” (pp. 119–120). The Libyan Organization of Policies & Strategies (2016, pp.  17–19) presents some of the challenges that the Libyan education system encounter as the followings: 1. Lack of plans for the educational process as there is no written plan that defines the philosophy, purposes, and objectives of the education process. 2. Poor curricula are taught in the different school stages because the Libyan curricula are not linked to a well-done educational plan. 3. Adoption of traditional education methods in that there is strong dependence on memorization and writing with poor educational training and student feedback, based mainly on memorization and exams. 4. Poor academic achievements, with students’ frequently abandoning of school, particularly following primary school. 5. Lack of integration among educational institutions, particularly given that some education institutions are not well integrated with vocational education and public education.

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6. Poor private education, meaning that the majority of private schools lack proper educational infrastructures and do not provide the expected quality education. 7. Lack of effective control mechanisms across the Ministry of Education’s departments, leading to financial corruption, at least in previous educational projects, as well as poor school administration and negative outcomes. 8. Poor regulations and laws that govern the educational process in the country. 9. Persistent poor performance vis-à-vis integration of groups with special needs in the educational process. Shafter (2020) emphasizes that “despite these remarkable changes in education, the educational program still suffers from a limited curriculum, a lack of qualified teachers, and a marked leaning to learn by rote rather than by reasoning” (p. 19). So, one of the most concerns in education in Libya is the poor quantity and quality of the education system in the country. Other concerns include “a lack of coordinated investment planning and management, with uncontrolled staff recruitment and underserved poorer, rural regions” (Libya Ministry of Education, 2012, p. 10). For the challenges that Libya encountered after its 2011 uprising, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2018) reported that “the protracted crisis since 2011 has damaged vital education infrastructure, and impacted on the education system’s delivery, outreach, coverage, retention and quality, with some areas affected more than others” (p. 29). Based on a report by UNICEF (2018), the drop of school enrolment in 2015 in the country reached 20%, and almost 4% of school children including displaced children in Libya quit school in 2017. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2017) expected that roughly 300,000 children would need education support in 2018, including 67,000 internally displaced children, 79,000 returnee children, 121,000 resident children, and 32,000 refugee and migrant children. A study by REACH (2017) shows that the majority of households with school-­ aged students encounter challenges regarding sending their children to school. Some of these challenges include the distance to school and lack of educational services. Also, Home Office (2018) reported that internally displaced children are living in inappropriate camps with no or low-level access to an education system, which negatively affects the level of education they obtain. Other challenges, based on REACH (2016) include: –– Use of schools as shelters for internally displaced families due to the armed conflict in the country; –– Unsafe way to school due to the possibility of kidnapping and shooting; –– Unsafe school building because of the deconstruction of some main parts; –– Lack of school supplies and equipment; –– Lack of teachers due to joining military parties or fear of teaching; and –– Unavailability of rooms in classrooms for the newcomers from other cities. From the reports above, it seems that safety and security remain the most challenging to concern parents, teachers, and administrators. In this regard, Save the Children

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(2015) reported that “families who have access to functioning schools are often not sending their children to school due to the perceived or actual danger of children becoming victims of violence, especially in urban centers” (p. 36). Similarly, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (2018) reported that “increasingly common abduction of civilians by armed groups was negatively affecting school attendance, with sporadic cases of students and educators being individually targeted for attacks and parents keeping their children away from school in response” (p.  165). Also, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Libya (2016) reported that “education in Benghazi has been particularly affected by the crisis, with schools having been either damaged, destroyed, occupied by internally displaced persons, converted into military or detention facilities, or otherwise dangerous to reach” (p. 53).

8 Conclusion The discussion above shows that illiteracy was dominant in Libya till the end of the 1960s. Though the situation had improved gradually in the 1970s, the concern of illiteracy in the country remains a big concern. The revolution against illiteracy began practically in 1975, when the Libyan government imposed compulsory education from the age of six to 15, 1st grade to 9th grade, which is called basic education. Yet, illiteracy has still remained among children in the country  in the 21st Century. The concept of literacy has changed over time to include not only the ability to read and write in the native language, but also “the ability to communicate with people in the community. The concept ‘literacy’, hence, covers all kinds of social relationships, which shift literacy from identifying and comprehending written messages into writing, reading, analyzing, inquiring, and evaluating all kinds of messages” (Omar, 2018a, p.  183). Yet, in this paper, the focus is on the traditional definition of literacy as the ability to read and write in the native language. The discussion above shows, also, the importance of using Arabic language, as the native language among Libyans, not only as a medium of instruction at school, but also in daily-life routines and activities. Focusing on Arabic, though it is difficult with various complicated grammatical structures, it has urgently become core for eradicating illiteracy in Libya. Then, the other step is to move to the new definition of literacy for Libyans to be part of this globalized world in the 21st Century.

References Abushafa, M. (2014). Changing practices in a developing country: The issues of teaching English in Libyan higher education. (Doctoral dissertation, De Montfort University). Arabic. (2019). Retrieved 15 Nov 2020 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic

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Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structure. Mouton & Co. Clark, N. (2004). Education in Libya. Retrieved 20 Dec 2020 from https://wenr.wes.org/2004/07/ wenr-­julyaugust-­2004-­education-­in-­libya General People’s Committee of Education. (2008). The development of education national report of Libya presented to the International Conference on Education Session (48) (Geneva, from 25–28 November 2008). Retrieved 1 Nov 2020 from http://www.ibe.unesco.org/National_ Reports/ICE_2008/libya_NR08.pd Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack. (2018). Education under attack 2018. GCPEA. Hanemann, U., & Krolak, L. (2017). Fostering a culture for reading and writing: Examples of dynamic literate environments. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Home Office. (2018). Country policy and information note Libya: Security and humanitarian situation. Version 3.0. January 2018. Retrieved 1 Nov 2020 from https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/673747/ Libya_-­_Security_Situation_-­_CPIN_-­_v3.0.pdf Ibrahim, K. K. (2020). Challenging of teaching grammar at Libyan schools: Case study on English language teachers at secondary schools in Marij. In Y.  Z. Omar (Ed.), Pedagogical issues in teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Libyan schools’ various settings (pp. 1–15). Democratic Arab Center. Libya Ministry of Education. (2012). Nationwide school assessment. Retrieved 11 Nov 2020 from https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/libya/assessment/ nationwideschool-­assesment Libyan Organization of Policies & Strategies. (2016). Public education in Libya: Problems, challenges & solutions. Nationwide School Assessment Report. (2012). Libya nationwide assessment report 2012. Beyond Art 4 Printing. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2016). Investigation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Libya: Detailed findings. Retrieved 21 Nov 2020 from http://www.refworld.org/docid/56d00d0f4.html Omar, Y.  Z. (2012). Challenges of denotative and connotative meaning for second-language learners. ETC, 324–351. Omar, Y. Z. (2014). Perceptions of selected Libyan English as foreign language teachers regarding teaching of English in Libya (Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri Columbia). https:// mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/45769/Research.pdf;sequence=1 Omar, Y. Z. (2018a). Role of media literacy in teaching and learning English in Libya. Proceedings of Engineering & Technology, 43, 81–91. Omar, Y. Z. (2018b). Syntactic theory perception on language acquisition. Journal of Faculty of Arts, University of Benghazi., 42, 378–391. Omar, Y.  Z. (2021a). Basic steps in contrastive grammar: English and Arabic. University of Benghazi Publications. Omar, Y.  Z. (2021b). Conjugation and inflection in contrastive grammar: English and Arabic. University of Benghazi Publications. REACH. (2016). REACH multi-sector needs assessment update. Libya. February 2016. Retrieved 29 Sept 2020 from http://www.reachresourcecentre.info/system/files/resourcedocuments/ reach_lby_report_multi_sector_needs_assessment_update_february2016.pdf REACH. (2017). Libya. 2017 Multi-sector needs assessment. Libya Inter-sector Coordination Group. Retrieved 12 Nov 2020 from http://www.reachresourcecentre.info/system/ files/resourcedocuments/reach_lby_report_2017_multi-­s ector_needs_assessment_ september_2017_0.pdf Rhema, A., & Miliszewska, I. (2010). Towards e-learning in higher education in Libya. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 7, 423–437. Save the Children. (2015). SCELTA Save the Children Egypt-Libya-Tunisia Assessment Report. Retrieved 1 Dec 2020 from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/SCELTA%20 Final%20Report_18_Jun_2015.pdf

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Shafter, M.  E. A. (2020). State of higher education in Libya: A game change administrative approach. International Journal of Education, 8(3), 19–23. The Libyan National Report on Adult Learning and Literacy Education. (n.d.). Retrieved 20 Sept 2020 from https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Libyan+National+Report+on+Adult+Lear ning+and+Literacy+Education&oq=The+Libyan+National+Report+on+Adult+Learning+and +Literacy+Education&aqs=chrome..69i57.1161j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-­8 UNICEF. (2018). Draft country programme document Libya. Executive board second regular session 2018 12–14 September 2018. (June 2018). https://www.unicef.org/about/execboard/ files/2018-­PL16-­Libya_draft_CPD-­EN-­2018.06.19.pdf United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2017). 2018 Humanitarian Needs Overview. Libya. December 2017. Retrieved 15 Oct 2020 from https://www. humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2018_ hno_libya_1.pdf United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2018). 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan January–December 2018 Libya. Retrieved 15 Oct 2020 from https://www. humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/2018_ hrp_libya_0.pdf Worldometer. (2020). Retrieved 9 Nov 2020 from https://www.worldometers.info/world-­ population/libya-­p opulation/#:~:text=Libya%202020%20population%20is%20 estimated,(and%20dependencies)%20by%20population

Literacy and Education in Multilingual Algeria Anne Laaredj-Campbell

Abstract  The system of education in Algeria has undergone a significant transformation since it gained independence in 1962, inverting the gender imbalance in favor of girls aged 16 and over. At the same time, however, the number of non-­literate adults remains particularly high among women. This chapter revisits the development of literacy within the social-cultural and historical context of the Algerian educational system. The data included here draw from ethnological fieldwork from 2008 to 2011 conducted in the setting of an adult literacy class (Algerian Literacy Association, IQRAA) in the wilaya (district) Tiaret, located southwest of the capital of Algiers in the Tell Atlas region (Laaredj-Campbell, Changing Female Literacy Practices in Algeria: Empirical study on cultural construction of gender and empowerment. Springer. https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783658116323, 2016) and serve as the basis of comparison for the present analysis. As one of the most cited reasons for the challenges of literacy acquisition among adult women continues to be a lack of longterm enrollment, the primary causes of the low-­retention and high dropout rates were reassessed. The main results were as follows: (1) standard Arabic initially poses a hurdle for children and older adult literacy learners due to its difference to the spoken dialects Darija and Berber (2) social-­cultural norms and household obligations continue to prevent adult women from regularly attending literacy classes over an extended period of time and (3) recent changes in the recruitment process for teachers, which require them to hold a degree in a pedagogy-related field or Arabic language have a positive effect on the learning motivation of the participants. Despite these challenges, the IQRAA program has established itself as a credible and valued organization for literacy learning, that is primarily attended by adult women. Keywords  Adult literacy · Algeria · Gender equity · Inclusive education

A. Laaredj-Campbell (*) Educational Exchange Service (PAD) at the Secretariat of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz), Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_8

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1 Literacy and Education in Multilingual Algeria There is perhaps nothing more manifold than the history, culture and traditions of Algeria and the Algerians. It is, therefore, not surprising that the modifications in the system of education both during the 132 years of French occupation and after are additionally multi-facetted and diverse. Algeria, along with its Maghrebian neighbors, was able to build a strong formal system of education within a comparatively short time span despite the dismal aftermath they were faced with. Almost immediately after independence, governmental policies were put in place making education free and compulsory for boys and girls from the age 6 to 15. This was instrumental in reversing the high levels of non-literacy, with notable discrepancies between men and women. In the meantime, literacy levels among adults have significantly increased. According to the National Economic and Social Council (CNES), the rates of non-­ literacy were down to 15% for men and 21% for women in 2011 (Ouadah-Bedidi, 2018, p. 84). Although the government has demonstrated active, committed efforts in the field of literacy, adult women continue to be more affected by non-literacy than men. Nonetheless, an unexpected trend that has been steadily advancing since the early 2000s, despite the legacy of gender disparity in education, is that girls are surpassing their male counterparts in terms of success rates and enrollment at the secondary and tertiary levels (Ouadah-Bedidi, 2018, p.  84). This trend has been globally identified as early as the late 1980s by international organizations including UNESCO.  In the case of Algeria, however, such a development is fortuitous considering the stark adherence to gender roles, where the status of women continues to be primarily measured by their function within the family and home. Despite the prevailing successes of women’s education in Algeria, a continual disparity of education has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as most governments around the world temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. As a result, school children, university students and adult literacy learners have been in a state of reorientation outside of the classroom. In Algeria, schools and literacy classes nationwide temporarily closed their doors on March 12, 2020 and the latter have not been reopened in the same capacity since. The COVID-19 pandemic has already posed unprecedented challenges to all aspects of human lives and education is no exception. Therefore, the following will focus on the situation of literacy and education prior to the point of outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. The first segment of the chapter begins with an overview of the historical context of literacy and education at the elementary level followed by an outline of the organization of the current school system from the primary to tertiary levels. The challenges posed by the linguistic situation in Algeria (Arabic dialects, French and Berber languages) will also be reviewed. In the second part, the results of the comparative analysis of the development of women’s adult literacy within the context of the program IQRAA will be relayed whereby the question of how to integrate

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children with special education needs in the regular school system is raised. Due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on literacy and education, the transformation of education from face-to-face instruction to online and e-learning formats, as well as the benefits and challenges of such a shift, is briefly addressed. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of the main points regarding the current status of literacy and education in Algeria, whereby implications for future research with reference to educational trends for women and girls are considered.

2 Historical Retrospective of Literacy and Education The history of literacy throughout the Islamic world in the medieval and early modern periods (1300–1800) is an area that has been largely overlooked, especially at the elementary level. Traditionally, studies have focused their attention on prominent scholars and intellectual products that were generated in institutions of higher learning within the madrasa setting (lit., “place of study”) such as those known to have initially appeared in Iran, India and Central Asia (Hanna, 2007). The first detailed information about the development of literacy in Arabia prior to the first Arab expansion to North Africa was relayed by the Persian Muslim scholar, Sahih al Buhari (810–870). According to a Hadith, a record of prophetic traditions or sayings, the Prophet Muhammed (570–632) underlined the value and importance for all, that is women, men and children, to learn to read and write. Soon after the first Islamic revelations, girls and boys were taught the Qur’an in a mosque setting. ‘As is described in Islamic tradition, the first word that God revealed to the Prophet Muhammed through the angel Gabriel in 610  CE was “Iqra” which means “read”: Surah 96 Al-‘Alaq, Ayat 1-5

(96:1) Read in the name of your Lord Who created, (96:2) created man from a clot of congealed blood. (96:3) Read: and your Lord is Most Generous, (96:4) Who taught (writing) by the pen, (96:5) taught man what he did not know. (Quran, Surah 96 Al-‘Alaq, Ayat 1-5)

Knowledge about the basic education of girls and women among the Arabic- and Berber-speaking groups in Algeria during earlier times is comparably limited. It is known, however, that teaching children to read and write within a religious context in Algeria belongs to an age-old tradition that dates back to the seventh century (647–709) when the Umayyad empire expanded into North Africa. In the beginning, their program of Arabization was pivotal for spreading Islam and the Arabic language throughout the Maghreb region. The subsequent migration of the

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Beni-­Hilal, a confederation of Arabic nomadic tribes, during the eleventh century (1051) further contributed to the linguistic Arabization and religious Islamization of the Algerian countryside (Chabou, 1969). Their influence represents the bulk of modern urban dialects which continue to be spoken in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers (Bennoune, 1988). It is clearly documented that literacy education in Algeria was well established before the arrival of the French and their implementation of elementary schools following 1830. As was recorded by the Arab historian philosopher, diplomat and politician, Ibn Khaldoun (1332–1406) in his work al-Muqadimma (translated into Prolegomena or Introduction to Universal History and Modern Sociology), mosques were being built under Idris I (1227–1232) soon after the Arab expansion to North Africa. According to Ibn Khaldoun, these mosques were commonly used as centers for learning and children were also instructed in the Arabic language in schools in Spain and Tunis even before they were taught the Qur’an in mosques (Chabou, 1969, p. 27). A comprehensive analysis of the development of elementary schools in Algeria prior to the French conquest until independence in 1962 was written by a native Algerian, Mouley Driss Chabou (1969), within the framework of his doctoral thesis drafted in German and published in Heidelberg. Chabou’s thesis includes references to original documents from Arabic scholars and European statesmen on the development of primary education in Algeria. Furthermore, Chabou includes first-hand accounts made by French officers and clergymen that not only acknowledged but also expressed amazement as to how literate the Algerians were in comparison to the French. In 1833, the French officer M.  Rozet summarized the stand-point of education in Algeria at the time of colonial conquest as follows: The Moorish people, in their entirety, are likely more educated than the French people are. Almost all men can read, write and do some math; there are several public schools near the administrative district in Algiers where the children are taught at age four (Translated from German by author. Chabou, p. 46).

Other accounts of the situation of education in Algeria allude to the fact that not only was primary instruction more widespread than originally expected during the mid-nineteenth century, but a variety of academic subjects had been taught in institutions of higher learning as well: Primary instruction was, in 1830, much more widespread than we generally think. The average number of male individuals who know how to read and write was at least equal to that of rural France . . . Between 2,000 and 3,000 young men were studying in the madrassahs, a sort of high school in each province, and 600 to 800 were studying sciences, law and theology in some establishments of higher education (Bennoune, 1988, p. 28).

It is known that girls were generally taught to read and write at home, either by their fathers or brothers, and, in wealthier families, a private teacher who was affiliated with the local mosque was often hired (Chabou, 1969, p.  47). However, several sources suggest that both girls and boys received primary instruction in innumerable establishments throughout Algeria. The following account, made by the French priest Poiret as early as 1785, validates the education of girls outside of the home:

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I was a little astonished when I stumbled upon a public school in a douar (a village composed of tents) of the Aly-Bey (name of a tribe in Constantine), which, in addition to that, was led by a blind schoolmaster. In a tent, he was surrounded by approximately a dozen children comprised of both girls and boys whom he taught to read and write . . . (Translated from German by author. Chabou, 1969, p. 31).

Another reference regarding the education of girls in a school setting was made by the Arabist Louis-Adrien Berbrugger (1801–1869): In addition to schools for boys, there were also places where ‘Mouallemat’ (female teachers) taught girls (Translated from German by author. Chabou, 1969, p. 47).

An official departmental survey conducted in France in 1830 revealed that the average percentage of male students who could read and write from Algiers, Oran and Constantine either matched or exceeded the number of literate males in France (Chabou, 1969, p. 46). Information on the transformation and dislocation of the Algerian educational systems after the arrival of the French is extensive. The assimilation policies implemented via the French elementary schools as well as their subsequent effects on the indigenous population were detrimental, especially for girls and women (see also Chabou, 1969 and Colonna 1975 for detailed accounts of the educational situation of Muslim boys and girls during the French rule). In retrospect, it is clearly evident that the level of literacy among the Algerian people was well established by the onset of the French colonial occupation. This makes the subsequent reversal of their progressive and culturally embedded systems of education all the more ruinous. The situation of Algeria is not entirely unique as the reversion of mass illiteracy has often been linked with imperial invasions. However, the duration of the colonial rule in Algeria, lasting 132 years, and systematic disregard for native property (habus lands) connected with the organization of the educational systems, as well as the purposeful prevention of the greater part of indigenous children from readily accessing education were so far-reaching that the Algerians never had the chance to fully recover. At the end of the French colonial period, the system of education could be characterized as an exclusive institution primarily geared toward the training of French colonial elite males such that school attendance levels were down to 16% by 1962 (Akkari, 2008, p. 3).

3 The System of Education: Challenges and Current Developments One cannot fully grasp the current situation of literacy without first taking a look at the educational system in its entirety. Since the creation of the Ministry of Education in 1963, Algeria’s approach to education has been characterized by a steady, ongoing process with an affinity for experimentation, something quite uncommon for a developing country. From the very beginning, the primary focus areas included the

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“Arabization” of the curriculum and teaching staff, improvement of teaching skills at all levels and the emphasis of technical and vocational education with the overall aim of producing a skilled class of workers and technicians appropriate to the Algerian job market and thus both stabilizing and moving the country forward economically. Education was deemed central to rebuilding the nation from the very start and 29.7% of the national budget was set aside for it in 1990. In 2015, education accounted for 20.27% of government expenditure (Rose, 2015, p. 3). Soon after independence, Algeria passed a series of reforms beginning with a nine-year basic education program in 1971 which was extended to 10 years in 1976. These reforms also guaranteed free education to all at every level and mandated that education be solely run under the jurisdiction of the state. The private sector, therefore, has had minimal impact on education and training so far, though a tendency in that direction has moderately increased since the 1990s. In 2004, an executive decree was passed thereby allowing the establishment of private institutions of education. Shortly after, private schools were approved and in 2008 this was extended to private universities, the bulk of which are located in Algiers. It is anticipated that this reform will primarily have a positive effect on Higher Education (The Report: Algeria, 2011). Prior to entering the school system, children, especially those living in rural areas, often attend a nearby Qur’an school or djema, as was customary prior to the French rule and throughout their occupation. Here, boys and girls, between the ages of four and five learn to recite shorter verses in the Qur’an or are taught basic Islamic practice, such as how to pray. Djemas also give children an initial opportunity to begin learning the letters of the Arabic alphabet. The methods for learning have remained very similar to earlier times, though instead of writing on wooden boards with self-made pens containing ink made from wool, the children use tiny blackboards and chalk or, most recently, write on a central whiteboard with markers at the front of the class. The structure of Algerian education was originally modelled after the Napoleonic system consisting of three cycles 6-3-3: 6 years of primary school, 3 years of lower secondary school and 3 years of upper secondary school. The school year is comprised of 36 weeks which is divided into trimesters. In 2003, the school system was redesigned into the current three stages 5-4-3, respectively. The overarching purpose of this reform was to remedy the problems of class size, high dropout and repetition rates as well as the shortage of qualified teachers and inadequate teaching programs and pedagogies. Another aim was to adapt a competency-based approach that focuses on the students (learner-centered). Prior to the implementation of the new system, the dropout rates were exceedingly high and circa 500,00 students per year withdrew from school without any qualification. Approximately 10–16% of students did not pass and therefore, had to repeat the entire school year, commonly referred to as redoublement (Rose, 2015, p. 4). Whether these challenges have been remedied is debatable and, according to a report issued by The Council for Secondary Schools in Algiers has “failed” altogether (Rose, 2015, p. 5). Until now, pedagogy continues to follow the traditional, fact-based method which for the most part entails rote-learning.

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The compulsory 9 years of education for children age six and above are comprised of the primary and lower secondary phases (Enseignement Fondamental). During the first 5-year phase of education, children are taught the elements of literacy and numeracy as well as introduced to the natural sciences, roughly consisting of 27 h per week. For the final 4-year cycle, the hours of instruction increase to circa 32 h per week. During this time, English as a foreign language is added and politics, history, technology and the natural sciences are taught. At the end of the final year, grade 9, students take the national basic education certificate examination. Upon successful completion, students are awarded the brevet d’enseignement fondametal (BEF) and may continue on to secondary school, though many fail the first time around. Secondary education encompasses a period of 3 years. During the first foundational year, referred to as the common core or tronc commun, students have the opportunity to decide on one of three tracks of specialization – languages and social sciences (lettres), sciences (natural or physical) or technical (mathematics, physical sciences and technology). During the remaining 2 years, students specialize further in their core curriculum areas. The final baccalaureate exam is scheduled at the end of the 3 years and students complete the exam in their specialty area. Upon successful attainment of their bac, students may subsequently enrol in a tertiary-level institution based on their final score. A combined exam average of 50% must be attained in order to pass. As the rates of failure are relatively high, it is not uncommon for students to retake the exam at least twice before they succeed. The rates of passing raised from 43% in 2002 to 66.4% in 2010 (Rose, 2015, p. 5). Although basic education has greatly increased in Algeria, the particularly high demographic rates and large rural populations remain a challenge for student enrollment. It is still not uncommon for school facilities to be plagued by double or triple shifts as well as over-crowded classrooms, which continue to take a toll on the teaching staff and the quality of education alike. These deficits were the source of nation-wide teacher strikes over professional and salary demands in 2009, 2010 and 2014. The high amount of teacher participation in these strikes, estimated at 65%, resulted in month-long school closures. During this timeframe, the author’s son attended grade school in Tiaret, Algeria and recalls that parents were not initially informed when teachers went on strike. In several schools, children later shared that they were watched by the cleaning staff during the first days of the strike (Laaredj-­ Campbell, 2016, p. 125). Despite various challenges, Algeria has built up a comparably solid system of education and by 2009 the net enrollment rates of children aged 6 and 16 reached 97% (the International Council for Adult Education, CONFINTEA VI Seminar, 2009). In 2010, a law was passed requiring parents to send their children to school during the 9-year stage or otherwise face being charged a fine. Unfortunately, the number of students who repeat a whole year or drop out remains high. Higher education within the public sphere is free of charge to qualified students and each student is awarded a grant from the government, albeit a very minimal amount. Since independence, the number of institutions for higher education has

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greatly increased. By 1962, Algeria only had three establishments at the tertiary level (Algiers, Oran and Constantine) with a total of 250 instructors and less than 2000 students, of whom only 1% were women. In 2015 the number of universities had grown to 107 and along with that, the number of teaching staff at 54,000 and student body with over 1,500,000 students, of whom 60% were women (MERIC-­ Net, 2019, p. 2). Until 2004, the system of higher education took after the French model. However, due to the challenges of globalization, the shift went from the former LMD system (4-year Licence, 2-year Magister, 3–4-year Doctorat) to the BMD system (3- year Bachelor, 2-year Master and 3-year Doctorate) under the Bologna Process. The adoption of the BMD system has been instrumental in internationalizing education and thus increasing opportunities for students, especially in terms of making credits easier to transfer for study abroad purposes. Students can obtain a bachelor’s degree after completing 180 credits and a master’s degree after achieving an additional 120 credits. Both these degrees follow specialization in either an academic or applied technical track. A doctorate can be obtained after completing a third cycle of 3 years, which is an equivalent of 180 credits. Exceptions to this scale of classification include medical fields which are grouped to so-called “long” qualifications, lasting 5–7 years (MERIC-Net, 2019, p. 3). In general, the tertiary system is a fast-growing industry. As such, the challenges linked to the massification of higher education are on the rise. Among the most consistent problems include the deterioration of quality of facilities and materials and an increase of under qualified teaching staff, who in turn are underpaid and overstretched. This, in turn, generates a growing sense of dissatisfaction among students and higher dropout rates. Perhaps the severest problem is the failure to prepare graduates with the skills they need to effectively meet the demands of the job market. Private universities offer one way for students who can afford it to avoid this dilemma. Currently, there are 11 institutions of private higher education in Algeria. Study abroad programs are another option. The majority of Algerian students who study abroad, around 70%, pursue their studies in France and French diplomas continue to be highly regarded in Algeria (MERIC-Net, 2019, p. 15).

4 The Linguistic Dilemma: Literacy and the Plurality of Languages So far, the language of instruction in schools generally referred to in this chapter has been Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The process of standardizing the Arabic language to be implemented in schools nationwide began almost immediately after independence. Under the French rule, Arabic was banned at primary school and dismissed as an inferior language. A decree passed in 1964 made Arabic the official language of the government and administration, and in 1974, it was mandated that all education be in Arabic. Indeed, language is a complex matter

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within the context of education in Algeria. Perhaps one of the main challenges facing most Arab countries in learning to read and write is the difference between the spoken (colloquial) and the classical (literary) Arabic language. In Algeria, however, as is the case for the entire Maghreb region (Algeria, Libya, Mauretania and Morocco), the multilingual situation extends further to include French, several dialects of Berber (e.g., Kabyle, Tamazight, Chaouiya, Thamzabith, Thashelhith, Thaterguith) and Darija, which is a fusion of all three together (Arabic, French and Berber) and constitutes the mother tongue for most Algerians. Darija is an Arabic dialect that differs from Modern Standard Arabic on all levels of linguistic representation, from phonology and morphology to lexicon and syntax (refer to Appendix A: Multilingual Road Signs in Algeria). An important outcome of indigenous language movements, primarily in the Kabylie region, is that Berber or Tamazight has now been formally recognized as a national language next to Arabic and in 2016, it was declared an official language in the constitution. Since then, Berber has been taught from the primary to secondary levels in Berber-speaking regions, which after all comprise 35% of the entire Algerian population. The government’s official recognition of and efforts to unify Algeria’s native languages, however, does not solve the dilemma of language fluency in any of them. In the extract below, an Algerian blogger living in London describes how one should go about learning how to speak Algerian dialect or Darija: First you need to learn Arabic then learn French then have some knowledge of Berber, then you need to forget all that you’ve learnt about grammar and syntax and start conversing in all three languages at once and never apologise for it, and never make sense to any other [sic] but Algerians and perhaps other North Africans, namely Tunisians and Moroccans who thankfully share a bit of our Burden-Gift. (http://www.dz-­chick.com/2011/09/ trilingual-­illiterates-­algerias.html)

In reality, a vast majority of Algerians either cannot or unintentionally do not start a sentence in the same language they finish it in. The most current trend, however, is leaning toward yet another language, English, which should eventually take the place of French, especially at the tertiary level and also promises to be well received within the business sector due to its benefits as a lingua franca in the international arena. The British Council was established in Algeria in 1962. Since 2008 it has been closely collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research to improve the teaching and learning of English in the educational system (Rose, 2015, p.  5). Advocates claim that English is a global language that is free of the burdens of the history of French imperialism, thus enabling Algeria to move forward in a neutral manner. This ever-growing interest in the English language both at an interpersonal and more formal academic level also continues to be voiced by secondary and university students in Algeria (Belmihoub, 2018, pp. 6–8). In Tiaret, for example, students often mention the significance of internet and social media spaces in developing the range of vocabulary and, thus, fluency in the English language within the context of social networking internationally and improving written and oral

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assignments at the secondary and tertiary levels. In 2012, the Ibn Khaldoun University in Tiaret established the Department of English studies within the Faculty of letters and languages and the number of students interested in specializing in one of the two streams, namely, didactic or linguistic, continues to grow. The linguistic dilemma in Algeria continues to pose a challenge for the future direction of language literacy and education. Benrabah (2007) goes so far as to argue that Algeria’s language education policies, which continue to stand in the way of linguistic pluralism, will remain a major obstacle to the process of nation-­building (p. 227). To date, Arabic is the language of instruction in all subjects except foreign languages. Students specializing in natural sciences, physical sciences, and mathematics receive supplementary French-language classes to prepare them for training at the tertiary level which, in the sciences and mathematics, are still commonly taught in French. Currently, French as a first foreign language is taught from third grade onwards and English is introduced as a second foreign language during the first year of middle school at grade six.

5 Recent Reforms and Educational Trends of Girls and Women Historically, greater rates in literacy, school enrollment, and higher education were predominantly attained by men. However, according to recent records of the Ministry of Education and the National Office of Statistics (ONS and CNES), women have steadily begun to reverse this trend, chiefly at the secondary and tertiary levels. Since 1996, there has been a steady ten-percent increase in the number of women who graduate from an institution of higher learning. According to the latest statistical account of women and higher education in Algeria, 64.46% have graduated from universities (see also Ouadah-Bedidi, 2018). Among the most profound observations made by the author during visits to Algeria in the early 2000s as well as throughout the period of empirical research on adult literacy in the wilaya Tiaret between 2008 and 2011, was the stark contrast of the levels of literacy and education within a single generation of women. An explicit tier-like pattern of literacy emerged where the grandmothers and their eldest daughters (aged 55  years and up) were entirely non-literate, their middle to younger daughters (between 25 and 55  years) either completed primary or some years of middle school, and their granddaughters (aged 18–25 years) successfully achieved their baccalaureate diploma and were attending universities on track toward a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree (Laaredj-Campbell, 2016). For an overview of the enrollments rates of males and females at the secondary and tertiary levels from 1966 to 2002, see Appendix B. This reversed trend favoring women’s education can definitely be attributed to the educational reforms that made education mandatory and free of charge for all children from age 6 to 15. This, in turn, seems to have

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played a role in changing the traditional mindset, especially in urban areas, in regard to women becoming more active citizens in the public sphere, effectively beginning with longer enrollment rates at the primary and middle school levels (Ouadah-­ Bedidi, 2018, p. 92). Solid efforts have been made toward reaching universal education throughout the Maghreb region, especially in an attempt to tackle the geographical inequalities targeting the rural and mountainous areas. More schools are being built that also offer lunches to their students and public transportation has been increased to accommodate school goers. At the same time, regional disparities in Algeria are still evident between the northern region, where attendance levels are consistently high, and the Sahara, where enrollment remains significantly lower and the gender disparity between boys and girls is greater. A variety of economic and social-cultural factors that still impede school enrollment, specifically in agricultural areas in Algeria, include the absence of or distance from local schools and situations where families rely on their children to contribute to the household’s income in performing either agricultural or domestic tasks. Here, boys also continue to be prioritized over girls in receiving an education (Akkari, 2008, p. 94). Another issue, particularly prevalent when children leave school early, is that they easily revert back to a level of low literacy or “returning illiteracy.” This is a phenomenon that is primarily widespread in social-cultural environments where people are less supported in their acquisition and practice of literacy on a regular basis. This is often characterized by a low percentage of books that are published in the native language, as is the case in the Maghreb and much of the Arab speaking world, which represent 1.1% of the world’s total book production with a population that comprises 5% of the entire world (UNDP, 2003 In: Akkari 2008, p. 95). Overall, the positive effects of the educational reforms on girls and women in Algeria, especially at the upper secondary and tertiary level, is outstanding. At the same time, the literacy rates of adult women continue to remain relatively low.

6 Adult Literacy and Women: Revisiting the Literacy Organization IQRAA The national literacy organization IQRAA (Algerian Literacy Association) was enacted in Algeria in 1990  in response to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the United Nations Literacy Decade aiming to halve illiteracy and to promote human development through social solidarity, respect for learners, gender equality, empowerment of women and ensuring that all children receive an education (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Algeria, 2015). Worldwide, women still comprise two-thirds of the entire illiterate population, a reality, as reported by World’s Women, 2020, which has remained unchanged for over the past two decades. According to estimates by the National Economic and Social Council, the

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numbers of people aged 10 and over, who are unable to read or write in Algeria has shrunk from a total of 75% in 1966, when 85% were women and 62% were men, to 21% for women and 14% for men in 2011 (CNES In: Ouadah-Bedidi, 2018, p. 85). For the constant increase in literacy rates among the adult population between 1996 and 2011 see Appendix C. Although the literacy rates are steadily rising in Algeria, continued efforts are needed in the adult population, most notably for women. Furthermore, as one of the most cited reasons behind the failures of literacy classes for adult women has been institutions’ inability to meet the needs of the participants. This often results in low attendance and high dropout rates. The empirical case study of the IQRAA adult literacy program took place during a 3-year period (2008–2011) in the wilaya Tiaret, which is located in the Tell Atlas region of the central highlands of Algeria (Laaredj-­ Campbell, 2016). Tiaret’s agricultural-based economy relies heavily on crop growing, primarily wheat and the raising of livestock including purebred Arab horses. Among the main focus of the ethnological fieldwork was to determine what these women’s needs are and how they could be more sufficiently met. In this region, the literacy rates among women remain among the lowest in the country. One of the key objectives of the study was to determine whether women participants benefited from the program beyond the obvious gains of learning how to read and write, or more specifically, to determine in what ways women’s learning needs were met and how they were empowered through literacy. At that time, literacy teachers without any prior teaching experience and no training in the field of adult education could be recruited to lead an adult literacy course. Although many teachers were either university students nearly finished with their undergraduate degree programs or had just recently graduated, they came from all kinds of academic backgrounds, lacked pedagogical and didactical knowledge, and thus, were ill prepared to teach basic school curriculum. An additional challenge for teachers was the diversity of the participants, not only age-wise but in terms of the internal differentiation of their current learning and performance levels. On top of that, the adult literacy classes were also open to adolescents who had either dropped out of school or had never attended before due to a physical or learning disability. In general, the younger participants aged 16–50 were interested in learning the standard school curriculum and attaining a school diploma, whereas the older women aged 50–80 solely attended to learn how to recite verses from the Qur’an or simply to converse with their classmates. Teachers were required by the IQRAA program to adhere to a firm learning plan within a set timeframe; yet they lacked the pedagogical know-how, experience and skills to successfully orchestrate the great diversity within their classrooms. In view of this, it was difficult for teachers to maintain a good rapport with their students, while supporting their individual needs. During an interview with one of the local program coordinators in Tiaret, the situation was described as follows: “The older people are more difficult to teach because they are set in their ways and at times even childish.” Furthermore, she drew attention to the fact that children, adolescents, and adults learn at a different pace and with a different demeanor, with adults

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being less flexible and confident than children. The heterogenic constellation of the class posed a constant challenge for the advancement of each participant. On several occasions, the younger participants ended up going around the classroom to support the older women in their learning endeavors. Consequently, many literacy learners claimed to lose their motivation to continue with the program because they did not feel adequately supported by their teachers and could not make significant progress (see Laaredj-Campbell, 2016, p. 210 for additional challenges). Little by little, women dropped out of the course for a variety of reasons. Mothers of young children oftentimes stopped coming regularly because they did not receive support from their mother s-in-law to watch their children while they attended class and their contributions to the daily household tasks were needed. Older participants had difficulties keeping up with the content of the course books, as they had no prior experience learning in a formal school setting and only had recently learned to hold a pen. They also saw no functional relevance in the course-book topics for their everyday lives because the content was taken directly from grade school readers. Others explained that the primary classroom setting was the reason for not coming because the furniture for the younger children was uncomfortable and aside from that, the heaters did not work properly in the winter. Unfortunately, the participants were not the only ones who dropped out. Several literacy teachers “dropped out” as well citing either that they were overwhelmed with the magnitude of the unforeseen responsibility or that the promised salary was lower than originally agreed upon. Some teachers reported not receiving any payment for their services and, when they looked in to it, were told that they should feel content about doing a good deed. Admittedly, the many goals outlined by the IQRAA program in alignment with the United Nation’s MDGs in the early 1990s were ambitious and, in practice, nearly impossible to reach. Despite the challenges, some women claimed to have benefitted from the course and described the different ways in which they had been empowered. In the study, women’s empowerment was categorized into four areas: self-concept (intrapersonal empowerment), social participation (interpersonal empowerment), family dynamics (level of support and encouragement) and Islamic (religious fulfillment). These women spoke of a sense of accomplishment and confidence that they gained simply by being a member of the course and noticing the personal progress they made. Some referred to the support and many compliments they received from their family members and close friends as empowering and motivational. Others felt religiously uplifted because they could now read some verses in the Qur’an and would be able to recite them during their pilgrimage to Mecca. The responses varied depending on the participants’ age, status, and learning goals and expectations. For the background details and results of the entire case study of the adult women’s literacy class in Tiaret see  (Laaredj-Campbell, 2016, pp. 228–244). Since the original survey of the IQRAA literacy program in Tiaret took place, several important changes have been made. According to the author’s informants, literacy teachers are now required to hold an undergraduate degree in either

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academic fields related to pedagogy or Arabic philology. Furthermore, teachers undergo a comprehensive training before they may take over a literacy course. In the meantime, the overall structure of the courses has been reorganized so that participants who only want to learn how to recite the Qur’an can enroll in adult literacy classes focusing on Islamic education, which primarily take place in a local mosque. Those who wish to complete an equivalent to the primary, middle, or upper secondary level may enroll in a course focusing on those levels and work their way up to the baccalaureate. Finally, another option which has been made available to women via IQRAA is the association AFIF: Literacy, Training and Employment for Women in Algeria. AFIF was launched in 2005 to not only combat illiteracy but to help improve the socioeconomic status of women and girls by offering specific training in different areas including dressmaking, embroidery, weaving, hairdressing and information technology. The AFIF project also supports women to set up their own business, with a system of loans that enable them to buy the equipment they need to effectively get started.

7 Conclusions & Future Implications In conclusion, the system of education in Algeria has undergone a variety of transformations from the pre-colonial past to the present. Algeria’s efforts to eradicate mass illiteracy that existed during the first half of the twentieth century well up until the 1970s, as well as the measures taken to guarantee basic education for all children by creating structured educational systems and compulsory school attendance for boys and girls aged 6–15, has been effective in closing the gap in basic education. Furthermore, these reforms have undoubtedly led to the gender disparity in education, however, this time unexpectedly in favor of girls and women. Since the 1990s, women have not only surpassed the attendance rates of men but outperform them in their studies, which is currently most pronounced at the secondary and university levels. Regionally, this development is expanding beyond the greater urban regions nationwide. Though the trend toward the educational success of women should definitely be saluted, Ouada-Bedidi (2018) rightly raises questions in regard to the future implications of the gender imbalance in education and its effects on men and women within the context of Algeria’s deep-rooted patriarchal social structure. For example, how will men and women adjust their traditional gender roles when it has been customary for men to marry women who are less educated than themselves and what kinds of tensions will surface as a result? By contrast, women also constitute a higher number of nonliterate adults. In part, this can be attributed to the fact that the older women participants have not had the opportunity to benefit from the educational reforms. Though Algeria has invested a

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lot in curtailing the problem of mass illiteracy among adults, the literacy programs which have been implemented since 1962 have varied in efficiency, and have often  been described as inadequate or as  complete failures. In 1990, the literacy association IQRAA, in accordance with the United Nation’s MDGs, made a new attempt to combat illiteracy, this time focusing on the literacy needs of women and girls. According to the results of the empirical observation in Tiaret, Algeria (2008–2011), among the main challenges that affected the participants’ progress included organizational and social-cultural factors that hindered women from regularly attending the course or dropping out all-together. Previously, teachers were recruited to lead a literacy class without any prior knowledge, training or experience in the field of adult education. As a result, the learning objectives and needs of the participants could often not be attained. In the meantime, only qualified literacy teachers, who hold a degree in a related discipline such as Arabic language, pedagogy or adult education are recruited. As was recently relayed by literacy teachers and participants alike, these modifications have greatly increased the overall quality of the courses and level of learning satisfaction among the participants. Regarding the pluralistic situation of languages in Algeria and the dichotomy between the spoken colloquial dialect, Darija, and classical Arabic, children who stay in school for at least the required 9 years successfully surmount the initial difficulties adjusting to the new medium of instruction. The language discrepancy is more of a challenge for children who drop out early and lose their acquired literacy skills (referred to as “returning illiteracy”) or for the older adult literacy participants who have conversed in Algerian dialect throughout their lives. Finally, in taking a look at future challenges facing the educational system in Algeria, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown of all educational establishments and switch over to varying degrees of hybrid learning has made it indisputably clear that the technical capacity of distance learning will need to be at the forefront of educational discourse so that teachers and students can maintain equal access to the right to continue learning. Another area of importance which has not been addressed here is the education of children and adolescents with learning difficulties and other types of physical or mental impairments. Algeria has always valued the integrity of education and because of that, it will remain a central element for empowering and including those who have been neglected in the past such as girls, children with physical, mental or learning impairments, and the adult population.

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Appendixes Appendix A: Multilingual Road Signs in Algeria

Habib Kaki, Creative commons. Multilingual_road_signs_in_Algeria)

(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:

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 ppendix B: Enrollment Rates (%) by Gender, Ages 15–19 A and 20–24 in Algeria, 1966–2002

15–19 20–24 15–19 20–24 15–19 20–24

1966 (1) 1969 (2) Males 29.8 29.7 3.2 8.2 Females 9.6 11 0.5 1.5 Difference (males – females) 20.2 18.7 2.7 6.7

1987(3)

2002 (4)

49.9 12.9

44.3 11.9

35.8 7.8

49.5 15.5

14.1 5.2

−5.2 −3.6

Sources: (1) 1966 Census (CNRES, 1974); (2) 1969 Demographic Survey (CNRES, 1974); (3) 1987 Census (ONS, 1989); (4) PAPFAM Survey (data taken by author) In: Ouadah-Bedidi (2018, p. 88)

 ppendix C: Illiteracy Rate (%) of the Population Aged 10 Years A and Over in Algeria, 1966–2011

1966 (1) 1969 (2) 1977 (1) 1987 (1) 1998 (1) 2008 (1) 2008–2009 (3) 2009–2010 (3) 2010–2011 (3) Relative evolution (%)

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) [(i)-(a)/(a) ]

Men 62.3 51.4 48.2 30.8 23.7 15.1 15.1 14.8 14.4 −77%

Women 85.4 80.6 74.3 56.7 40.3 28.9 26.2 23.8 21.1 −75%

Total 74.6 58.1 43.6 31.9 22.1 20.6 19.2 17.6 −76%

Difference (Women D Men) 23.1 29.2 26.1 25.9 16.6 13.8 11.1 9.0 6.7 −0.71

Sources: (1) Censuses (ONS, 2011), (2) Demographic Survey 1969 (CNRE:S, 1974): only northern Algeria, (3) Estimation of CNES; unpublished In: Ouadah-Bedidi (2018, p. 85)

References Akkari, A. (2008, March). Education in the Maghreb: From the construction to the consolidation of educational systems. Analytical Reports in International Education, 2(1), 89–106.

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Belmihoub, K. (2018). English in a multilingual Algeria. In World Englishes (pp. 1–22). https:// doi.org/10.1111/weng.12294. Bennoune, M. (1988). The making of contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987. Cambridge. Benrabah, M. (2007, May). Language in education planning in Algeria: Historical development and current issues. In: Language policy (pp. 225–252). Chabou, M.  D. (1969). The Elementarschule in Algerien: Entstehung und geschichtliche Entwicklung der französischen Elementarschule für Algerier, 1830–1962. Heidelberg. Hanna, N. (2007). Literacy and the ‘great divide’ in the Islamic world, 1300-1800. Journal of Global History, 2, 175–194. Laaredj-Campbell, A. (2016). Changing Female Literacy Practices in Algeria. Empirical study on cultural construction of gender and empowerment. Springer. https://www.springer.com/de/ book/9783658116323 Ouadah-Bedidi, Z. (2018, June). Gender inequity in education in Algeria: When inequalities are reversed. Journal of Education and Social Policy, 5(2), 84–105. Rose, M. (2015). Education in North Africa since independence. Country profile: Algeria. British Council. The Higher Education System in Algeria. (2019). National report. Mediterranean Network of National Information Centres on the Recognition of Qualifications, MERIC-Net. The Report. Algeria. (2011). London: Oxford Business Group. UNESCO. (2015). Institute for lifelong learning. Last update: 24 November 2015. Literacy, training and employment for women, Algeria. Accessed 23 Feb 2021. https://uil.unesco.org/case-­study/ effective-­practices-­database-­litbase-­0/literacy-­training-­and-­employment-­women-­algeria World Bank Open Data. http://data.worldbank.org/country/Algeria/. Accessed 31 Dec 2020. World’s Women. (2020). United Nations Statistics Division. Accessed 24 Feb 2021. https://worldswomen-­2020-­data-­undesa.hub.arcgis.com

Language Choice, Literacy, and Education Quality in Morocco Mohammed Dahbi

Abstract  This chapter describes literacy in Morocco’s multilingual environment. Schooling is in standard Arabic, but Moroccans are native speakers of various forms of spoken Arabic and of Amazigh (a language better known outside Morocco as Berber). French and Spanish are also present in the Moroccan school system as languages of instruction; they came to the country with the French and Spanish Protectorates (starting in the early twentieth century and ending with Independence in 1956). Arabicization of education and of public life, a major policy of the 1980s, included all primary and secondary education and was completed in 1989. Since then, the presence of these two European languages in Morocco has significantly decreased, though they are still present, especially French, in STEM higher education and in business and economics. English as a language of wider communication and of science and technology is slowly becoming more prominent, particularly in the school system. The result of these historical and educational policy developments is a societal multilingualism that seems to be impacting education negatively. The question of language choice has dominated Moroccan politics and national strategy ever since Independence. As recently as 2011, a revision of the constitution included the Amazigh language as a co-official language of the state with Arabic. What seems to have been missing in these changes is how to manage the impact of the changing language of education. The Moroccan school system has been ranked toward the bottom in international tests of educational achievement. This chapter details the issues and argues that there is a direct relationship between the language of literacy and the quality of education. PIRLS 2021 international reading test results were published on May 16, 2023 while the book was in press (see https://pirls2021.org/results/achievement/overall). Slight positive changes in Morocco’s and other Arab countries’ achievements do not change anything in the core argument of the chapter. M. Dahbi (*) School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Ifrane, Morocco e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_9

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Keywords  Morocco · Arabic · Amazigh · Literacy · Multilingualism · Education quality

Morocco is a country that still faces challenging illiteracy problems in the adult population. In recent years, efforts of adult literacy teaching have contributed to raising the literacy rate to 73.8% of the population aged 15 and older, but large differences remain between men (83.3%) compared with women (64.6%). In contrast, the positive impact of universal access to schooling can be seen in the literacy rate among the younger population of 15- to 24-year-olds, which stood in 2018 at 97.7% in total with little difference between men (98%) and women (97.4%) (UNESCO, 2018). The acquisition of both basic school literacy and higher-level language arts education in primary and secondary schools continue to be unsatisfactory. This is clearly seen in the poor scores in reading and mathematics obtained by Morocco in international assessments of primary and middle school populations. Mother tongue literacy is also the subject of current debates in Morocco, and it affects the majority of Moroccans when it concerns Moroccan Arabic as a mother tongue, a vernacular form of Arabic not written and not used in school. More importantly, it concerns a sizable proportion of the population who are native speakers of one of the varieties of the Amazigh language (or Berber1), which is also a spoken language with no written tradition and not used in school. Amazigh has only recently been recognized officially as one main component of the language landscape in the country. French, Spanish, and more and more English occupy an important place in the education and literacy system and the daily lives of Moroccans. Their acquisition constitutes a vital factor in the equation of educational success and social development in the country in spite of the powerful Arabicization of school and public life. The present chapter presents a country profile for Morocco before describing the make-up of basic literacy in Morocco’s multilingual environment. It then examines the impact of various literacy traditions and education and language planning policies on the present literacy situation in the country. Poor educational achievement is related to language education in that educational quality has been neglected as a result of Morocco’s education policy’s excessive preoccupation with language choice instead of learning objectives.

1 Morocco Morocco sits at the northwesternmost tip of North Africa, 14 kms south of Spain at the Strait of Gibraltar. It borders the Mediterranean Sea in the north and the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Mauritania is its southern neighbor and Algeria its eastern one.

 The term “Amazigh” is used hereafter instead of “Berber.” Although “Berber” is more widely used, “Amazigh” is the term adopted by users of the language themselves. 1

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Its vast territory, including the Moroccan Sahara (still a subject of international dispute) covers some 710,850 Km2. Its population of approximately 37  million (2021 estimates) is ethnically rather homogenous with mixed Arab and Amazigh origins. Linguistically, Moroccans are native Arabic speakers of Arabic in their majority with a large minority of native Amazigh speakers. This difference in language is not translated into an ethnic distinction between the two groups because of the intermixing of populations over the centuries. Students of Morocco distinguish only between Arabic speakers and Amazigh speakers when they refer to Arabs and Amazigh, all with a common Amazigh ethnic substrate. Hart (1999, 2000) has a famous phrase which served as the title of a text he published on the subject. He explains that “Although Arabs and Berbers have lived in juxtaposition in the Maghrib for well over a millennium, it is quite apparent that the Berber element is very much more than just a residue. It is, indeed, the base of the whole North African edifice, and it is still very strongly so today, so much so that one can say: ‘scratch a Moroccan, find a Berber’” (p. 26). The first Muslim state was established in Morocco in 788 ACE by the Idrissi dynasty some 80 years after the end of the Arab conquest in 709 ACE. Since then, a central state has always been there, with different dynasties holding more or less power and territory. Morocco remained independent while resisting European settlements on its coasts until 1912 when it became a French-­ Spanish Protectorate. Currently, Morocco is a constitutional monarchy, and the King of Morocco is a member of the Alawi dynasty which has ruled the country since 1631. Legislative power is held by the two elected chambers of Parliament, and a Constitutional Court oversees judicial power. The King shares executive power with the Head of Government, and he retains legislative power by means of decrees that have the force of law. The official religion of the country is Islam, but about 1% of Moroccan citizens are Jewish or Christian. A very large Jewish community, which has inhabited Morocco since before the Arab Islamic conquest, emigrated to Canada or Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, but they continue to hold Moroccan citizenship.

1.1 The Multilingual Environment Morocco is an Arab country, but voices of cultural and political groups call for more emphasis on the specifics of Moroccan identity. These are identity characteristics acknowledged by the Moroccan constitution which states in its preamble “Its [Morocco’s] unity is forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassani components, nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebraic and Mediterranean affluents” (Kingdom of Morocco, 2011, p.  5). The Arabic language is the official language of the country; it is the prescribed language of instruction in primary, secondary, and higher education, but it competes in the school environment with French, and to a lower extent with, Spanish, and English. One of the country’s native languages is Amazigh, which has been recognized in the latest 2011 constitution as an official language, making Morocco, thus, a

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country with two official languages, one of which is Arabic, a world language, one of the eight official languages of the UN system. The other, Amazigh, is a spoken language with no notable literacy tradition but with a strong oral tradition and culture. “Arabic” is used as a cover term for the official Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and at least two varieties of spoken Arabic, referred to as “Hassaniya”, used in the southern Saharan provinces (Taine-Cheikh, 2011), and “Darija,2” used in the rest of the country. Three Amazigh dialect groups are generally recognized; they are mostly unintelligible to each other. An upcoming variety, which is a construction of a national language planning institution (see www.IRCAM.ma) is being promoted in schools and in the media as a common modern Moroccan variety combining aspects of all three original dialect groups of Amazigh. Amazigh language education is introduced progressively starting with primary school, but it remains limited. Language education policies have been inconsistent throughout the years as they try to adapt to changing political, geopolitical, and economic imperatives. They have gone from a strong presence of European languages (French and Spanish in particular) during the Protectorate period, 1912–1956, and after Independence, to full Arabicization of school education since 1989. Niches of European languages, French in particular, are to be found in science and technology education and higher education. The latest experiment in the educational linguistic landscape is a policy that allows students to pursue part of their later secondary school education in any one of three European languages instead of Arabic (CSEFRS, 2016). The current situation of the multiplicity of languages and scripts (Arabic, French, Amazigh) in the educational system at an early age calls for several questions concerning the efficiency of the system. Are children given the best chances for acquiring literacy? Does the diversity of languages help or handicap literacy acquisition? With French being introduced only in Grade 3, what is its role in the acquisition of literacy skills, if any, in addition to the role of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)? Are basic literacy acquisition difficulties due to the characteristics of the Arabic language? This is a necessary question given the difficulty that children in other Arab countries have with the acquisition of literacy skills as demonstrated by low Arab scores in international educational achievement tests.

1.2 Languages and Literacies Each one of the languages that make part of the Moroccan linguistic landscape comes with its literacy functions, including even the native vernaculars. The country counts at least the following literacy types: Arabic literacy, Moroccan Arabic mother tongue literacy, Amazigh mother tongue literacy, Hassaniya Arabic mother tongue literacy, and French, Spanish, and English foreign language literacies.

 “Darija” is the term used by Moroccans to refer to the local variety of Arabic spoken in the country. It will be used hereafter invariably as a synonym for “Moroccan Arabic.” 2

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Arabic is the official language of Morocco. The initial paragraphs in the preambles of Moroccan constitutions since independence have always included a statement about the official language of Morocco being Arabic. This is how Morocco counts as an Arab country, member of the League of Arab States. This is also the formal/political aspect of being Arab. The reality lived by Morocco, like all Arab countries, is that none of its citizens is a native speaker of the formal common variety used by, and intelligible to, Arabic-educated people, i.e. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Most citizens of Arab countries have as mother tongue one variety or another of the local Arabic vernacular. Morocco is no exception. The majority of Moroccans speak a variety of Moroccan Arabic while a large minority of Moroccans are native speakers of the Amazigh language. Most Moroccans, who are native Arabic speakers, use one variety or another of Moroccan Arabic, and all Moroccan children, Arabic or Amazigh natives, who are in the Moroccan school system, public or private, acquire their basic literacy in Modern Standard Arabic. Thus, whereas Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh are home languages, Modern Standard Arabic is the school language. The great majority of Moroccans become literate in MSA, but other literacy traditions exist beside MSA literacy. There is a literacy tradition in Arabic that is Quran-related and there are literacy traditions in Spoken Arabic (or Darija) and Amazigh which serve to keep alive a rich Moroccan oral culture. Nascent literacy practices encouraged by technology are to be seen in the use of Darija and Amazigh home languages on social media. The various aspects of literacy in Morocco are introduced in the sections below.

1.3 Public School Education During the French Protectorate, the Moroccan educational system was dominated by public schooling, with the exception of a very few private schools started by the nationalist movement. These nationalist schools were established in only a few of the large urban centers in the country, and they provided solid bilingual education, giving a better place to the Arabic language while aiming for a good balance with French. The other educational system that has traditionally been present in both urban and rural areas is the traditional religious schooling that starts with Quranic schools for young children and ends with higher education certification from advanced religious schools or from Al Qarawiyin University, established in 859 AD, and its two branch schools in Tetuan and Marrakesh. This system of education, referred to locally as atta’liim al ‘atiiq or “ancient education” (the word “ancient” carrying a more positive connotation of “classical heritage” than in French or English) continues to the present day under the oversight of the government department in charge of religious affairs. It starts with the memorization of the Quran and learning to read and write in Arabic, then moves to the study of the Quran and Islamic tradition and theology, including advanced study of Arabic grammar and rhetoric essential for the interpretation of traditional texts. This system has recently experienced a gradual introduction of the study of humanities and social sciences,

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science and mathematics, and modern and classical languages at all levels, a modernization trend which aims to open Islamic education to understanding and dialogue with other religions and other schools of Islamic tradition. This ancient education was supported mostly by local community subsidies for primary and secondary levels, and by the Islamic establishment and the Sharifian state for the higher education levels. The nationalist schools were tuition-paying with strong support from the nationalist movement. The public school system was supported by the modern state budget before and after Independence. Private schools fully supported by fee payment are a more recent addition to the system starting after Independence. Each one of these systems has promoted a different language and literacy education that has been dominated by the choice of one language instead of another rather than by the educational objectives to be gained. We argue that this attitude has impacted negatively the quality of education in the country. Language choice for education has been dominated by political and ideological objectives, not learning outcomes. French and Spanish served the political objectives of the colonizing powers; the nationalist movement pursued its militant objectives to counter the development of the culture of the colonizer; and traditional religious education promoted Arabic as the language of the Quran and Islamic tradition. Recently, the mother tongue cultural movements promoting the Amazigh language on the one hand and Moroccan Arabic on the other hand are following the same course of putting forward political and identity objectives. Whereas these attitudes are to be expected in cultural movements because they serve to gather the necessary enthusiasm and support for a cause, they end up ignoring the essential question of the function of language in education. This is an important question in the language planning literature which distinguishes between corpus planning, status planning, and acquisition planning (Fishman, 1967; Hornberger, 1994). Fishman (1968) makes an interesting distinction between nationalist-driven and nationist-driven development policy, the first being focused on questions of identity and nationalist ideology, and the second being more concerned with pragmatic efficiency. It seems that “nationist” concerns have not been at the center of the attitudes at the origin of the language choices described above; they have had as a consequence an enduring lack of quality in Moroccan public education. Moroccan public-school education has been a serious challenge for the country’s development. Poor education has always pulled down the country’s Human Development Index (HDI), which stands in 2019 at 0.686, giving Morocco the rank of 121 out of 189 countries. Figure 1 below (UNDP, 2020, p. 3) illustrates the weight of education, the lowest of three indices which make up the HDI. Educational achievement in the Arab World has been a source of concern especially since a few Arab governments have accepted having their educational systems participate in international assessments such as IEA’s PIRLS, TIMSS, or OECD’s PISA. Out of 50 countries from different world regions, Morocco sits at the bottom of the PIRLS list (48th out of 50) with a score of 358, just above Egypt (330) and South Africa (320) (Mullis et  al., 2017). The PIRLS scale CenterPoint is 500. The other Arab countries, including Gulf countries, did not fare much better. Kuwait (393, 47th), Oman (418, 46th), Saudi Arabia (430, 44th), Qatar (442, 43rd),

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1

.8

.6

.4

.2

1990

1995

2000

Life Expectancy

2005

Year

2010

Education

2015

2019

GNI per capita

HDI

Fig. 1  Trends in Morocco’s HDI component indices 1990–2019

Bahrain (446, 42nd), UAE (450, 41st) all scored below the CenterPoint of 500. Moroccan public schools’ poor educational achievement has also been documented by a national test, the PNEA in 2009, and 2016 (INE, 2016); this reaches the same conclusions as the international tests. An important question to ask is why rich Gulf countries with small populations are not doing better. High socio-economic status is usually strongly associated with educational success, so it seems appropriate to examine common features of Arab countries’ systems of education and to raise the question of the role of the basic literacy medium, Modern Standard Arabic. Myhill (2014) offers a useful discussion of diglossia in Arab states compared to other states with other diglossia situations and the strategies they have adopted to deal with diglossia’s impact on education.

2 Basic Literacy 2.1 Learning to Read and Write Literacy curricula in the public school system are mostly in Arabic with some French and Amazigh. Because Arabic is the main school language, it serves as the early grade literacy medium for the large majority of Moroccan children. It is introduced in Grade 1 with the Arabic alphabet, a regular but complex writing system.

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Arabic is also present in the limited Moroccan preschool system, which is not part of compulsory public schooling. Many children, especially in urban centers, will have been enrolled for one or 2 years in a private or an NGO pre-school if they have not been placed in a Quranic school where they would have been introduced to the Arabic script but not necessarily to reading (Wagner & Lotfi, 1983). In rural areas, only Quranic pre-schooling is available for a small number of children prior to Grade 1. A public pre-school system has been introduced progressively beginning in 2019–2020 school year as it is becoming clear that it constitutes solid preparation for successful early grade literacy. As soon as Grade 3, French is introduced with the roman alphabet and the complexities of French orthography. Since 2003, Amazigh has been introduced in a few public primary schools, and the trend has been going up or down depending on the political mood in the country and on the preparedness of the various regional academies in terms of training a sufficient number of Amazigh language teachers. Very few private schools, if any, teach Amazigh. Tifinagh, the official script for Amazigh, is introduced beginning in Grade 1; it is alphabetic and highly phonetic but widely different from Arabic or French (see Fig. 2). Approximately 15% of schoolchildren go to fee-paying private schools. Private schools offer bilingual education in Arabic and a European language, claiming to do so on an equal basis. Legally, they must comply with minimal curricular conditions having to do with the teaching of Arabic, civic and religious education. The majority offer French as the additional language of instruction. A smaller minority within the 15% minority is made up of a few foreign government-supported or sponsored schools. The largest group is made up of French schools in the largest cities, access to which has been quite exclusive and difficult given the extremely large demand and the limited offer. These schools comply with French curricular requirements with very few concessions made for the national requirements. They are open to international residents, French and other, but more than 70% of their student population of approximately 44,000 are Moroccan nationals (Ambassade de France au

Fig. 2  Tifinagh alphabet (from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tifinagh_alphabet.png)

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Maroc, 2019). The demand for such schools has been so large that the Belgian government also negotiated the introduction of French-medium schools in 2014 (Ecole Belge au Maroc, 2020). Spanish language schools attract a smaller but sizeable student population (Le Matin, 2020). English language medium schools have been on the rise for the last 20 years; they are backed by autonomous or private British or American institutions but generally introduced in the country through high-level negotiations involving UK or US embassies. The difficulties faced by the average Moroccan child going to public school are not so much due to the acquisition of a multiplicity of phonological and morphosyntactic systems as they are due to the lack of meaningful interaction in language. Language instruction moves from one formal system with its grammatical and orthographic rules to another and the focus is mostly on the form of the language rather than on interactive communication about content which is meaningful to the child. Language acquisition and learning are well known to depend mostly on function and meaningfulness. In contrast, in the Moroccan school context, literacy objectives are diluted among several languages, and the main medium of literacy, the Arabic language, has specific characteristics that make its instruction focus much more on form than on function. Three of these aspects will be examined in the following sections; they have been identified by the research literature as the main sources of concern. They are: (i) the difference in form and in status between the home language and the school language, (ii) the complex writing system of Arabic, and (iii) the pedagogical traditions based on memorization and repetition.

2.2 Diglossia Moroccans generally grow up speaking Moroccan Arabic (MA) or Amazigh (Az). Although statistical data on the difference in proportion between Moroccan Arabic native speakers and Amazigh native speakers has been politically taboo and difficult to ascertain, it is generally agreed that the difference is roughly 60% Moroccan Arabic and 40% Amazigh. However, neither Moroccan Arabic nor Amazigh are school languages. The official school language is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the form of the Arabic language shared by all Arab countries, but which is native to none. Amazigh, only recently recognized by the Moroccan constitution as an official language, has been making its way to classrooms slowly and hesitantly, but it is not yet used as a language of instruction. This means that there are no Moroccan children being taught basic literacy skills in their mother tongue. The difference between MSA and Moroccan Arabic is described as a high and a low form of the same language, Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic is the high form; it is written, it is used in school and in formal settings, and it has a large body of literature and scholarly tradition. Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, is a vernacular with several varieties within Morocco; it is the language of home, of informal conversation on everyday topics, and it has a strong oral tradition representing a rich popular culture. This relationship between a high and a low form of the same language in a society

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is referred to as “diglossia” (Bassiouney, 2009; Ferguson, 1959; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003). The same kind of diglossic relationship has been described in Greek, in Hebrew, and in German, but language planning processes have managed to reduce the differences and promote one common form of these languages for everyone to use in formal (H) as well as in informal (L) settings, at home as well as in school, while preserving the local dialects and their lore (Britannica Editors, 2018, 2020; Lejeune et  al., 2018). No such language planning policies have been feasible or desirable in the many Arab nations which form the Arab World, and which hold on to their national sovereignty as well as to their common shared language, MSA, which serves as the main defining characteristic of being Arab. Arabic diglossia has served as a topic for many debates in public media as well as in specialized literature, but almost to no avail. Discussions of the subject are often carried out at cross purposes. Proponents of mother tongue early grade literacy seem to ignore the arguments of those who start from a political/geopolitical and religious stance, and vice versa. Even propositions to use Moroccan Arabic as a classroom management language to make children feel safe and comfortable have been rejected by the “purists” who think that it would be a breach that can be used by “corrupt” forms of the language to penetrate the system.3 This does not prevent classroom teachers in Morocco and elsewhere from using colloquial (L) varieties to manage their classes and engage briefly in genuine communication with their pupils. However, the use of the colloquial is never recognized officially; it is hidden, ignored, and/or neglected as insignificant in classroom surveys. The result of this attitude is that there are no guidelines for when or how to use the colloquial, so much so that teachers perpetuate the attitude of considering words or phrases of spoken language as corrupt and shameful to use, and they pass this on to their pupils.4 Once the class management issues are resolved, the teacher moves on to the “real lesson” and makes children repeat language without understanding or with only an approximate understanding that they may have worked out. Good repetition becomes very early on a mark of good achievement, and comprehension and critical thinking are just not considered part of classroom tasks. This special focus on form and display, which will be discussed below (see Vignette 1), is probably the most important root cause of poor achievement in early grade literacy classes because it deprives the language and literacy lesson from its meaningfulness and relevance. What about Moroccan children whose mother-tongue is Amazigh, and not Arabic? They are affected by the diglossia situation in at least three important ways. (i) They are welcomed to school in a language that they do not feel comfortable and  See Laroui, 2011 for a discussion of what he calls Morocco’s “linguistic tragedy.” A serious digital news media source, (Medias 24, 2013) discusses how any debate on language in Morocco gets “wildly passionate.” 4  At the beginning of the 2018–19 school year, some primary school textbooks were published with some pages including words from Darija referring to very well-known Moroccan pastries and pancakes. This caused a huge national debate headed by the political party leading the governing coalition, the PJD, and another very well-established conservative political party, the Istiqlal, who in Parliament declared that the introduction of Darija in school is unacceptable and even unconstitutional (See TelQuel, 2018). 3

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Vignette 1  Classroom observation: The language of meaningful interaction in a science lesson “Science activity: The medical thermometer” We were allowed into a primary school in the university town of Ifrane in the Middle Atlas mountainous part of Morocco. Access was rather easily granted to us by the local educational authorities who were informed of our research objectives. We met with a couple of teachers whose classes we were going to visit, and we talked with them about our objectives and agreed on where to place the video recording equipment in the room. The next day we came before classes started and placed camera and microphones. Our first class was a Grade 3 science lesson scheduled as “Science activity: the medical thermometer.” The teacher, a man in his late fifties, did not seem to be disturbed by our presence, two researchers and one technician. The students, about 15 of them, seemed somewhat excited with the experience. The teacher started in MSA asking students to open their textbooks on a specific page. The text has as a title “the medical thermometer” with a drawing showing a nurse placing a thermometer in a young girl’s mouth. Another drawing showed a thermometer with its different parts carefully labeled. The class continues in MSA: Teacher: “What is the nurse placing in the girl’s mouth? Look at the picture.” Student: The thermometer T: Why is she putting a thermometer in her mouth? To measure what? S: to measure her sickness T: not her sickness S: to measure her temperature T: So, how do we measure body temperature? T: Repeat this sentence Habiba: We measure body temperature with a medical thermometer. T turns to the chalkboard, reproduces the drawing of the thermometer from the book and writes the names of the different parts as in the book. T: What are the parts of the medical thermometer? S: The parts of the medical thermometer are the scale, the small tube, the thermal fluid T invites students to the board. They point to the parts and read their names. T writes the sentence repeated earlier: “We measure body temperature with a medical thermometer.” then adds: “The parts of the medical thermometer are: the scale, the small tube, the thermal fluid, and the tank.” Lesson continues with T asking questions, taking answers and writing them as full sentences on the board, and asking students to repeat the sentences. It is all about the description in MSA of the parts and the functioning of the thermometer. A few students are asked to read the complete text on the board. All of the preceding interaction is in MSA, with very few words and phrases here and there in colloquial. T then switches to the colloquial and asks about the use of the temperature scale, and a student answers that if it is 21 then the temperature is OK. T, realizing the big knowledge gap, explains the gradation in the scale. “if we read 35, the person has 35. If it is 40, he has 40. Understood?” Then T asks about temperature 37 and explains that it is neither high nor low. He asks “I am not sick now, I feel fine. What would my temperature be if I measured it with a thermometer?” Students answer “37.”  This interaction is not included in the summary of the lesson written on the board. Teacher, still using the colloquial, signals the end of the class: T: You will take your notebook, the lessons notebook, and you will try to draw the thermometer like this, and you will copy the summary from the board. For drawing, remember to use only a pencil. Don’t forget to write today’s date.”

secure with, and (ii) they do not have the advantage of recognizing some of the common characteristics of MSA that their Arabic-speaking classmates do because Amazigh and Arabic are two different languages. Moreover, (iii) the status of Az as only a home language, a “dialect” that has no place in school or in the mosque, also

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affects their attitude to school and to learning. In fact, this coexistence of two unrelated languages with specializations in high and low domains of social life is also referred to, by extension, as a situation of diglossia (Fishman, 1967). In general, research has shown that Amazigh-speaking children are heavily affected during the first two school grades, but their performance catches up with non-Amazigh-­ speaking classmates starting in Grade 3 (Wagner, 1993, pp. 181–182). The situation of diglossia in Arabic has attracted a lot of attention and has produced many opinions and attitudes that are often tainted with political or ideological biases (see Suleiman, 1999, 2003; Zughoul, 1980). A middle variety (al-lugha al-­ wusTaa), halfway between MSA and the colloquials, seems to be developing in Arab societies and may progressively become the new modern standard. Globalization and the development of sophisticated communication media have brought Arab societies closer, more able to communicate with each other, and much more knowledgeable about each other’s language varieties. Moreover, as Wagner (1993, p. 183) concludes on the basis of the data from the Morocco literacy study, “[…] one should not conclude that mother tongue literacy is inappropriate in many linguistic contexts. Rather, the generalization that first language literacy is axiomatically best requires serious reconsideration in light of specific contexts of language use and literacy acquisition; in the case of our data in Morocco, this presupposition can be rejected.” We adopt the attitude that it is valid to say that Arabic is a mother tongue for Arabs without specifying the local spoken variety. Wagner argues that “Moroccan Arabic speakers can be thought of as learning literacy in their mother tongue in the same sense that nonstandard dialectal English speakers (e.g., African-Americans in the United States; Scottish-English speakers in Great Britain) are learning mother tongue literacy when they learn to read English. Generally speaking, the relationship between any spoken mother tongue and mother tongue literacy may exhibit some differences and have certain consequences (e.g., social acceptance vs. rejection), but the basic phonological, syntactic, and semantic structures are usually highly related.” (Wagner, 1993, pp. 172–173; see also Myhill, 2014, 210 n. 11 for a discussion of this position). Wagner (1993) further cites the work of Badry (1983) and Maamouri (1983) who have shown that Moroccan children using colloquial Arabic are able to produce verb derivations that are similar to MSA patterns and that Tunisian Arabic and MSA have a common lexical core that should be used in early grade literacy instruction. Albirini (2016) adopts the view that, “together with QA [Colloquial Arabic], SA [Standard Arabic] is the mother tongue of the Arabic-speaking people” (p. 33). He further explains that “… it is true that many Arab children may not be able to speak SA fluently, but most of them do understand it. This is similar to passive bilingualism, where children speak one language and can understand another but not speak it. It is also similar to the situation of many heritage speakers who do not necessarily speak their first language but do understand it” (pp. 33–34). A more recent discussion of diglossia and early grade literacy comes from Eviatar and Ibrahim (2014), who bring to bear on the issue interesting psycholinguistic research trying to answer the question “Why is it Hard to Read Arabic?” They identify two general sources of difficulty: Arab children are not fluent in Standard Arabic, and the Arabic orthography has a visual complexity

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that makes it more demanding from a neurolinguistic point of view. Saiegh-Haddad and Spolsky (2014), describing the current situation of Arabic as a “fossilized diglossia,” have investigated children’s oral language vocabulary to document the “linguistic distance” between standard and spoken varieties. They propose “Exposure through Reading Program” as an approach to reduce the distance between the two varieties and make children more fluent in the standard because they believe that “… literacy acquisition in Arabic will continue to happen, at least in the foreseeable future, in the Standard not vernacular variety..” (p. 230). The implications of this discussion of diglossia for Moroccan literacy are that there is an important place for Moroccan Arabic, as there is for Amazigh, in early grade literacy instruction. Dahbi (2007) argued for the use of the colloquial in the early grades adopting an approach described as “un bilinguisme de soutien oral dégressif,” a bilingualism of diminishing oral support. The aim of such an approach is to make the child feel secure and comfortable, able to express himself/herself in the language that they are familiar with without being afraid of being ridiculed by the teacher or the classmates for using the wrong word or phrase. In such a safe environment, the child is more likely to learn more rapidly how to read and write in MSA.

2.3 Arabic Script Moroccan children learning to read are first introduced to the Arabic script before they delve into Latin and Amazigh Tifinagh scripts. In addition to the difficulties due to the diglossic situation described above, they have to learn to decipher a complex script composed of letters that vary in shape depending on their position in the word, and they have to learn to read a script that rarely provides short vowel markers. Arabic orthography is based on a cursive script made up of 28 letters. Arabic letters have a line form augmented by superscripted or subscripted dots. All the letters represent consonants or glides (except alif when it occurs as the first letter), so the short vowels of Arabic must be represented by diacritic symbols above or below the letter line. Because of the cursive nature of the script, the 28 letters have two to four variants depending on whether they occur at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word, and depending on whether they attach to the following letter or they stand alone within the word (see Afkir, 2018). More complexity comes from the slight differences between different fonts in print or from individual handwriting, not to mention any calligraphic features. In spite of this complexity, the Arabic script is regular and phonetic with little ambiguity when vowel diacritics are added. However, because of its cursive nature (letters are not standalone), and because of the dots, the vowel diacritics, and the changing letter shapes, it requires more effort on the part of the learner, sometimes described as more cognitive processing time than with other scripts (Abadzi, 2006, 2012; Saiegh-Haddad & Taha, 2017). However, while beginning readers need the vowel signs to decipher written texts, proficient readers, on the other hand, are able to read more quickly when texts

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are not vowelized (Abu-Rabia, 2002). Published printed matter in Arabic only rarely includes vowel signs except for the Muslim holy book, the Quran, and books for children, because additional diacritics require more labor in terms of production and in terms of grammatical correctness as case endings. Often, in a printed non-­ vowelized text, some vowel diacritics are added occasionally when the writer feels that a word or a phrase may lead to serious ambiguity.

2.4 Arabic Pedagogy The collocation “Arabic Pedagogy” may sound odd, but it does refer to something real. The Arabic language is associated with a specific pedagogy because of its religious ritual character and because of its diglossia. Arabic is the language of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, and it is the language of prayer. Although supplications and preaching can be done in the local language, prayers and recitation of the verses of the holy book must be in Arabic. The Quran is considered in Islam as God’s message revealed verbatim to Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is to be protected in its most subtle details so that the message does not get corrupted. The Arabic language in which the holy message was revealed was not an ordinary language learned as a mother tongue. It had a special status in Arabia; it was a koine or lingua franca, superposed onto the Arabic dialects spoken by the various tribes in the different parts of Arabia (Ferguson, 1959). This is a lingua franca that needed to be learned in addition to the normal tribal language variety acquired during childhood and used for everyday functions. It was the language of the powerful elite, recognized by all as a prestigious form of Arabic and as the language of the poets and the bards who chanted the merits, and related the achievements of, their tribes, their chiefs and their heroes. It was used in places like Mecca, in periodic festivals, pilgrimages, and other large gatherings of the powerful members of the elite of each tribe. Scholars of Arabic are not in agreement about the diglossic status of pre-Islamic Arabic but they all recognize the existence of this prestigious variety of Arabic that they refer to as Classical Arabic or Literary Arabic which is shared by all the pre-Islamic tribes who used it as a formal register (see Versteegh, 1984, 1997). It appears then that the diglossic nature of the Arabic language dates as far back as the existence of the Arabic koine that served as a formal means of intercommunication among the various Arab tribes. This reverence for the Arabic language among Arabs was made even more real when the Quran was revealed in their prestigious lingua franca. In fact, it is considered as Prophet Muhammad’s miracle, his ability to use a language whose sophistication in form and substance was unequalled by any poet of the time. The reverence for formal Arabic, and the protection that it has benefited from, have continued until the present time. Today, more than 14 centuries later, Quran Arabic is a variety which is generally intelligible to Arabic-­ educated Arabs. The syntax and morpho-phonology are very similar to MSA, and the lexicon is largely shared.

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This phenomenon of language stability and veneration for a language is reflected in the traditional pedagogy of Arabic which has dominated the teaching of the Arabic language in today’s Arab World. Arabic is revered and learned and cultivated almost as “an art form” (Tsimpera Maluch & TahaThomure, 2021). In Arabic language classrooms, form is protected, cultivated, and given precedence over substance. Grammar, memorization, and recitation constitute the main teaching and curricular objectives; and accuracy is favored over fluency. Arab countries began to pay attention to the problem of pedagogy when it became clear that poor educational results may have something to do with basic school literacy acquisition and Arabic language teaching. The Arab Human Development Reports (AHDRs) commissioned by UNDP and prepared by independent Arab researchers from different parts of the Arab World have shone a strong light on the unsatisfactory preparation of Arab human resources. The first four AHDRs (UNDP, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) focused on three “development deficits” which were identified as “knowledge,” “women’s empowerment,” and “freedom,” and all of them attributed the deficits described to poor education results and the teaching of the Arabic language. A few Arab countries agreed to participate in IEA’s (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) reading and math tests known as PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) (see https://timss.bc.edu/index. html). PIRLS tests reading at the fourth grade and TIMSS tests science and math at the fourth and eighth grades. Scores for Arab States in the PIRLS and TIMSS are reported later in this chapter. In test after test (notably the PIRLS editions in 2006, 2011, 2016) these scores have stood at the bottom of the ranking list, well below the average center-point. OECD’s PISA test (Program for International Student Assessment), which tests middle school (15-year-olds) achievements in reading and science produced similar results (OECD, 2019). The disappointing results have served to sound the alarm for Arab governments. The World Bank’s report on education in the MENA region (World Bank, 2008) and their very recent publication on “educational poverty” in the MENA with a special focus on Arabic language teaching and learning (World Bank, 2021) have pinpointed educational deficits as serious development handicaps for all the countries of the region and emphasized the role of Arabic language literacy. Many Arab countries have published strategic vision reports where education holds a very important place; sometimes the whole report is reserved for the issues concerning Arabic language teaching and learning (UAE Government, 2021). The Jordanian Queen Rania Foundation (www.qrf.org) has commissioned a study with Zayed University (UAE) researchers on “The Effect of Arabic Language Diglossia on Teaching and Learning” (Taha Thomure et al., 2021). This is a “systematic review” of relevant research on diglossia aiming to draw lessons from the long-lasting debate on the sociolinguistic feature that characterizes the Arabic language and seems to impact education in Arab states. In Morocco, the question of what language to use in school and what foreign languages to introduce has always been at the center of educational policy and planning. In 2000, a Royal Commission was assigned the task of diagnosing the problems of education in the country and proposing a strategic vision for the public

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school system. The document produced, the “National Charter for Education and Training” (COSEF, 2000), has marked the debate and served as a reference for educational policy in subsequent government plans. Many of its sections were devoted to language issues, which were recognized as problematic. It recommended continuing Arabicization of education, reinforcing of foreign language teaching, and acknowledging the important cultural roles of the spoken varieties of Arabic and of Amazigh. In 2005, to celebrate 50 years of Independence, a national commission, working with a select group of researchers and intellectuals, produced another strategic document which reviews 50 years of human development and makes recommendations for 2025 (Haut Commissariat au Plan, 2006). This was another occasion to revisit the educational issues and sound another alarm concerning the importance of preschool and the delicate question of mother tongue literacy (see El Andaloussi, 2006). The current national strategic plan for education is “Strategic Vision for the 2015–2030 Reform” (CSEFRS, 2016). The most recent document on the subject is a major legislative initiative referred to as Framework Law no. 51–17 which sets the general objectives and orientations to which all educational policy must conform (Bulletin Officiel, 2020). Both the strategic vision and the framework law reserve a good number of pages to the language issues in education. They agree on the essential orientations: (i) Arabic as the “main school language,” Amazigh as a “language of communication,” and French as a “language of wider communication.” This applies to all preschool and primary education. English is to be introduced progressively so that it would eventually (2025 horizon) start in Grade 4, and a third foreign language (mostly Spanish) is supposed to start in Grade 10. (ii) diversify teaching languages starting in Middle School so that French (short term) and English (medium term) would be used to teach various subjects. (iii) the objective is to allow the high school graduate to master Arabic, enjoy conversational skills in Amazigh, and be able to enroll in higher education, at home or abroad, in any one of the three foreign languages. These three general characteristics describe the current strategy in the public school system in Morocco.

3 Language Choice in Morocco 3.1 Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) As First Literacy Modern Standard Arabic literacy is now dominant in Morocco after some 40 years of continuous efforts to Arabize education and public life. Primary and secondary schooling is all in Arabic, all sections included. Basic literacy is learned primarily in MSA except in some private schools, especially the foreign-government affiliated ones. Illiteracy is fought almost exclusively in MSA. The last 15 years have seen a very serious focus on trying to reduce illiteracy among the adult population through the organization of literacy teaching by NGOs and in mosques. A government agency has also been created to oversee all adult literacy operations.

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In public life, the last 40 years have seen a clear change in the dominant literacy culture. Newspapers are mostly in MSA.  The majority of books published in Morocco are written in Arabic. Public discourse, political and cultural, is dominantly in Arabic. Audiovisual media are also mostly in Arabic with TV and radio broadcasting time in French greatly reduced. Public administration is carried out in Arabic though not exclusively. Official correspondence, official documents, government forms, ID cards and documents and public signage continue to be bilingual in Arabic and French but with preeminence given to Arabic. In recent years, Amazigh Tifinagh signs are to be found more frequently especially in official public signage. Money coins, banknotes and post office stamps continue to be equally bilingual. Another aspect of Arabic literacy is worth mentioning: It is what we may call traditional law literacy or Shari’a literacy. Marriage contracts, inheritance distribution acts, land property acts, land sales acts, religious endowments acts, all and many more acts that have to do with family law and personal law are mostly written by official notarial writers known in Morocco as ‘adl (plural ‘adul). These written acts and the archival tradition that goes with them exist within a literacy tradition that one finds in Morocco and elsewhere in Muslim societies (Messick, 2018; Wagner, 1993). What distinguishes them is a special legalese discourse and a unique calligraphic tradition. In Morocco, some aspects of the calligraphic script known as Maghrebi script are in fact quite different from MSA handwriting rules. For example, letters for the sounds /f/ and /q/ are dotted differently, and the alif letter for the long vowel /ā/ is written not as part of the line letters; it appears as a superscript that does not break the word as in MSA. There are other calligraphic variations such as the /k/ letter that does not change shape when occurring in final word position as it does in printed MSA. All of these variations and the different calligraphy features are found in the tradition in transcribing the Quran; the Quran includes many more symbols that serve minute details in the oral recitation and reading of the holy text.

3.2 Moroccan Arabic Vernacular Literacy Moroccan Arabic refers to the vernacular variety of Arabic used in Morocco. It is part of the Maghrebi variety of Spoken Arabic. Darija is the name used commonly by Moroccans to refer to this variety. As a living language, it has different registers and different varieties, social and regional. Two large groups of varieties are recognized by students of Moroccan sociolinguistics; they are the Urban and the Rural varieties defined historically as pre-, and post-Hilalian, respectively. Pre-Hilalian refers to the period that followed the first Arab conquest in seventh century until the arrival during the twelfth century of large waves of Bedouin migrants from Arabia who had invaded eastern parts of North Africa in the eleventh century. The mother tribe of these migrants was the Hilalian tribe. The Urban pre-Hilalian dialects include the varieties spoken by migrants from Andalusia who were Muslim or Jewish, having left Spain following the Christian Reconquista movements. These migrants settled in the historical urban centers of Morocco, notably in Fes, Meknes,

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Rabat, Tetuan, and Marrakesh and their dialects thrived until the beginning of the twentieth century when massive urbanization due to rural migration started to bring Hilalian varieties to these historical centers and to the many other urban centers of the country. While remnants of these Arabic varieties are still currently used in many social groups, they are clearly giving way to a variety that is socially dominant; it is the variant used in popular singing, in theater and cinema, in radio and TV announcements, and most notably in publicity and marketing. It has been named Average Moroccan Arabic, General Moroccan Arabic, and Mainstream Moroccan Arabic in the literature, but Moroccans refer to it only as Darija when they do not need to distinguish it from local varieties that they name by regional origin, as in Fassiya (from Fes) or Marrakshiya (from Marrakesh) or Shamaliya (from the north). What are the literacy practices which are associated with the language that stands out as the mother tongue of the large majority of Moroccans? The Moroccan oral tradition is rich and well established historically. While its transmission and recording depend essentially on memory and master-disciple teaching and learning practices rooted in orality, much of it has also been recorded in writing, which often functions as support for the process of memorization. Thus, Moroccan Zajal, oral poetry in spoken Arabic, has been committed to writing throughout the ages since the twelfth century, and it has been cultivated by present-day poets, singers, screenwriters, and playwrights who have produced some of today’s masterpieces in popular music, theater, television, and cinema. Its poetic form is different from classical Arabic poetry, and the script it has adopted is Arabic with some slight modifications to represent sounds specific to Moroccan Arabic. A well-known genre, part of the classical music heritage of Morocco is malhūn; it is a genre that puts zajal poetry in music. Zajal and malhūn have thrived, traveling back and forth between Morocco and Andalusia over the ages, and continue to be a distinguished part of Moroccan culture, with some revival initiatives in present-day Andalusia. Moroccan Arabic has also been used in informal correspondences between family and friends. People who have acquired some literacy skills in a Quranic school or at a public school but whose knowledge of MSA is limited would use the Arabic script and no specific orthographic rules to represent what they would normally say to the other party. Given the specificity of domains of use in diglossia, it often feels incongruous, even ridiculous sometimes, to put some of the usual everyday expressions, idioms, or turns of phrase into the standard form. As for people who are illiterate, they often dictate to a willing relative or friend what needs to be said in the letter, and when they ask to hear the writer read what has been written, they like to hear language that is familiar and not the formal language, unless the letter is meant for an administrative use. Public writers are a type of “literacy mediators” (Wagner, 1993, p.  26) available in rural souks and in urban centers to provide the service for a fee. The need for this informal correspondence literacy is served by mobile phones and texting. Short text messages are becoming a very popular means of interacting between literate and not so literate people. They sometimes use the Arabic script without the usual orthographic rules, or they use the Latin script augmented with

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various digits representing sounds specific to Arabic. This form of communication is used on simple phones or on smartphones and platforms such as WhatsApp. Figure 3 shows the digits added to Latin script to represent some Arabic sounds. These same letters and digits are used along with the Arabic script in the language of publicity in leaflets distributed in the streets or stuffed in mailboxes or under doors, in posters of various sizes, art and colors on street walls, or on different types of totems in public view. They are also used in marketing messages pushed

Fig. 3 Informal transliteration of Darija in Arabic and Latin letters and digits

Arabic script

‫ب‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ج‬ ‫ك‬ ‫د‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ز‬ ‫س‬ ‫ش‬ ‫ف‬ ‫گ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫م‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ھ‬ ‫و‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ض‬ ‫ص‬ ‫ح‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫غ‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ء‬

popular letters & digits b t j k d r z s ch/sh f g l m n h/8 w/ou y t d/dh s 7 kh 3 gh/6 9 2

َ◌ /‫ا‬ ُ◌ /‫و‬ ◌ِ /‫ي‬

a

schwa

e

Darija

English

bab tab jJab kal daz jar rezza sal chaf/shaf fat lal lam mal nab hak/8ak wad/ouad yak? tab dar/dhar sif hlal/7lal khal 3lam ghab/6ab Qrib/9rib ra2is

door repented (3rd p) brought (3rd p) ate (3rd p) went by (3rd p) neighbor turban leaked (3 rd p) saw (3rd p) passed (3rd p) said (3rd p) reproached (3rd p) leaned (3 rd p) represented (3rd p) take (imperative) river don’t you think? cooked (3rd p) house summer halal/kosher mole flag disappeared (3rd p) close president

kteb,

write

u/ou i

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through various social media. Many online businesses make use of social media advertising and outreach using Moroccan Arabic and the latest trends in letters and digits transcription (see Caubet, 2017; Miller, 2017).

3.3 Amazigh Planned Literacy The Amazigh language, generally known as Berber, is one of the native languages of Morocco along with Arabic, and, since 2011, it is the second official language of the country. It is important to note that the two native languages do not represent a racial or ethnic distinction; the difference is between Moroccans who grew up speaking Amazigh and Moroccans who grew up speaking Arabic. Scholars who have studied Morocco have always known that this distinction is a linguistic one. There has been so much mixing between the native Amazigh population and the migrant populations from Arabia as well as many other populations from different migration waves at different times in history that it is difficult to distinguish between pure Arabs and pure Amazighs. Since the twelfth century many Arab tribes have become Amazigh and many Amazigh tribes have become arabicized. Although nowadays the proportion of Amazigh speakers is about 30–40% of the total population, this has not always been the case. Over the centuries, and because of urbanization and massive population movements due to epidemics, wars, and famines, the proportion of the population who speak Amazigh as a mother tongue, with or without Moroccan Arabic, has decreased tremendously, especially in the twentieth century. The history of the Arabization of the population has been slow and quite irregular in pace depending on the various events in the history of the country. Throughout this long history, Amazigh has been used of necessity for the purpose of governance and administration as it has naturally developed as the language of a rich oral culture. This oral tradition and culture often needed recording and it used the Arabic script that had been available for centuries. Many family archives as well as manuscripts of important religious texts have been used for collecting historical information on different topics. Abdellah Bounfour (2010) provides a good overview of the situation with some facsimile copies of Amazigh documents in Arabic script. In 2001, a language planning institution, the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (www.IRCAM.ma), was established; it prepared the ground for the introduction of Amazigh into school curricula and for its officialization (Boukous, 2009, 2012). An impressive amount of corpus planning, status planning, and acquisition planning activities has been accomplished in the last 20 years. As a result, Amazigh literacy is currently being promoted, and the formal revitalization of the Amazigh language and culture are generally well received, but questions remain about the opportunity for adding another school language and about the literacy functions to be assigned to it (Aït Mous, 2011).

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3.4 French Second Literacy French is the language of second literacy (Wagner, 1993) in Morocco in the sense that it is the second school language. However, before 1989, French was present beginning in Grade 1; it was also the language of instruction of major school subjects in primary as well as in secondary education. Thus, school success required high proficiency in the French language, and the second literacy status did not mean that it was the weaker language of the two. On the contrary, French was the language of school literacy in humanities, social sciences, science and mathematics subjects, while Arabic was the language of school literacy for Arabic grammar and literature and religious and civic education. With the completion of the Arabization of school education in 1989, literacy in French changed progressively to become the weaker of the two. French is currently introduced in Grade 3, which means that all secondary school graduates have had French language classes every week for 10 years, from Grade 3 to Grade 12, but proficiency in French is now by far weaker than in Arabic for almost all public school students. Some of the top tier national private school students end up with good knowledge of French because they will have studied additional subjects in that language, in contrast to the public-school students. They will also have had better quality French language teaching because the schools are managed better, and supervision is more effective. French is now rarely present in adult alphabetization classes which are almost exclusively in Arabic except in some situations where students, men in particular, demand French classes because they need to have some knowledge of the language to handle some machinery and/or to understand some of the French technical vocabulary. For the same reasons, admission to vocational schools requires some basic French literacy. Next to problems of reduced literacy in French, there is an interesting phenomenon to be observed in many Moroccan professionals and government executives who are highly literate in French usually or in another foreign language. These are highly sophisticated individuals with high positions of responsibility in society who cannot at all function in MSA because all of their education was in French, having studied either abroad or in one of the foreign-government private schools. Thus, often, CEOs of public agencies or at the head of very successful companies or even government ministers are caught in situations where they have to make a public speech or respond to a member of parliament’s or a journalist’s questions, and they find themselves unable to communicate in MSA or even in an educated register of Moroccan Arabic with technical vocabulary necessarily borrowed from MSA.

3.5 Spanish Second Literacy in the North Spanish used to be a second language in Morocco because it was the language of the North, the part of the country that was under Spanish occupation. Saharan provinces in the south also were occupied by Spain, and Spanish was the dominant foreign

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language, but these were military zones with little urban development. Many years after Independence in 1956, official government documents such as national ID cards, passports, drivers’ licenses, and official government registers had to be trilingual in French, Spanish, and Arabic. Mass media and public signage had to be provided in Spanish in Tangier and in all the northern part of the national territory. Northern Darija, i.e., Spoken Moroccan Arabic in the North, was very much impacted by Spanish influence and code-switching was naturally between Darija and Spanish. After Independence, Spanish schools progressively changed to become Moroccan except a few institutions that were kept for resident Spanish or other foreign nationals and were partly open to a few Moroccans. As Arabic and French became the first school languages, Spanish and English were offered for a second language option starting in Grade 10, and Spanish was “naturally” the most common choice in the beginning of the independence era, changing slowly to be replaced by English as in the rest of the country. Second literacy in the north of Morocco has thus changed gradually from Spanish to French. Nevertheless, given that Spain is a close neighbor and the first or second most important economic partner, Spanish is still doing reasonably well in Morocco. Approximately 5000 children are enrolled in 11 Spanish schools in Moroccan cities in the north but also in other parts of the country, and about 19,000 students are still opting for Spanish as a second foreign language in secondary schools (see Fernández Vítores & Benlebbah, 2014; Le Matin, 2020; Yabiladi, 2006). Spanish TV channels are more popular in the North and in the Saharan provinces than in any other part of Morocco. Being literate in the north still involves a knowledge of Spanish to read road signs and names of shops and businesses and to be able to communicate more easily with Spanish-educated people who use many Spanish words and phrases in their speech.

3.6 English, the Literacy of Globalization, Business, and Technology English presence in the Moroccan linguistic ecosystem has been gaining ground rapidly, especially in the last three decades with the development of the World Wide Web. While surfing the WWW is possible and productive in Arabic and in French, more and more people have sought to become part of the small elite literacy group that could have access to the huge amount of information available through the use of English in science and technology as well as international business. English as the lingua franca of globalization is becoming more and more of a reality in Morocco. A notable presence of English among Moroccans started early on for a very small group of citizens “protected” by treaties signed between the British and Moroccan governments in the nineteenth century. The Right of Protection was later extended to the United States of America and several European nations at the

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Madrid conference of 1880.5 “Protected” citizens served the interests of the foreign governments and acted as liaisons between them and the Moroccan authorities. English, Spanish, French, German and other languages were thus spoken in the northern part of Morocco, which later became known as the International Zone of Tangier (Britannica Editors, 2008). The presence of American soldiers who came with WWII started transactions that saw many Moroccan civilians and Moroccan military personnel doing business with Americans, thus establishing a significant literacy community which functioned in spoken American English. A more significant source of English presence in Morocco must be its popularity as a second language option in high school since the establishment of the Moroccan educational system after Independence. Spanish, English, and German were the main options proposed to high school students for a foreign language taught about 5 h a week on average. Very soon, English became by far the most popular choice because attitudes towards English were more positive than towards Spanish or French, two languages associated with colonization. The growing school population of young Moroccans, opening up to European culture via French, a strong second literacy language, was discovering British and American culture through music and cinema, and the English language became gradually part of the daily reality of educated youth (Dahbi, 2020). More recently, Internet and social media helped propel this reality to a level of presence that makes English a serious competitor with French for second literacy status. More and more schools from kindergarten to higher education institutions offer partial or full English language instruction and use this as a powerful selling argument in their marketing campaigns (Belhiah et al., 2020).

4 Education Policies and Literacy Traditions 4.1 Arabic and French Literacy Traditions in the Public School Public schooling has been served by the Arabic and French languages fulfilling the functions of first and second literacies, respectively. These two school languages have brought their own literacy traditions to the various school programs with a clear impact on the quality of education provided. Since the completion of the Arabization process in the late eighties and early nineties, French has been relegated to the status of a foreign language taught only as a language and not serving as a language of instruction. This change resulted in the dominance of the Arabic literacy tradition in the modern school system leading to a noticeable loss of quality that cannot be explained only by the massive increase in the school population.  See a copy of the treaty accessed at Library of Congress at: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/ustreaties/bevans/m-ust000001-0071.pdf 5

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4.2 Preschool According to the World Bank, “In 2015–2016, only 43% of Moroccan children aged 4–5 were enrolled in preschool and only 27.9% in rural areas” (World Bank, 2017). In 2021, the preschool sector in Morocco is still being structured. There are five government departments in charge: national education, religious affairs, youth and sports, social development, and national solidarity, with the largest number of schools under the Ministry of National Education. There is no central coordinating body, and the largest number of schools are Quranic. Most of these schools are in urban areas, most of them have poor resources, and credentials and training of personnel in charge are inadequate (MEN, 2014). Although literacy activities for preschoolers are normally quite limited, Quranic schools get children started memorizing Quranic texts and prayers, and, at the age of five and six, the children begin learning to write by copying text, traditionally by writing over penciled letters of a Quranic text on a wooden slate called luHa, more frequently now, using chalk and a chalkboard or a slate (Wagner, 1993). Many researchers have investigated the pedagogy of msid (Quranic school) education (Eickelman, 1985; Wagner & lotfi, 1983; Wagner et al., 1986). The memory skills and the contact with written text, which children learn to respect because of its association with religious devotion and reverence, constitute the gist of the literacy gain that msid children carry with them to the modern primary school classroom. This is an important advantage for literacy acquisition as Wagner argues (Wagner, 1993). What they do not learn is the ability to read and write in the full sense, e.g., to construct their own text, to talk about themselves, to “show and tell,” to ask questions.

4.3 Primary The role of the public primary school is to help children acquire “the religious, ethical, civic and human values necessary to become citizens proud of their identity and their heritage, conscious of their history and socially adapted and active.” This is a general statement of the mission of primary education as it appears in the National Charter on Education and Training, published 1 October 2000, which continues to serve in many ways as the strategic national reference framework for education and training, notwithstanding the policies or strategic plans of the last 20 years (COSEF, 2000). As regards language and literacy, the Charter sets as an objective “the acquisition of knowledge and abilities of comprehension and expression in Arabic, with support, if needed, from regional languages and dialects” (Fondements Constants, para. 2 and Espace III, Levier 9). It specifies further that the aim is to develop “functional communication in a first, then in a second foreign language […]” to be introduced in Grades 2 and 5, explaining that “functional communication” is achieved by

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using the foreign languages for instruction of specific modules in the humanities and the sciences.6 The strategy and objectives in this national reference framework charter are well thought out and based on good state-of-the-art knowledge, but everyday classroom practice has been slow to change. About half the weekly contact hours in Grades 1 and 2 are reserved for the study of the Arabic language, more specifically to “expression, reading, writing, and grammar.” However, the overall attitude towards the task of studying language remains very formal and based on memorization. It does not include any specific strategies and techniques for teaching reading and writing. Reading, writing, and language arts in general are all perceived as part of “the study of Arabic.” Reading is perceived as the ability to read aloud and recite texts that are partly memorized orally rather than decoded from written materials. Text comprehension is not presented and discussed from the student’s point of view. Expected answers to comprehension questions are usually in the form of sentences from the reading text itself. There is rarely any meaningful interaction between student and instructor and between students about meaning and interpretation of textual material and what it means for the individual student (USAID, 2012). Observations of reading lessons generally reveal no questions at all coming from the students to the teacher, let alone questions from student to student. Even at the basic level of decoding, guidelines have promoted the whole language approach, not the phonics approach based on letter-sound matching to develop phonological awareness. If colloquial forms of Arabic are generally observed in classroom management and other marginal activities, teachers will not resort to Moroccan Arabic during the core lesson time to discuss the interpretation of a text; neither will they allow a student to use the colloquial to deal with formal aspects of the subject being studied (USAID, 2014). Vignette 1 (in Sect. 2.2 above) describes a science lesson with formal and informal interactions between teacher and students and shows how the core science objectives of the lesson are neglected in favor of formal MSA learning. What seems to have happened in the classroom in Vignette 1 is that the teacher has used the science lesson period and the day’s topic to teach a reading and writing lesson in MSA. He made sure students know how to name the parts of the thermometer and how to describe the operation of measuring temperature in MSA. He made them repeat the names of the parts, and he even translated some of the words from MSA to colloquial Arabic. He made them repeat sentences, full sentences, when they answered questions. He summarized the lesson in a few sentences that he wrote on the board which he asked the students to copy on their notebooks as a record of the day’s lesson. But students did not know about the temperature scale, high and low temperature, and how it relates to being healthy or ill. These are the science components of the lesson that are supposed to be the core of the lesson. He deals with these questions at the end of the class period, marginally and informally, using the  The Charter issued in October 1999 by the Special Commission on Education and Training (COSEF in French) has no official English translation. Quotes provided here are translations by the author and the complete text in French is available on the Ministry of Education website at COSEF, 2000. 6

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colloquial to finally have a meaningful interaction with students, making sure they go home with an idea about temperature, how to read it, and what it means medically. Thus, in this example, a science lesson period has been used mostly for formal Arabic language instruction in MSA; the core science part was offered marginally at the end of the class in colloquial Arabic and not included in the summary of the lesson that students had to copy from the blackboard and keep in their notebooks. Thus, MSA, a formal language, seems to remain separate from meaningful educational interaction. This specific aspect of the problem of education quality has generally been noted by observers, but it has not been formally investigated. When Standard Arabic is used in the classroom, the socio-educational interaction is limited to formal aspects that students perceive as external to them in the sense that they do not concern them directly and do not call for their own personal contribution to the exchange. We propose that this is where formal literacy and education quality meet, and where they diverge. By focusing on the form of the language, its “beauty,” its “elegance,” its “rhetoric,” and its sanctity as a holy language, formal schooling in MSA relegates educational substance to a lower level of interest that can be dealt with in the colloquial or in another school language. French language, as a second literacy language, which is introduced in Grade 3, builds on the literacy acquisition strategies developed by children learning to read and write in Arabic (Wagner, 1993), but it remains marginal in that it is taught only as a language and not used as a language of instruction. Thus, the lack of any real motivation for learning French begins in primary school and continues during secondary education.

4.4 Secondary The first school language in secondary school is Arabic (MSA) and the second language is French. MSA serves as the language of instruction, and it is studied as a language and a literature. French is also studied only as a language and a literature; lessons in French science terminology are offered to prepare students for studying in French at the university. The National Agency for Evaluation, affiliated with the Higher Council for Education, Training, and Scientific Research, paints a bleak picture of literacy in both languages. Their reports on the 2016 National Test for Educational Attainment (INE, 2016) and on the 2016 international PIRLS test (Mullis et al., 2017) describe a situation where Moroccan students have very low scores in Arabic and French. Their reading comprehension in both languages is much below their expected reading level. Even among the advantaged groups, as in private fee-paying schools, who manage slightly higher scores than the Moroccan average, their scores are at least ten points below the international average. A statement in the conclusion of the PIRLS, 2016 analysis report (PIRLS, 2016) makes clear the problem of deficiency in reading ability in both languages, especially in Arabic, the first school language and language of instruction. It also leaves open the question of the search for an explanation:

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Ces constats dévoilent la persistance de la faible qualité des apprentissages en compréhension de l’écrit, un domaine nécessaire pour la réussite scolaire, surtout pour l’arabe qui est à la fois une langue enseignée et d’enseignement. Ceci invite à identifier les facteurs qui empêchent les élèves de progresser et ceux qui les aident à s’améliorer. (p. 49)7

We argue here, as we did at length in Dahbi (2007), that the reason Moroccan language teaching is not successful is that it focuses on language form and teaching about the language rather than using the language class to teach language arts, critical thinking, confidence in self-expression, creativity in the use of language and all the skills and competencies that would make a child feel empowered in his/her own language. (A series of books of standards for all the levels of Arabic language arts education (Taha, 2017) is an interesting development in trying to define specific functional objectives for Arabic language arts education). A look at the language curricula in public schools in Morocco shows an excessive focus on grammar and classical literature and rhetoric, which makes the student stand in awe in front of the complexity and “the beauty” of the language of the masters. This attitude prevents the student from learning to use language as a tool for discovery and invention, for seeking information, for analyzing information and expressing opinion, for arguing and persuading. The language is high on a pedestal and cannot be handled for simple tasks of everyday interaction that one encounters at home or in school. While critical thinking is developed outside the language class in the other disciplines, it remains quite limited to the data, or the theory, or the specialized notation of the mathematics class, the biology experiment, the geographical description or the historical account. The wide-ranging, more open horizons of critical thinking that take place in the language arts class is at the foundation of good general education, useful for pursuing further studies or for functioning as a responsible citizen. The French language proficiency of secondary school students is not as good as expected of students having studied the language since Grade 3 for 5 or more hours per week. The total number of hours reserved for the French language is 1037 h for primary school, 413 h in middle school and 395 to 432 h in high school. Sixty five percent of Semester 1 students admitted at public universities place at A1 and A2 beginning proficiency levels on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages (Messaoudi, 2016). The insufficient results in the French language are not surprising because the teaching of this language is not designed to contribute in any specific way to the education of schoolchildren. This teaching is not designed to teach basic literacy skills, a function which has been taken up by Arabic; it is not a language of instruction of any of the subjects that the school offers; and it has little attraction for the majority of public-school children who see it as just an additional hurdle on their way to success. Private schools, on the other hand, use it as a marketing argument; they offer instruction in French beyond the national curricular requirements; and the fee-paying families, who are aware of the  These observations reveal the persistence of the low quality of learning in reading comprehension, an area necessary for academic success, especially for Arabic, which is both a language taught and a language of instruction. This invites us to identify the factors that prevent students from progressing and those that help them improve. (Revised Google Translate) 7

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role of French in social advancement in Morocco, cultivate in their children a positive attitude towards the language. PIRLS results are telling about the difference in performance between the majority of schoolchildren in public schools and the small proportion of private school students. PIRLS 2011 scores for public schools (representing 91% of the total) was 299 compared with an average in the private schools (representing 9%) of 425. Five years later, PIRLS, 2016 scores for public schools (representing 85% of total) were on average 340 compared with private schools (representing 15%), with an average score of 425 (PIRLS, 2016).

4.5 Higher Education The literacy landscape in public universities is quite surprising to the observer who is not aware of the history of language education policies in the country. Students who have completed their school education in Arabic and have been struggling to learn French are admitted to higher education schools where mathematics, science, technology, engineering, medicine, management, finance and economics are offered in French. There are two sets of schools in Moroccan higher education, open access schools and selective admission schools. Open access institutions (88% of the student population) offer humanities and social sciences, law, economics, and foundation science disciplines. Selective schools (12% of students) offer professional training degrees. Attrition in the open access system is high with 47% on average, (CSEFRS, 2018). In 2012–2013, the graduation rate for the 3-year undergraduate degree, after 4 years, has reached a low of 19.1% (CSEFRS, 2019). We would argue that a large part of this unhappy situation is largely attributable to a poor language and literacy education. As indicated above, the majority of students are stuck at the A1-A2 beginner level in French, which cannot allow them to read, write, and understand academic discourse at university level. This indication of the French level is available because universities have started requiring placement tests in French. No such positioning or proficiency tests are available for Arabic, but anecdotal feedback from faculty and external observers is readily available. As a colleague of the author at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Rabat once put it in a private communication, “[…] this is nothing other than illiteracy at the university […].” He was reacting to his students’ writing in response to a history exam question; many pages were filled with text that read like Arabic, showed relative accuracy and fluency, but did not make any sense in that it was incoherent, had no unity, and was irrelevant for the topic at hand. Composing has always been highlighted as Moroccan students’ weakest skill in any of the languages that they use. The language teaching pedagogy that starts in primary school focusing on form and neglecting use and meaningfulness continues through secondary school with a focus on the study of classical poetry and rhetoric in Arabic and literature in French. Composition and the many arts of communicating through writing are outside the scope of this teaching. At the university, nobody questions students’ ability to use Arabic for academic purposes. It is not tested, and it is

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generally not taught any further. One “remedial” reaction to the unsatisfactory level in French at the university is the introduction of support courses, especially of “science terminology,” basically technical word lists and expressions, not an adequate means for developing communicative skills in academic discourse.

5 Conclusion This chapter has put a special focus on what it considers the most important issue that Morocco needs to deal with at the present time; it is the question of the relation between school language and the quality of education. Since Independence in 1956, Morocco has spent a lot of energy and resources on what language to choose for education and for public life, and the questions of language education objectives to be pursued have remained largely unanswered. With the illiteracy and schooling indicators improving rapidly, will the country now manage to provide quality literacy in the public school system by promoting new attitudes towards school language? Identity and nationalist functions in language are important, but educational and cognitive functions are vital for social-economic development. Teaching the Arabic language needs to focus more on educational intended learning outcomes, not on perpetuating various oral traditions through memorization, recitation, and repetition. Reading and writing are tools for the development of literacy and the skills of analytical and critical thinking necessary for the acquisition of scientific competencies. Arabic language teaching, and other language teaching in general, should help to socialize schoolchildren at various ages in the academic discourses of scientific inquiry and critical thinking. The citizens who are linguistically empowered in the Arabic language are the ones who are going to help promote the language and to attain new levels of excellence. Linguistic empowerment implies the ability to do things with language that are new and creative and that are allowed to break with tradition when necessary. The language arts of reading and writing need to be promoted as disciplines to include in the training of language teachers and as subjects of study and research in higher education institutions.

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Literacy Education in Multiple Languages and Scripts in Eritrea Yonas Mesfun Asfaha and Saleh Mahmud Idris

Abstract  Multilingual basic education in Eritrea is provided in nine languages written in three scripts. The origins of the language policy are traced to colonial, missionary and independence movement experiences. After outlining the historical background, this paper describes the orthography development and curriculum and textbook design efforts conducted by the Ministry of Education in Eritrea. Despite the success in writing and standardizing all the officially recognized languages in the country, the multilingual education policy has faced some implementational challenges, including some resistance to home language education. Learning achievement results in core learning areas show low levels across the basic education system. Critical assessment of the multilingual education policy also reveals the need to re-evaluate the conceptions of language, language boundaries, and language use approaches in the policy. Implementation of the multilingual education policy can be improved by considering insights from cross-language and script comparisons of reading development in Eritrean languages. The paper concludes with some recommendations. Keywords  Multilingual education · Literacy · Orthography development · Mother tongue · Eritrea

1 Introduction The multilingual and multiple script basic education in Eritrea, Horn of Africa, has some distinctive features that require scholarly attention. As a result of the language policy, all the nine languages of the country are used in the provision of basic education to communities all over the country. This is the result of the language policy that declares equality of all nine languages. The origins of the language policy can be Y. M. Asfaha (*) · S. M. Idris Department of Language Education, Asmara College of Education, Asmara, Eritrea e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_10

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traced back to colonial, missionary, and independence movement experiences of providing basic education in multiple Eritrean languages. To implement these multilingual education programs, educators, researchers and other professionals have studied language varieties, described the languages, created or refined orthographies, designed curriculum and textbooks, developed teacher training in home language instruction, and occasionally conducted evaluations of the multilingual education programs. The efforts have gone a long way in developing these languages and have potentially contributed to enhancement of cultural assets and identity of language groups historically marginalized over the centuries. However, this multilingual education approach has faced a number of challenges, including in the implementation of the programs. This chapter gives an overview of the opportunities offered and the challenges encountered in the multilingual literacy education in Eritrea.

2 Background Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa, shares borders with Sudan in the North and West, and Ethiopia and Djibouti in the South. With dry and semiarid lowlands and wetter highlands, the country has a long coastline along the western side of the Red Sea. Eritrea is home to nine ethnolinguistic groups, nine officially recognized languages, three scripts and two major religions of Christianity and Islam. Although the coastal areas of the country experienced Ottoman Turkish and Egyptian rule from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, Eritrea was formally defined in 1889 when Italy colonized the territory. At the end of the Second World War, the British took over Eritrea, replacing the Italians. After 10 years of British protectorate, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia. The federation fell apart in 1962, when Ethiopia declared Eritrea its 14th province. In 1961, an armed movement for independence of the country was started by the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), a group which broke away from ELF in 1970, dominated the movement and the war intensified in the 1980s. In 1991, the war ended, when the EPLF controlled the whole territory and formed a transitional government. In 1993, after a UN sponsored referendum where the majority of Eritreans chose independence from Ethiopia, the country was formally declared a sovereign state. Although there has not been a census for many decades in the country, some estimates put the Eritrean population at around three to four million (Alders & Abbink, 2005). The Tigrinya ethnolinguistic group, mainly Orthodox Christians, form 50% of the population. The next biggest group, the Tigre, mainly Muslims, share 31% of the population. The rest of the groups are Kunama, Saho, Afar, Nara, Bilen, Bidhaawyeet (formerly called Hidareb) and Rashaida. The languages of these groups are called by the same names, except for the Rashaida ethnolinguistic group, whose members speak Arabic. Around 80% of the population in Eritrea lives on subsistence farming in rural areas. The mode of life in the highlands is predominantly agricultural while in the lowlands it involves both agriculture and livestock

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breeding, with some seasonal movements of the herds or the entire communities following the rainy season. Fishing, trade (cross border), and artisanal mining are also practiced to supplement the subsistence farming activities in rural areas. The country, with an area of about 120,000  km2, is divided into six administrative regions. These are Central, Southern, Northern Red Sea, Southern Red Sea, Gash-­ Barka and Anseba regions. There are nine officially recognized languages in Eritrea (Afar, Arabic, Bidhaawyeet, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, Saho, Tigre, and Tigrinya), which are written in three different scripts (Geez, Latin, and Arabic). Arabic and the languages of the two biggest groups, Tigrinya and Tigre, are Semitic, while Afar, Bilen, Bidhaawyeet and Saho belong to the Cushitic language family. Kunama and Nara are categorized under the Nilo-Saharan language family. Recently, researchers have uncovered Dahalik, a language spoken by a couple of thousands of speakers in the Red Sea island of Dahlak (Idris, 2012; Simeone-Senelle, 2006). The ancient language of Geez serves as a liturgical language in the Orthodox Church. In addition to these languages, English is used in the educational domains and Italian in limited social circles of Italian community members in Eritrea. The Eritrean language policy in education strives to embody “an appropriate balance between the reinforcement of the learner’s own identity and cultural continuity, and the acquisition of a language offering wider communication and opportunity” (Ministry of Education, 2008, p. 39). In line with this policy, elementary level education (Grades 1–5) is offered in mother tongue while English is taught as a subject during the same period (Grade 1–5). English becomes the medium of instruction from Grade 6 onwards in middle and high school and college level education (Ministry of Education, 2011). English serves not only as the language of instruction beyond elementary level but also as a working language of public institutions such as ministries and big business enterprises (Fig. 1).

3 Origin of Multilingual Education in Eritrea The successive Italian, British, and Ethiopian rules in Eritrea had educational policies in line with their political ends. During Italian rule (1889–1941), education, limited in access to only 4 years to native Eritreans, was only basic in scope and conducted mainly in Italian, although some local languages were also used by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. The British rule of 1941–1952 was credited for broadening its scope by introducing the major local languages, Tigrinya and Arabic, in education at primary level and in producing local newspapers. Later on, the government of Eritrea in the federation with Ethiopia (1952–1962) adopted Tigrinya and Arabic as official languages of government in the federal union and introduced these languages as media of instruction in schools. The 1950s were the only times in Eritrea’s history of colonial domination and Ethiopian rule in which Eritrean languages were used in education and that Eritreans were in charge of the educational system in their country (Government of Eritrea, 2002).

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Fig. 1  Geographical spread of the ethnolinguistic groups in Eritrea (Idris, 2015)

The federal arrangement was formally abolished in 1962, and Ethiopia declared Eritrea as the 14th province under the monarchy’s administration. Tigrinya and Arabic were replaced by Amharic in education and other public offices. Gottesman (1998) argued that policies of “Ethiopianization” and “Amharization” that followed the dissolution of the federation became “one of the factors which awakened national consciousness and united diverse ethnic groups against the imperial regime” (p. 81). After the end of the federation, a long war for independence was waged by various movements against Ethiopia. During the war for independence, both the major movements, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) adopted the federation era practice by declaring both Tigrinya and Arabic as the languages for formal communication and publications (Woldemikael, 2003). The organization that eventually dominated the independence struggle, the EPLF, adopted a language and education policy that embraced all the languages in Eritrea as equal and promoted their use in education and mass media. The EPLF provided education to its combatants and civilians in areas under its control and in the mid 1970s started the Zero School, “a boarding school for orphans, refugees, children of fighters and those who had run away to join the front but were too young to fight” (Gottesman, 1998, p. 88). The educators and the graduates of this school later played a vital role in the 1983–1987 literacy campaign and the national educational program after the liberation of the country in 1991. At the center of the EPLF efforts to provide multilingual education were the textbooks in Tigrinya and Tigre, prepared by its Department of Education. Translation of these textbooks into Afar, Arabic, Kunama, Nara and Saho helped to broaden multilingual education (Dutcher, 1998). For some of the languages (e.g., Nara), the EPLF devised new orthographies in the 1980s, which was the start of these languages’ written history. After liberating the country in 1991, the EPLF, after forming a provisional government, declared an educational policy based on its independence movement

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experiences. The educational policy was declared with some authority by the provisional government because the “EPLF had been able to hone its educational policies in the liberated areas before 1991, and with the core of the organization forming the provisional government in that year, the government of Eritrea since 1993, an education policy was initiated with some degree of confidence and at some speed” (David, 2004, p. 438). The 1991 ‘Declaration of Policies on Education in Eritrea’ acknowledged the cultural diversity in the country and laid out a school plan that aimed at “founding a united, solid and an on-ward looking society” (Department of Education, 1991, p. 1). In order to provide education to all nationalities in their own languages, the policy promised further efforts in the commitment of hitherto unwritten Eritrean languages into Latin script and thus declared for “those nationalities, whose languages have no scripts, the EPLF has adopted the Latin alphabet as the medium of reading and writing” (Department of Education, 1991, p. 1). One of the most important aspects of the 1991 educational policy declaration was its calls for rectifying of the historical inequity in the distribution of education in different parts of the country. The document, thus, further promised: “to eliminate the educational and developmental imbalances existing within the Eritrean society, the EPLF, away from the policies of the colonialists, is extending learning opportunities to these corners of the country hitherto unreached” (Department of Education, 1991, p. 1). Through this policy declaration, multilingual education was consolidated in Eritrea. After three decades of independence, the country has schools in all nine recognized languages. The adult literacy program is run under the same language in education policy and thus has its programs of literacy, post-literacy and continuing education in almost all the languages in the country (Asfaha, 2015a). The literacy rate in the country is estimated at 80% (National Statistics Office (Eritrea) & Fafo AIS, 2013). The school system in Eritrea consists of 5 years of primary education followed by 3 years in middle school and another 4 years of secondary or high school education. Post secondary education, at the level of certificate is provided in technical and vocational schools, schools of associate nursing and some private educational institutions. Diploma, bachelor’s and master’s degrees are provided by a number of newly established colleges or independent institutions of higher education all over the country replacing the single university based in the capital during the 2006 restructuring of higher education in the country. According to the 2015–2016 academic year data, education in the elementary, middle school and secondary levels was provided to 583,269 students all over the country in 1424 schools (958 elementary, 362 middle and 104 secondary levels) (Ministry of Education, 2016a). Pre-­ schooling is rare and unevenly distributed in rural and urban areas. However, traditional religious education, in both the Christian and Muslim communities, provides informal preparation for regular schooling at the age of 6 or 7. Teacher training is provided by the Asmara College of Education. Teachers are also targeted to receive regular intensive trainings and workshops on new teaching materials, pedagogies, and orthographies.

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The design of the curriculum, the textbook writing, and part of the teacher training is conducted by the Basic Education Unit within the Curriculum Department at the Ministry of Education. The Unit has nine language panels that bear the responsibility of curriculum and textbook development and teacher training in their respective languages. The language panels each have a minimum of two professionals that are trained and experienced in linguistics and education. The panel experts participate in the development and revision of the curriculum, textbook preparation, language description, and creation and refinement of orthographies for their respective languages. The origins of the language policy in Eritrea are, therefore, related to the ideology of resistance to colonial and Ethiopian rule and to political ends of unifying diverse communities in the one nation-state (Asfaha, 2015b). These language policies are also related to cultural arguments of developing the languages and other cultural assets of linguistic groups in the country through the use of every group’s language in mass media and education (Asfaha, 2015b). The use of Eritrean languages in primary education is tied to the pedagogical advantages of teaching children in their own languages as the home language education policy allows members of each ethnolinguistic group to send their children to primary schools with their own language as the medium of instruction.

4 Orthography Development 4.1 Language Varieties Over the last four decades, the language policies of the EPLF and the government of Eritrea have encouraged the use of all languages in the country in education and mass media. However, some of these languages were not written or standardized, as they were barely used in schools or other public institutions before (see Table 1). This meant that educators in the independence movement and in the government had to study, codify, and produce textbooks in these languages (e.g., Nara in the 1980s and Bidhaawyeet in 2002) (Dutcher, 1998; Idris, 2014). The language panels at the Department of General Education in the Ministry of Education conducted a number of studies in conjunction with expert consultants from the Summer Institute of Linguistics. These efforts have led to the writing and standardizing of all the languages in a relatively short period of time (Hailemariam, 2002). In preparation for writing some of the languages, the Ministry of Education conducted dialect surveys as part of the efforts to develop orthographies and eventually use all the Eritrean languages in education. In 1997, the Ministry of Education sponsored a dialect survey, where language variations ranging from two dialects (for Afar and Bilen) to seven dialects (in Kunama) were described. The dialects in Kunama were identified as the only variations with potentials to creating problems in communication (Ministry of Education, 1997). In addition, there are at least three

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Table 1  Languages and scripts in education in Eritrea (based on Ministry of Education, 1996) Language Afar

Script Latin now Arabic

First written 1840 Latin 1981 Geez 1000 years ago in religious schools

Bilen

Geez

Hidareb (Beja) Kunama Nara

Latin

Early nineteenth century 2000

Saho

Tigre

1990 Latin 1983 Geez Geez

Tigrigna

Geez

Arabic (Rashaida)

Latin Latin

First used in Eritrea as MI in education 1991 EPLF schools

Share of population MT 5.0%

1941 Yemen Comm. School 1950s Fed. Admin. schools (1991–94 as subject in religious school) 2002 Eritrean schools

0.5%

100 yrs. ago 1988 1993 1890s Latin

1903 Cath. schools 1997 as a subject

2.0% 1.5%

1983 EPLF schools 1990 EPLF schools

5.0%

1889 Bible

1890 Cath. schools 1977 EPLF schools 1870 Cath. seminary 1942 Brit. Adm. schools 1952 Fed. Adm. schools

Thirteenth/fourteenth century

2.0% 2.5%

31.0% 50.0%

varieties of Arabic used in the country: the Najdi dialect is the home language of the nomadic Rashaida ethnolinguistic group (Young, 2005); the refugee returnees from neighboring countries, e.g. Sudan, speak local varieties reflecting their migration history; and in Arabic medium schools in Eritrea, Standard Modern Arabic is used. Recently, researchers have described a ‘new’ variety or language, Dahalik, spoken in the Dahlak islands in the Red Sea (Simeone-Senelle, 2006; Idris, 2012). Almost all the languages share a simple phonological structure. The Semitic Tigrinya and Tigre have CV and CVC syllable combinations and clusters of consonants are broken up with the insertion of a vowel to conform to the CV and CVC syllable structure (Raz, 1983). Occasionally, Tigre has the CCV or more precisely the tCV syllabic structure, e.g., tgasa (‘he sat down’) (Idris, 2015). The Cushitic languages of Saho and Afar have a simple syllabic structure which does not allow consonant clusters (Banti & Vergari, 2005). For example, Saho typically contains V, CV, VC, and CVC syllables (e.g., alsa ‘moon’, faras ‘horse’). Nilo-Saharan Kunama and Nara have an even simpler CV open syllable structure, especially with nouns. For example, in Kunama, the loanword kubbayat (cup) from Tigre, becomes kubbayata to become a Kunama noun (Abraha, 2005). In terms of morphology, all the languages in Eritrea have a rich morphology. For example, inflectional morphemes showing time, gender, number, etc., and many derivational morphemes are common among the languages (Idris, 2015).

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The vowel inventory ranges from five to seven, and gemination, pitch-accent, and tone are suprasegmental characteristics of some of the languages (Ministry of Education, 1997). Afar and Saho are pitch-accent, and Bilen is an accent language while Tigre and Tigrinya are non-accent and non-tone (Ministry of Education, 1997). In Saho, a dieresis (ä) is used to mark final pitch accent to distinguish feminine nouns from masculine nouns (Banti & Vergari, 2005). Kunama is a tonal language with seven tonal variations recorded while, after the revisions in 2004, the Kunama school orthography incorporated two diacritics to represent a high and a rising tone (Asfaha, 2009). These tone markers have not been adopted outside school contexts in the Kunama community.

4.2 Orthography Development The history of writing the languages in Eritrea stretches from hundreds of years back for Tigrinya and Tigre languages to two decades back for the language of Bidhaawyeet (see Table 1). For the most part, missionaries were responsible for the early orthographies of some of the languages and the more recent commitment of languages using Latin alphabets was conducted by educators in the independence struggle and post-independence periods. Although Geez based orthographies of Tigrinya and Tigre languages have been in rare use for centuries, their adoption in schools and teaching is based on the colonial experiences of missionary schools (1890–1941). Tigrinya was also further developed for a couple of decades more (1940s–1960) as a school language, along with Arabic, during the British Military Administration and the federal union with Ethiopia. The spelling method of Tigrinya reading instruction, starting with single letters or syllable symbols which are introduced along with pictures of animals and objects and progressively introduces reading of simple 2–3 syllable words and simple sentences, was first introduced during the Italian colonial period and has persisted until the present time (Asfaha & Kurvers, 2022). Subsequent improvements by educators in the independence and post-independence period have now created a Tigrinya and Tigre language medium primary education curriculum which is relatively stable compared with programs in the more recently developed Latin-based orthographies. Although a systematic analysis is difficult to find, the orthographies of all the languages in Eritrea show relative regularity in the way orthographic units represent either phonemes (e.g., Kunama) or syllables (Tigrinya and Tigre) (see Table 2). The Geez orthographies of Tigrinya and Tigre use ‘single consonant’ symbols to represent syllable-end consonants in the CVC syllable structure common in these languages. A Geez letter, or fidel, consists of a core consonant and a vowel. The seven vowels of the Tigrinya language, for example, form the columns of a traditional ordering of consonants in rows; the vowel changes in the consonant-vowel (CV) unit are indicated by a slight change of the shape of the basic symbol itself or adding a diacritic to the basic entry in each row. The table usually consists of many syllable symbols formed by conjugating the consonants with the vowels. In Tigre

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Table 2  Latin script and alphasyllabic Geez orthographies in Eritrea (based on Tesfamicael, 1986) (1) Common Afar a

Saho a

Blin a

Hidareb a

Tigrea ኣ (a)

Tigrignaa ኣ (a)

IPA a

b

b

b

b

b

በ (b)

በ (b)

b

c

c*

c

c

c

ዐ (c)

ዐ (c)

ʕ

d

d

d

d

d

d

ደ (d)

ደ (d)

d

e

e

e

e

e*

e

አ (e)

አ (e)

e

Kunama a

Nara a

b c

f

f

f

f

f

f

ፈ (f)

ፈ (f)

f

g

g

g

g

g

g

ገ (g)

ገ (g)

g

h i

h i

h i

h i

h i

h i

ሀ (h) ኢ (i)

ሀ (h) ኢ (i)

h i

y

y

y

y

y

y

የ (y)

የ (y)

j

k

k

k

k

k

k

ከ (k)

ከ (k)

k

l

l

l

l

l

l

ለ (l)

ለ (l)

l

m

m*

m

m

m

m

መ (m)

መ (m)

m

n

n*

n

n

n

n

ነ (n)

ነ (n)

n

o

o

o

o

o

o

ኦ (o)

ኦ (o)

o

r

r

r

r

r

r

ረ (r)

ረ (r)

r

s

s

s

s

s

s

ሰ (s)

ሰ (s)

s

t

t

t

t

t

t

ተ (t)

ተ (t)

t

u

u

u

u

u

u

ኡ (u)

ኡ (u)

u

w

w

w

w

w*

w*

ወ (w*)

ወ (w*)

w

gn

ɲ/n+g

(2) special* ñ

ŋ

ñ

ñ*

gn*

gn*

sh

sh*

sh

sh

sh*

ሸ (sh)

ሸ (sh)

ʃ/s+h

j

j

j

J

j

ጀ (j)

ጀ (j)

ʤ

x dh* q

x

ሐ (x)

ሐ (x)

q

ቀ (q)

(ቀ) q

ħ ɖ/d+h kʹ

z th*

z* th

th*

ዘ (z) ጠ (th)

ዘ (z) ጠ( th)

z tʹ/t+h/ʈ

ts

ts

ጸ (ts)

ጸ (ts)

sʹ

ch*

ጨ (ch)

ጨ (ch)

ʧʹ

kh*

-

ኸ (kh)

x

-

ቐ (qh)

xʹ

-

ጰ (ph)

pʹ

29

33

34

x dh*

dh*

ch* kh

2 tones* 24

kh

1 tone* 24

23

30

29

25

The language is written in Geez script. The Latin script is used for transliteration purposes only

a

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orthography, the vowels in the first and fourth column of the matrix are recognized as the same vowel with different lengths.

4.3 The Use of the Latin Script in Eritrean Languages Outside the major languages of Tigrinya, Tigre, and Arabic, orthography development was closely related with the Latin script given initial missionary experiences of writing Eritrean languages in this script as well as the fact that the policy of the EPLF for sometime revolved around adopting Latin more broadly. At one time during the independence struggle in the mid-1980s, when early educators in the struggle envisaged the writing of all Eritrean languages in one script system, they chose the alphabetic Latin and produced in 1986 the Alphabet Table which had 42 letters or “graphemes” that were to be used to write all Eritrean languages, including those which have already been written in other scripts. Of the 42 graphemes in the Alphabet Table, 26 were single letters, 3 had diacritic marks, and 13 were double letters (digraphs) (Tesfamicael, 1986). These letters were assumed to represent the phonemes of all Eritrean languages. Later on, more symbols for Bilen and Nara were added. This unified system was expected to strengthen the national unity of the speakers of the different languages (Tesfamicael, 1986). Although this plan of developing Latin-based orthographies for all languages never materialized, the efforts were later on to serve as the basis for the development, mainly by the independence movement, of Latin-based orthographies for the six languages that were relatively recently introduced to education as media of instruction. These languages were Afar, Bilen, Bidhaawyeet, Nara, Kunama and Saho. The more established orthographies of Tigrinya and Tigre used the Geez alphasyllabary while Arabic and Arabic written language had been in use even longer. Some of the basic pedagogic and linguistic assumptions which led the Eritrean educators to favor the use of Latin script system over other scripts, for example Geez and Arabic, were the following: (1) it facilitates the writing of a language with a small number of letters and allows learners to read and write in a short period of time; (2) it makes it easier to show geminated sounds (lengthening of consonant sounds which is represented by doubling the consonant), long vowels and tone variations in the Eritrean tone languages; (3) it facilitates the use of modern technology,1 and encourages and opens the gate for linguistic research (Tesfamicael, 1986). The choice of letters was guided by the principle of ‘one sound - one symbol’. In other words, for every language, every distinct ‘sound’ (‘phoneme’) should be shown by a single letter. In this way, the orthographies conform to the ‘phonological laws’ of the individual language. For instance, in one case, even the ‘variant’  In the early 1980s, the Geez script was not used in computers and not easily accessible in printing presses and type writers. Due to these reasons the Eritrean educators thought that use of the Latin script would enable the Eritrean languages to benefit from the progressive technology and linguistic research used for other languages. 1

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pronunciations of one item have been written with two different symbols: the /ɖ/ of Saho. This is one phoneme which is pronounced in two ways: (1) it is pronounced [ɽ] ‘rh’ only between vowels, and (2) it is pronounced [ɖ] ‘dh’ in all other environments. To write both ‘rh’ and ‘dh’ would go against the principle of ‘one phoneme – one symbol’. Such inconsistencies were identified and corrected during the careful phonological studies of the sounds and sound patterns of the Eritrean languages. In Saho, the ‘dh’ is now used to represent the sound in all its variations (Idris, 2014). In terms of technical feasibility, the choice of letters was also influenced by limitations that were imposed by common computer keyboards, type writers, or printing presses (Tesfamicael, 1986). In developing the orthographies of the Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Bidhaawyeet languages, the symbol diagraph ‘sh’ for the sound [ʃ] created reading difficulties by producing long consonant clusters in Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Bidhaawyeet. As a result, presently the sign “š” is used instead of ‘sh’. Similar to the case of Saho, the diagraph ‘dh’ represents the phoneme ‘ɖ’ (voiced alveolar retroflex) in Afar and Bidhaawyeet languages. The statistical tests of texts, however, showed that there are probabilities where these two symbols can be read as two sounds ‘d + ‘h’, i.e., ‘d’ at the end of a syllable and ‘h’ at the onset of another syllable of the same word. However, the current orthographies of Afar and Bidhaawyeet have resolved this challenge by representing ‘dh’ in the orthography. Moreover, in Bidhaawyeet, there are probabilities where the combination ‘th’ stands for two sounds, ‘t + h’ in addition to a retroflex ‘ʈ’, which violates the principle of ‘one phoneme one symbol’ (Idris, 2014). This is not yet resolved in the current Bidhaawyeet orthography. Most of the Latin-based orthographies consist of 20–30 consonant letters and digraphs and five vowel letters. Long vowels and consonant geminations are represented by doubling of the letters. Two of the Eritrean languages, Kunama and Nara, show tone variations. When the Eritrean alphabet chart was created in 1986, tone marks were not included. Later studies showed high reading and meaning ambiguities in these two tone languages when tones were not marked. As a result, now Kunama orthography marks two of the seven tone variations in the language, and Nara marks only one out of its two tones (Idris, 2014). Kunama school orthography incorporates diacritics to represent a high and a rising tone (Abraha, 2005) and in Nara the high rising tone is marked (Idris, 2014). From a historical perspective, the Ministry of Education orthography development efforts in some languages were not the only ones. For example, throughout its written history, the Kunama language had at least three orthographies accompanied with their respective teaching methods. In the first missionary church-based instruction, the Italian names of the letters were learned (e.g., ‘che’ for C) and children were expected to figure out the sounds later on their own. During the period from 1983 to 1991 and up until the curriculum revisions in 2004, a teaching style identical with literacy education in the independence movement was followed. The consonants were learned combined with the vowels, for example, ka, ku, ki, ke and ko (e.g., Sellasi sesa kitakko, ‘buy a goat tomorrow’). In the current revised curriculum sounds are represented by a single letter and children learn the sounds of the letters

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and not their names. This coincided with the introduction of high and rising tone diacritics and long and short vowel markers in the orthography (e.g., Selláasi sésa kitákkó, ‘buy a goat tomorrow’; Selláasi séésa kitákkó, ‘buy clothes tomorrow’) (Asfaha, 2009).

5 Social Use of Multilingual Literacy In one of the few studies on language use in Eritrea, Cooper and Carpenter (1976) found that Arabic, Bilen, Tigre and Tigrinya ‘compete’ in the market place in Keren, a small town in north central Eritrea. This multilingualism is evident in many towns and agricultural centers where a number of ethnolinguistic groups reside in adjacent districts. Hailemariam (2002) observed a greater mismatch between school and home language use in towns where multiple languages are spoken than in villages. In towns such as Keren, where the school language is usually different from home language, more respondents reported using their first languages with family members and friends at home and another language at school. In contrast, many of the students from the villages, where commonly home and school language is one, reported frequent use of their home language which was also the language of the school (Hailemariam, 2002). In spite of the fact that the language policy does not recognize official languages, Tigrinya and Arabic are commonly used as working languages in the country (Asfaha et al., 2006). Tigrinya and Arabic, as de facto working languages, and Tigre, as the language of the second largest group in the population, dominate the language landscape in the country. The majority of public, commercial and inter-group communications are done in Tigrinya and Tigre. The more formal functions in public offices are mainly done in the Tigrinya language. Despite its popularity among Eritreans, the use of standard Arabic is limited to Eritrea’s political, business and religious elite. The common use of Arabic in the general public is restricted to the more colloquial use of the language in the market places and other less formal contexts. The multilingual scenario in Eritrea also includes wider regional languages. As a result of education in Amharic (Ethiopian language) during Ethiopian rule of the country and as a result of mass expulsions of Eritreans from Ethiopia following the border war with Ethiopia (1998–2000), many adults in today’s Eritrea speak Amharic (written in Geez script) as a first or second language. The mass literacy campaigns conducted during the last military regime in Ethiopia, the Derg, included Eritrea and Eritrean languages of Tigre and Tigrinya (McNab, 1990). Arabic has significance as a regional language spoken by repatriated refugees, who have lived in neighboring Arab countries, mainly Sudan, where they acquired Arabic as a second language. English enjoys the status of a working language of institutions of higher education and commerce, such as banks and corporations. Nevertheless, English language proficiency among college students and public workers is low, and the language’s use is limited to formal written domains. Most of the oral

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communications, including in work places and formal meetings, are carried out in Tigrinya or any other Eritrean language. The use of written language reflects the diversity in languages and scripts in the country. Major urban centers reveal a print atmosphere where street signs, names of businesses, and public offices are written in three languages (Tigrinya, Arabic and English) and three scripts (Geez, Arabic and Latin). A similar mix of languages and scripts is usually applied to produce handwritten signs and announcements on notice boards and graffiti on walls. For example, the ubiquitous ‘smoking is not allowed’ sign commonly appears in the three languages (Tigrinya, Arabic and English) and three scripts (Geez, Arabic and Latin). A computer printout has even become a standard item available at stationary shops for sale. In a survey of literacy use and attitudes (Asfaha et al., 2007) conducted among speakers of the nine languages in Eritrea, the majority of respondents said they engaged in literacy activity only ‘now and then’ and a small part, especially the higher educated in urban regions, reported ‘frequent’ use of literacy. The use of literacy is evident in different domains of life that can be categorized as work, entertainment, functional, religious and citizenship related literacy. Literacy activities in the domains of work, entertainment and functional literacy are higher than those in the religious and citizenship related activities. Religious texts are in the classical languages of Geez and Arabic and rarely in other Eritrean languages. Proficiency in these classical languages is limited to religious leaders and is rare among the general public. A simple observation of the print atmosphere in the country reveals that there is greater availability of written materials in Tigrinya, spoken by half of the population, which is widely used in public offices, commerce and inter-group communication (Asfaha  et  al., 2008). Those literacy activities, classified as workplace, functional and entertainment, are usually conducted in Tigrinya language and Geez script as most of the limited print material is only available in Tigrinya using Geez script (Asfaha, 2015a). The survey by Asfaha et al. (2007) revealed the prevalence of Geez script and the lack of any meaningful application of the Latin script-based orthographies of the six Eritrean languages in the different domains of life. The Eritrean languages written in Latin script are barely used outside the schools in Eritrea. Despite this, current policy promotes Latin-based orthographies for use in education for six of the languages in Eritrea. According to education officials, it might be possible that with time and more resources spent on developing the languages, the Latin script-based orthographies in the country are likely to gain more visibility and eventually greater acceptance (Asfaha et al., 2007). Becoming literate in a language, as the Eritrean mother tongue education policy aims to do, only leads to a solid and permanent use of literacy if this very language is publicly available, i.e., if there is something to read in it (Kumar, 2004). The limited availability of written language especially applies to the Eritrean languages that use the Latin alphabet, i.e., Afar, Bidhaawyeet, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho. Literacy is valued highly in Eritrea. Its significance is usually explained in its value as a basic skill in an age of technology and information, its importance in

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communicating with people nearby and far away, and the material benefits it brings to those who have the skills (Asfaha et  al., 2007). The perception behind these expressions of values and benefits of literacy corresponds to the view of literacy as a powerful tool that brings positive effects to all who acquire it in whatever socio-­ cultural context. According to this view, literacy is said to provide independence, rationality, balance, and many similar effects (Ong, 1982; Olson, 2006). The official discourse on literacy in Eritrea, expressed in language and education policy documents, reveals similar perceptions. Although on average literacy is valued highly, there are some significant differences in the way the different ethnolinguistic groups value literacy. The values of literacy seem to diminish with communities that have enjoyed literacy education for some time and perhaps have not been able to meaningfully reap the promised benefits of literacy (Asfaha et al., 2007; Asfaha, 2009). Literacy does not always translate into the better income or the upward mobility in society that many associate it with (Verhoeven, 1994). Although other related studies exist, the Asfaha et al. (2007) sociolinguistic survey of literacy and script attitudes can be considered as an implicit evaluation of the multilingual education policy. More than 75% of the participants approved the languages and scripts that the policy prescribes in education. These findings could be of use to policy makers and educators who are concerned with raising public acceptance of the languages and scripts in primary education and society at large since they indicate where the least support for certain scripts comes and highlight the reasons for some of the poor acceptance rates. Further sociolinguistic investigations of language and literacy use and attitudes, in addition to language use and language proficiency data, may prove useful to language and orthography development planners (Hailemariam, 2002) with a potential to improve formulations and implementations of language policies in education, ultimately leading to improvements of literacy levels in the country.

6 Literacy Curriculum After describing the multilingual education policy, the development of orthographies and the sociolinguistics of multilingual literacy, the chapter moves to the implementation of multilingual literacy education in the country by describing the curriculum, the teaching materials, and instructional approaches adopted. The two most important aspects of literacy teaching are the content of the instruction and the methods used to teach the content (Hurry, 2004). Deciding on these two interrelated facets is rarely a straightforward issue and often generates heated debates, mainly in the English speaking world, about phonics versus whole language approaches. The phonics approach emphasizes the sound-letter correspondences that would enable children to decode words and eventually texts (Evans et al., 2004). The differences between the whole language and phonics approaches are attributed to differences in perceptions of reading as top-down or bottom-up, to assumptions about the learning processes and the role of the teacher.

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Choosing one or the other approach means deciding on the content of the curriculum. While a phonics based curriculum might include teaching letter-sound correspondences, recoding words and non-words, and blending of sounds or syllables, a whole language teaching approach on the other hand might be centered around ‘reading’ meaningful texts, i.e., content materials such as stories that a child or a group of children could ‘produce’ on the blackboard. Although it may be hard to find a consensus on the debate, there is growing evidence that suggests a fair amount of phonics teaching combined with whole language methods might be the most effective. It is no longer viable for the proponents of a whole language approach to argue that letter-sound correspondences are not important; supporters of phonics have also to see the benefits of “contextualization and a certain amount of ‘metalevel’ teaching” in phonics decoding (Hurry, 2004, p. 570). The debate on phonics versus whole language approach in literacy teaching was one source of influence on the literacy curriculum in Eritrea as it was part of the discussions at the Ministry of Education in 2004 during curriculum revisions at the national level. The phonics traditions of teaching reading in Eritrea were challenged by the new whole language input from the language panels and expatriate experts from the Summer Institute of Linguistics International and other consultants. For example, Kjertmann (2003, p. 60) suggested “a shift from the present skills approach with emphasis on a technical-alphabetic entrance to the written language, to the whole language approach, the early use of reading and writing linked to children’s real life situations.” On the other hand, Wright (2002) warned against overlooking traditional instruction methods such as “chanting”, which in a literacy instruction context might be leaning towards skill based drills. The current literacy curriculum in Eritrea has to acknowledge other traditions or sources of influence. Primarily, the influences of traditional instruction, exemplified by the ubiquitous presence of teaching methods such as “chanting after the teacher”, need to be fully understood (Wright, 2001). Secondly, we have to acknowledge that the current education system is based on the educational programs stemming from the independence movement whose main actors after the country became independent were responsible for the design and running of the curriculum (Gottesman, 1998). The third line of influence concerns the colonial and missionary traditions of literacy education which laid the initial ground for modern education in Eritrea (Asfaha & Kurvers, 2022). The traditional literacy instruction methods in turn were influenced by Christian and Islamic literacy practices such as the Coptic Church’s instruction by priests and the Islamic Khalwa that pre-date colonial and missionary education and that still persist even today. The management of the literacy curriculum rests with the Unit of Basic Education at the Ministry of Education. The unit’s nine language panels produce the primary schools teaching materials in their respective languages. In addition to deciding the content of the curriculum, the language panels deliberate on methodological approach to be adopted and until recently on the nature and implementation of teacher education for teachers in the primary schools in the nine languages of the country. For example, the debate on phonics versus whole language approach mentioned earlier was one of the tasks that had to be handled by the Unit of Basic

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Education. There were heated discussions at the Unit of Basic Education during consultation workshops with teachers on the whole language approach before the Unit decided in favor of combining the more traditional drill oriented phonics teaching method with the whole language approach. The reason why the Unit chose this combined approach of phonics and whole language was because teachers and some language panel members showed resistance to an exclusive whole language approach replacing the traditional phonics approaches. Educators criticized the whole language method’s emphasis on language (a skill ‘that children already know’) and they felt that children would progress only slowly in memorizing and reciting the letters in the alphabets and the syllable symbols (Asfaha, 2009). The revision of the primary education curriculum in 2004 meant the designing of new teaching materials to replace the existing textbooks that date back to the time of literacy instruction programs in the independence movement. The new curriculum incorporated extended content materials and new teaching approaches and styles. Ever since after the curriculum revisions in 2004, literacy instruction materials include an alphabet book, a work book and a reading or story book, and teacher guide. The Ministry of Education insists that a mix of skills and whole language approaches guide the preparation of the books compared to skills oriented traditions that have dominated textbooks in the past. Teachers are encouraged to use learner centered activities outlined in the teacher guide.

7 Evaluations of the Literacy Curriculum According to the Ministry of Education (2004), the new curriculum attempts to go beyond the old one’s emphasis on memorization and decoding of simple words. The new curriculum views reading not only as a technical skill that students have to be drilled in but also as a way of further developing their language skills and independent appreciations of literary and informational texts. Elementary school students are expected to develop skills in “speaking, listening, reading, writing and other language skills” beyond memorization of “letter sound correspondence and decoding single words” (Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 2). Even as early as Grade 1, students are expected “to develop their oral language and communication skills and move to becoming independent readers and writers” (Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 2). The Ministry of Education (2004) stated specific literacy outcomes at the end of Grade 1 in relation to print awareness, phonological awareness, letter sound correspondences, decoding and comprehension and as a result of comprehension ask questions, retell stories, infer and predict, and in terms of writing produce connected and meaningful writing (Ministry of Education, 2004). But are these learning outcomes observed on the ground? What are the learning achievements of Eritrean students in terms of language and literacy and other skills? What are the results of all these efforts stretching for decades in developing multilingual education policy, designing orthographies, preparing curriculum, textbooks and other supplementary teaching materials, and in preparing teachers? Does the

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observed curriculum in classrooms correspond with that in curriculum documents of the Ministry of Education? These are some of the questions tackled by a number of evaluation reports and academic papers which have studied the achievement levels, instruction methods, teacher training, and other areas of language and literacy education. This section will outline some of the findings of these studies by focusing on insights around implementation of the language policy, learning achievements and comparisons of literacy development across scripts and orthographies in the country.

7.1 Appraisals of the Language in Education Policy The multilingual education policy in Eritrea has been the focus of a number of studies. In a historical examination, Gottesman (1998) studied the 1983–1987 EPLF literacy campaign, through interviews with 38 ex-fighter educators, and reconstructed the ‘inversions’ in roles as teachers and students the young fighters assumed in advancing “mass literacy, social change and national liberation” (p.  254). Gottesman (1998) showed how the fighter-teachers “developed a reflective praxis in which they became students of the communities as well as their teachers” and how this made the fighters “legitimate voices in educational, social, and political matters, so as to make their teaching ability most effective and their knowledge most useful” (p. 254). After liberation of the country in 1991, these teachers formed the core of the educational institutions and the literacy campaign they led can be considered as one of the formative experiences of the Eritrean multilingual educational system (Gottesman, 1998). In 1996, the Ministry of Education sponsored a study to evaluate the mother tongue program. The study, which included 42 schools from eight languages (except Bidhaawyeet) and which was based on interviews with school heads, teachers, parents and students, classroom observations, concluded that the mother tongue education program has been gradually gaining acceptance with 60% of the schools visited choosing the local language as a medium of instruction (Ministry of Education, 1996). Two decades later, a similar evaluation of the ‘mother tongue’ education by the Ministry of Education assessed the acceptance of the policy among the speakers of the different languages, including approval of the adopted script to write their language. A majority of respondents, around 73%, accepted the script of their home language or ‘mother tongue’. A slight majority, 53%, agreed that their home language should continue as a medium of instruction in elementary education. Another majority of respondents, 61%, accepted that the use of home language in education has increased school enrolment in their areas. These figures might be considered as a strong approval of the language policy. However, the study pointed out to some implementational challenges and ‘mismatches’ between policy and practice. The lack of any meaningful application of the Latin-based orthographies in the wider social context was one of the complaints coming from speakers of languages that use this script. The practice of translating curriculum materials from the Tigrinya

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language original into the rest of the languages was also seen as problematic. One of the serious mismatches between policy and practice relates to the supply, qualification and experiences of teachers. There is a need for supply of teachers with relevant pedagogical training and appropriate exposure to the language and orthography, and their numbers should be proportionate to the demand (Ministry of Education, 2016b). Some of the objections to home language education from members of the language communities are based on the perceived socio-economic disadvantage that might arise from learning in one’s minority language in a rapidly globalising world (Hailemariam, 2002). During the 1990s, some communities demanded that their schools teach the dominant languages (Tigrinya and Arabic) in addition to the home language and compulsory English. This meant that many hours of school time had to be dedicated to language teaching, amounting to a “demanding cognitive load” for students (Dutcher, 1998, p. 268). In a sociolinguistic study of language use and education, Hailemariam (2002) combined data on language use in communities and schools with a critical analysis of the language policy in Eritrea. The researcher analysed policy documents, surveyed language use and attitudes of school children (N  =  359) and their parents (N = 84), and observed teachers deliver lessons in eight classrooms in different parts of the country. The study assessed the implementation of the language policy by analyzing language use in and around schools by students, parents, and teachers. One of the major findings was that language policy provisions and language use and values matched to different degrees with different ethnolinguistic groups. For example, the study revealed that the classroom behaviour of teachers and the reported language values of the Kunama community matched more consistently with the visions of the language policy. Hailemariam (2002, p. 266) noted that in Kunama communities “language-related variables, like the home language, the dominant language, and the preferred language of instruction together with the language of support expressed in parental attitudes, all showed internal consistency” suggesting support for the language policy (see also Hailemariam et al., 1999). In an examination of classroom implementation of the multilingual curriculum, Wright (2002) analysed, through an interpretive ethnography, the social, cultural and historical contexts of English language and literacy teaching and learning. The study showed that teachers practiced traditional teaching methods such as ‘chanting after the teacher’ despite the recommendations of the English curriculum and advices during their training to avoid local teaching practices. Although the findings indicated “incompatibilities between the recommendations of the English curriculum and teachers’ beliefs about appropriate classroom methods”, Wright (2002, p. 7) has found that teachers supported English language teaching in the country. The deviation from prescribed curriculum observed by Wright (2002) is partly encouraged by the openness to the use of multiple languages in classrooms in the current language in education policy. At least in the mother tongue or home language elementary education, the multilingual education policy has, for example, sometimes allowed the use of languages other than the medium of instruction in the classroom (Asfaha, 2013). At higher levels, the multilingual policy has opened the

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opportunity for minority language speakers in particular to write and standardize their languages by preparing curriculum, textbooks and supplementary readings. This amounts to opening of ‘ideological and implementational spaces’ for speakers to use and develop their languages (Asfaha, 2013). However, this same liberal language policy has yet to recognize as new additional languages the recently described Dahalic variety and some of the Kunama dialects with such big variations that some have labeled as “mutually unintelligible”. This reluctance to recognize these varieties as languages is probably a relic of the colonial ideology of naming and enumerating of languages where an essentialist and boundary-defined perspective of languages predominated (Asfaha, 2020).

7.2 Assessment of Learning Achievements The education system in Eritrea routinely conducts different kinds of assessments at different levels. These include school-based assessments, national examinations which determine learners’ progression from one level to the next in the school system, and systemic assessments which indicate student achievements (Ministry of Education, 2016c). There is little information on the country’s participation in regional or global assessment surveys. One of the major assessments conducted in the country, the Eritrean Reading Survey in 2002, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, assessed reading skills in all the local languages (except Bidhaawyeet) and English. The survey measured pre-reading skills such as phonological, awareness, print awareness, and reading skills such as reading rate, reading accuracy rate, and reading comprehension of 2400 students for the tests in the Eritrean languages and 1200 students for the English language tests (Walter & Davis, 2005). Results showed that reading in the local languages progressed slowly in Grade 1. Even in the subsequent grade levels the study covered, i.e., grades 3 and 5, reading skills remained poor. English language reading results were also low across all grade levels in the study. The report concluded that despite the success of establishing a national education system in a short period, primary education in Eritrea was not equipping children with the literacy skills needed for education beyond the primary schools. The results showed that the reading skills (in the local languages and English) of students were lagging two to 3 years behind grade-level national standards (Walter & Davis, 2005). The study recommended changes to the curriculum, in particular to the Grade 1 curriculum. The other sources of information on learning achievements have been the series of assessments from the Monitoring Learning Achievement (MLA) project which is “a joint UNESCO-UNICEF international educational assessment initiative which aims at obtaining information on the ‘effectiveness of basic education provision in terms of actual learning achievement’” (Ministry of Education, 2016c, p. 21). So far, three MLA assessments have been conducted: the first one in 2001; second in 2008 and the last in 2016. Since the design and outcomes point to a similar general

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direction, the focus here is the third MLA assessment that covered three core learning areas: home language, English language, and mathematics. The study sampled 3074 Grade 3 students (9–13 year old) from a selected 59 schools and another 2812 Grade 5 students (10–15  year old) from the same 59 schools (Ministry of Education, 2016c). The MLA assessment put forward two performance targets: the Minimum Mastery Level target which “requires 80% of learners to attain 50% or above on minimum learning competencies” and the Desired Mastery Level which “requires 50% of the learners to attain 70% or above on minimum learning competencies” (Ministry of Education, 2016c, p. 19). Analysis at the national level revealed that the Minimum Mastery Level was achieved in none of the learning areas of home language, English language and mathematics. However, learners did better in home language assessments with around 44% of Grade 3 and Grade 5 learners attaining the Minimum Mastery Level (Ministry of Education, 2016c). In addition to the low learning achievements, the MLA assessment has revealed regional and ethnolinguistic disparities among the different groups in the study. On average, the central region, where the capital Asmara is located, reported results relatively closer to meeting the threshold scores of the two achievement targets (MML and DML) compared to the other five regions of the country (Ministry of Education, 2016c). Although gender disparities were negligible, urban schools outperformed rural schools. The language-related imbalances among Grade 3 and Grade 5 learners were reported as follows: There exist disparities in achievement among students using different learning languages in both grades. In both grades, on average, poor achievement has been particularly observed among students using Tigre, Bilen and Nara languages. Students using Tigrinya medium of instruction did comparatively better in both grades. (Ministry of Education, 2016c, p. 7)

These languages (Tigre, Bilen and Nara) are among those whose speakers have shown lower acceptance of the home language education in their respective languages (Asfaha et al., 2007).

7.3 Literacy Development across Eritrean Languages In studies of cross linguistic comparisons of early reading, the psychological grain size theory in particular, grain sizes of reading and orthographic transparency were used to explain developmental differences in decoding strategies of early readers in alphabetic orthographies across European languages (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005; Seymour et al., 2003). Children learning to read in opaque orthographies with complex (syllable) structured languages (e.g. English) lagged behind readers in transparent orthographies with simple language structure (e.g. Finnish). Reading strategies in English as a result are forced to be based on small as well as large grain sizes while in Finnish the small unit decoding works well in most cases. In consistent orthographies (e.g. Italian), children heavily use a grapheme-phoneme recoding

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strategy while in inconsistent orthographies (e.g. English) this small grain size strategy has to be augmented with reading of larger size units such as rimes and onset and even whole words. The cost of having to rely on different sizes for decoding is reflected in the slower reading development in English. Asfaha et  al. (2009b) applied the grain size theory in understanding reading results of four Eritrean languages. The languages of Tigre and Tigrinya use alphasyllabic Geez script while Kunama and Saho use alphabetic Latin. As expected, children in the syllable based orthographies did better in word reading and spelling. When the two languages with Latin orthographies (Kunama and Saho) were compared, there was an advantage for the syllable based teaching of Saho (e.g., da instead of ‘d’). Specifically, a large unit teaching of a small unit orthography of a language with simple syllabic structure appears to work better than a phoneme based teaching of Latin orthography. In a follow up research study (Asfaha et al., 2014), the syllable advantage was further observed when analysis of children’s spelling errors in Saho and Tigrinya revealed that significantly more letters or fidel symbols representing syllable beginning CV combinations were correctly spelled than letters or fidel symbols representing syllable end single consonants, suggesting faster acquisition of spelling of CV fidel or Saho letters than those representing syllable-end single consonants. Similarly, Estifanos et  al. (2017) have found that there is significantly lower correct spelling of Tigrinya pseudo words with heavy syllables (i.e., containing syllable end consonants) than words with no or less heavy syllables. The findings have important implications for the teaching and design of Latin orthographies and their comparison with the Geez script-based orthographies in the country. The early development of reading in these four languages barely shows the advantages of contained Latin-based orthographies (Nag, 2007) and on the other hand the numerous fidel symbols or letters appeared to have little effect on early reading development, thus weakening the popular perception that Geez fidel literacy is difficult because of the high number of letters or syllable symbols (more than 240 in Tigrinya and 200 in Tigre). The advantage of syllable based orthographies, however, disappears with more skilled readers as the differences in results between these scripts is insignificant at Grade 4. On the other hand, the push for further transparency in the Kunama orthography, exemplified by the 2004 inclusion of tone and long vowel markers and the move towards alphabetic teaching away from traditionally syllable based teaching of alphabetic orthographies, which is the case in Saho, has resulted in slower development of reading in more transparent Kunama compared with Saho. The cost of having alphabetic small grain size teaching is the slower reading development; this benefit of syllabic teaching of alphabetic orthography, however, disappears with more skilled readers in grade four. The lesson to be gained has to be that it is important to weigh the early reading development costs and benefits when engaging in orthographic reform projects. Finally, as English has a prominent role in education in the country, examining the interdependence of literacy development in this foreign language and the Eritrean languages and scripts becomes important. Asfaha et  al. (2009a) studied

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predictors of English language literacy among Grade 4 learners using language and literacy tests in four home languages (Tigre, Tigrinya, Saho and Kunama) and English. The results showed that English literacy is predicted by English oral language proficiency and first/home language literacy skills. The effect of first language script (Geez and Latin) in English alphabetic literacy was insignificant. The results indicate to the complementary functions of oral and written language skills in both home and second/foreign languages in the development of literacy in school children in the country.

8 Conclusions This chapter has presented an overview of the historical development of the multilingual education policy in Eritrea, the orthographic and curriculum development efforts that followed the policy formulations, and the results and implementations of these policies and programs. It provided discussions of some of the reports of assessments and academic studies conducted over the last few decades. The picture that emerges is that Eritrea embarked on a bold initiative to recognize and use in education and other institutions all of the country’s languages. The success in graphization, standardization, studying and preservation of the languages and the increased visibility (e.g., educational textbooks, public media – radio and newspapers) of minority languages has opened up spaces for speakers of these languages to develop and use them. This has probably increased the enrollment of students in home language education. Despite these successes, however, the implementation of the pluralistic language policy in education has faced some challenges. The social acceptance of the use of home language in education is not uniform; some languages have low acceptance. This is contrasted with a mismatch between home language and school language. It is not yet known as to what effects low acceptability (or even visibility) of home language education has on learning achievement. On the other hand, what happens to social acceptability of a language when it is used as a school language might require further explorations. The opening up of ideological spaces that was partly brought about by the recognition of all the languages in turn increased implementational spaces. This is exemplified by discussions and research, sometimes involving speakers of minority languages, on which variety or dialect to use in education, development of orthography (although the script in which that orthography is to be developed has been determined in the policy document), development of textbooks and supplementary reading materials. Throughout the history of literacy education for speakers of many of the languages in the country, these decisions were made by others and through languages other than their own. However, the challenges of low learning achievement and low sociolinguistic acceptance of the language of instruction are more pronounced in speakers of minority languages. There is a need for a synergic alignment of learning needs of minority language speakers with the opportunities the

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language education provides in terms of using and developing a particular group’s language. The design of orthographies and the methods of teaching of orthographies has to be based on insights from cutting-edge research into the process of reading development and on cross-language and cross-script comparisons of reading development. These insights may then inform decisions on teaching material design, teacher training and classroom interventions. On the other hand, updating ideas of language, language boundaries and social uses of languages might help define languages, language varieties and language acquisition planning much more feasibly and in line with current theories, which will, in turn, support the implementation of the multilingual education policy much more efficiently, ultimately meeting the egalitarian ideals of the language policy in the country.

References Abraha, J. (2005). Kunama dialects and morphology. Journal of Eritrean Studies, 4(1), 28–44. Alders, A., & Abbink, J. (2005). Eritrean beauty: The wonderful people of Eritrea. PrimaMedia. Asfaha, Y. M. (2009). Literacy acquisition in multilingual Eritrea: A comparative study of reading across languages and scripts. Aksant Academic Publishers. Asfaha, Y. M. (2013). From policy to practice: Multiple language and script education in Eritrea. In J. A. Shoba & F. Chimbutane (Eds.), Bilingual education and language policy in the global south (pp. 49–65). Routledge. Asfaha, Y. M. (2015a). English for adult Eritrea: Perspectives and practices in second language textbook preparation. In I. V. Craats, J. Kurvers, & R. V. Hout (Eds.), Adult literacy, second language, and cognition (pp. 187–198). Centre for Language Studies (CLS). Asfaha, Y. M. (2015b). Origin and development of multilingual education in Eritrea. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(2), 136–150. Asfaha, Y. M. (2020). Multilingual language policy discourses and superdiversity at the peripheries: Exploring language policy and practice in Eritrea. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 15(1), 404–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2020.1771346 Asfaha, Y. M., & Kroon, S. (2011). Multilingual education policy in practice: Classroom literacy instructions in different scripts in Eritrea. Compare: Journal of Comparative and International Education, 41(2), 229–246. Asfaha, Y. M., & Kurvers, J. (2022). Colonial and missionary contributions in Tigrinya reading instruction in Eritrea. In M. Spotti, J. Swanenberg, & J. Blommaert (Eds), Language policies and the politics of language: Essays in honour of Sjaak Kroon. Springer. Asfaha, Y. M., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2006). Literacy use and instruction in multilingual Eritrea. Leeds African Studies Bulletin, 68, 70–78. Asfaha, Y.  M., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2007). Literacy use and acquisition in multilingual Eritrea. In P. K. Austin (Ed.), Language documentation and description (Vol. 4, pp. 195–206). School of Oriental and African Studies. Asfaha, Y. M., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2008). Literacy and script attitudes in multilingual Eritrea. Journal of SocioLinguistics, 12(2), 223–240. Asfaha, Y. M., Beckman, D., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2009a). L2 reading in multilingual Eritrea: The influences of L1 reading and English proficiency. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(4), 351–365. Asfaha, Y. M., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2009b). Grain size in script and teaching: A comparative study on literacy acquisition in Geez and Latin. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 30(4), 709–724.

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Ministry of Education. (2016b). Evaluation report on the effectiveness of mother tongue education in Eritrea. Author. Ministry of Education. (2016c). Assessment report of monitoring learning achievement III. Author. Nag, S. (2007). Early reading in Kannada: The pace of acquisition of orthographic knowledge and phonemic awareness. Journal of Research in Reading, 30(1), 7–22. National Statistics Office (NSO) [Eritrea] and Fafo AIS. (2013). Eritrea population and health survey 2010. National Statistics Office and Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies. Olson, D. R. (2006). The documentary tradition in mind and society. In D. R. Olson & M. Cole (Eds.), Technology, literacy, and the evolution of society: Implications of the work of Jack Goody (pp. 289–304). Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. Routledge. Raz, S. (1983). Tigre grammar and texts. Undena Publications. Seymour, P.  H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J.  M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94(2), 143–174. https://doi. org/10.1348/000712603321661859 Simeone-Senelle, M. C. (2006). Some characteristics of Dahalik: A newly discovered afro-Semitic language spoken in Eritrea. In S. Uhlig (Ed.), Proceedings of the XVth international conference of Ethiopian studies, Hamburg July 20–25, 2003 (pp. 861–869). Harrassowitz. Tesfamicael, A. (1986). The simplified system. Eritrea Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF). Verhoeven, L. (1994). Modeling and promoting functional literacy. In L.  Verhoeven (Ed.), Functional literacy: Theoretical issues and educational implications (pp.  3–34). John Benjamins. Walter, S. L., & Davis, P. M. (2005). The Eritrea national reading survey. SIL International. Woldemikael, T. (2003). Language, education and public policy in Eritrea. African Studies Review, 46(1), 117–136. Wright, M. W. (2001). More than chanting: Multilingual literacies, ideologies and teaching methodologies in rural Eritrea. In B. Street (Ed.), Literacy and development: Ethnographic perspectives (pp. 61–77). Routledge. Wright, M. W. (2002). Ideologies and methodologies in language and literacy instruction in postcolonial Eritrea. (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). University of Pennsylvania. Young, W.  C. (2005). Rashaida. In S.  Uhlig (Ed.), Encyclopaedia aethiopica 4 (pp.  335–337). Harrassowitz. Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 3–29.

Literacy in the Polyglot Ethiopia: Towards Breaking the Quantity-Efficacy Tradeoff Abebayehu Messele Mekonnen

Abstract Literacy in Ethiopia has evolved from religious-based endogenous literacy programmes to a secular education system, which expanded from having 10 million learners a decade ago to more than 25 million learners today. This significant increase in terms of access to primary education has been overshadowed by problems associated with quality. A persistent shortage of qualified human and material resources is among the major challenges in the ever-expanding basic education sector of Ethiopia. Added to that, a chronic deficiency of context-relevant and effective curricula, teacher preparation programmes, core and supplementary learning aids as well as suitable  infrastructure are also part of the long list of obstacles  that have  continued  compromising quality of education in the multilingual Ethiopia. For children with  various types of disabilities, even provision of basic literacy still remains a critical  limitation, with the dimensions of marginalization being worse for girls with disabilities, resulting from various biases around gender and disability. Towards addressing a wide range of such issues, the government has recently  developed and begun to gradually implement an Education Roadmap (2021–2030) meant to reform the education sector in accordance with the national vision and national development goals. This chapter provides an overview of the historical account of literacy in Ethiopia, patterns of language use in literacy as well as descriptions of the linguistic and orthographic aspects of Ethiopian languages. The chapter also touches on issues around teachers preparation, current literacy proficiency levels, equality and inclusion in the education system as well as early childhood care and education in Ethiopia.  Theoretical and practical implications coupled with policy recommendations are also highlighted particularly with regards to the urgency for ensuring equitable and inclusive quality education.

A. M. Mekonnen (*) Department of Linguistics, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_11

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1 Introduction This chapter reviews and analyzes major issues related to literacy provision in Ethiopia. The chapter provides a historical prospective on education in the country as well as language use in the education system as practiced in the various historical landmarks the country has gone through. It also describes linguistic features shared across Ethiopia and provides their implications for literacy provision. In addition, the chapter explores matters related to scripts, literacy proficiency, equity and inclusion in education, and early childhood care. The last section summarizes the main issues, highlighting the need for context-relevant literacy and education programmes in Ethiopia.

2 Literacy in Ethiopia: A Historical Perspective Literacy in Ethiopia can be well described in relation to the overall history of education in the country, which has had different characteristics at various landmarks in the political history of the nation. The following are the major historical eras that are useful to describe the historical millstones of education in Ethiopia. The first is the time before the early 1900s, when traditional education was prevalent. The second is the initial period of secular education from 1900 to 1936, during which the church elites attempted to modernize education. The third period, which lasted from 1936 to 1941, can mainly be characterized by the education system that was crafted by the Italian colonials. This period was followed by the independence era, which began in 1941 and lasted until 1974. This time can be characterized by the efforts made by the reinstated emperor, Haile Selassie I, to recover and develop the country’s educational system. Then, there was a post-Imperial, Marxist era, which further reformed the modern educational system until 1991. Finally, there is the post-1991 period of the current government, which is still operational to this day. In order to provide a concise account of the development of education through these periods, this section is divided into three sub-sections: literacy through religious education, literacy through secular education, and literacy in the post-1991 era.

2.1 Literacy Through Religious Education Unlike most sub-Saharan African states, where education was initiated or adapted by colonialists, Ethiopia has had a long history of traditional religious education, provided through religious institutions, dominated by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Islamic institutions, until secular education was adopted in the early 1900s. Although the existence of inscriptions prove that literacy preceded the adoption of Christianity as the recognized religion in Ethiopia in the fourth century, at

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the time of the earliest surviving records, formal education was dominated by the church. The religious education provided by the church, which to this day is active, began with the learning of the alphabet, followed by the memorization of the first chapter of the first Epistle General of St. John in Geez, an ancient Semitic language currently being used only for liturgical purposes in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Handwriting lessons may also have begun at this time, and particularly in more modern times, some arithmetic might be added. In the third stage, the Acts of the Apostles are taught, while certain prayers are also studied, and lessons of handwriting and basic arithmetic continue. The pupils, who also study church music are later able to serve as choristers (members of a choir). The fourth phase begins with the study of the Psalms of David, which is considered an important landmark in a child’s education, being celebrated by the parents with a feast, in which the teacher, father confessor, relatives and neighbors are invited. A boy who reaches this stage is often be able to write, and might act as a letter writer for his family and neighbourhood. Other lessons in this stage include the study of Praises to God, and the Virgin Mary, the Song of Solomon and the Songs of the Prophets (Pankhurst, 1968). The higher education provided by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church involves Church music (divided into digua (a book of chant), zemare (a song) and mawaset (an antiphony), and qidasse (holy liturgy)), poetry, mathematics, history, philosophy and manuscript writing. Another field of study is Aquaquam, also known as Tekle Aquaquam, a unique style of chant performed by the church choir using Maquamiya (prayer sticks) and Tsinatseil (sistra). Islamic education has also had a significant longstanding role in the dissemination of literacy in Ethiopia. The culture of religious tolerance and equity that is found in today’s Ethiopia has its root in ancient Ethiopia, well evident in the seventh century (615  CE), when the then Christian Ethiopia warmly welcomed and sheltered the companions of Prophet Muhammed (the Sahaba) who came to Ethiopia fleeing religious persecution by the Quraysh, the ruling elite in Mecca (Feyissa & Lawrence, 2014; Najeebabadi, 2000). It follows, therefore, that the history of “Islam in Ethiopia is as old as the religion itself” (Feyissa, 2013:27), as it was manifested during the time of the prophet Muhammad’s life. It can also be deduced that Islamic education, in some form, has been spreading literacy in Ethiopia ever since the first Muslim migrants were granted safe haven in the country. However, Quranic schools began operating in Ethiopia around the eleventh century, with the provinces of Ifat and Wollo being the centers of learning, which later moved to Harar (Hussein, 1986; Ministry of Education (MoE), 1977). According to Hussein (1986), the three principal aims of traditional Islamic education in Ethiopia have been: (1) teachings and dissemination of Islamic dogma and practice, (2) training of the clerical class and (3) spread of literacy, using the Arabic language and script as well as Ajami, the written Ethiopian languages using the Arabic script. In addition to the predominant role of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Islamic institutions in spreading literacy, there are sporadic reports of literacy provision by the Falasha Communities, who identify themselves as descendants from members of the Beta Israel. Until the early 1900s, formal education was predominantly confined to the religious institutions and was provided almost exclusively to

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the children of the nobility and to the sons of limited numbers of tenant farmers and servants associated with elite families.

2.2 Literacy Through Secular Education Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the initial European missionary schools of Ethiopia were established to provide secular education. At the same time, religious-­ based education continued providing literacy, to some extent to this day. However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, both the fledgling secular teachings and age-old religious education failed to meet the needs of even the people involved in statecraft, diplomacy, commerce, and industry, which necessitated the introduction of government-sponsored secular education. The first public school to provide a secular, western style, education was the Ecole Imperiale Menelik II, which was opened in October of 1908. That same year, Emperor Menelik II established a primary school in Harar. In 1925, the government adopted a plan to expand secular education, but 10 years later there were only 8000 students enrolled in twenty public schools in the entire Ethiopia (Pankhurst, 1968). A few students also studied abroad on government scholarships. After their conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, the Italians quickly reorganized the educational system. In mid 1936, the colonial force issued an ordinance that reiterated the discriminatory principle that the newly conquered country, as in the older colonies, would have two different school systems, namely, the “Italian type schools” and the schools for “colonial subjects.” Accordingly, the existing Tafari Makonnen School was converted into two “Italian type” schools, which were the Liceo-Ginnasio Vittorio Emanuele III and the Istituto Tecnico Benito Mussolini, respectively, both reserved for European children, while the prewar Empress Menen School for girls was converted into the Regina Elena military hospital. Many other existing schools were converted to Italian-only schools, while new schools were created for the native population; these schools were widely described as institutions established for propaganda purposes rather than ones providing education. Following the Italian defeat, the country begun to build up the education sector, but the system faced shortages of teachers, textbooks, and facilities. Recruiting foreign teachers for primary and secondary schools was the primary measure taken by the government to offset the teacher shortage. As a result, the number of schools and enrolment rates began to gradually increase. As the education system developed, curriculum revisions required, which introduced a mixture of academic and nonacademic subjects. However, Amharic remained the only local language serving as a medium of instruction for the entire primary cycle, which presented a range of challenges to children who had a different first language. Before the Ethiopian Revolution in 1974, there were two institutions of higher education: Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa, formed by imperial charter in 1950; and the private University of Asmara, in Eretria, which was then a province of Ethiopia.

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With the beginning of the Revolution, the university was renamed Addis Ababa University (AAU). In 1974, the new regime received a nation having less than 10% of its total population literate. Following the Revolution, the incoming government made significant efforts to enhance literacy across the country, with particular emphasis on people in the rural areas. In line with this approach, in early 1975, the government launched two major national literacy campaigns, mobilizing tens of thousands of students and teachers and sending them all over the country for a national service. The two campaigns were the Development through Cooperation, Knowledge and Work Campaign (from 1974 to 1976) and the National Literacy Campaign (1979–91). These literacy initiatives had considerable advantages for the great majority of Ethiopian populations who were devoid of educational opportunities. Among a wide range of benefits of the literacy initiatives were: (i) the programmes enabled over 22 million ‘illiterate’ Ethiopians to become literate; (ii) they enhanced the motivations of millions of people for formal education; and (iii) about 15 local languages were reduced to writing and used as medium of literacy for the first time in a traditionally ‘monolingual’ education system (Kebede, 2005; Molla, 2008).

2.3 Literacy Post-1991 In 1991, another change in the political landscape happened, when a coalition of armed fighters replaced the Military Socialist Government. After few years in power, the new government formulated an Education and Training Policy, presumably that took a different paradigm from the proceeding educational programmes. This change, of course, has resulted in a gradual increase of public and private schools and institutions of higher learning. Currently, Ethiopia has achieved remarkable improvements in the education sector whereby the system expanded from having 10 million learners in primary education, a decade ago, to more than 25 million, today. Moreover, over the years, Ethiopia has been engaged in a highly ambitious effort to realign its higher education system in order to contribute more directly to its national strategy for economic growth and poverty reduction. As noted above, established in 1950, Addis Ababa University is the oldest and largest state university in Addis Ababa, the capital; and has been a leading center for education, research and community services in East Africa. The university is comprised of ten colleges, which include 55 departments, 12 centers, 12 schools, and two teaching hospitals, along with several research and teaching institutes, based across its 14 campuses. In 2008, the government decided to increase the number of new universities through an initiative called the Ethiopian University Capacity Building Programme. As a result, the country experienced a massive expansion from seven public universities in 2007 to 46 today. The use of local languages in education at various levels has remarkably grown during this period. The following section reviews the evolution of language use in education in the Ethiopia state.

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3 Language Use in Education Evidently, there have been varying patterns of language use in education across the historical periods discussed above. The historical account of language use in Ethiopian education system relates pretty much to the education history of the country discussed above. This section therefore explores language use in education in relation to the evolution of the Ethiopian education system over the course of time.

3.1 Language Use in Religious Education As noted above, the endogenous religious education, offered by the Ethiopia Orthodox Church used the Geez language as a medium of instruction. Although the existence of older inscriptions in the country suggests that literacy preceded church education (in the fourth century), no evidence markedly indicates the presence of an educational model that was as systematically structured as the church education before the adoption of Christianity by the country. This, therefore, could mark the Geez language as the first Ethiopian language to be utilized in a “systematic” education system. In addition to its essential role in education, the Geez language also served as the language of the people and the state in the Axumite Kingdom up until the sixteenth century (Heine, 1970; Ullendorff, 1973). However, the language, which no longer has a native speaker, is currently confined to liturgical services and medium of instruction in residual centers of church education, which endured the profoundly supplanting by the secular education since the early 1900s. As discussed above, religious education, initially hosted only by the Ethiopia Orthodox Church, was later offered in Islamic teaching centers as well. The medium of instruction in Islamic education has been Arabic, which could be regarded as the second language to be used in Ethiopian traditional religious education. Attempts to use Amharic in education began by Emperor Tewodros II (1855–1868), starting with the practice of using Amharic in writing the Royal Chronicles, which before were customary written in Ge’ez. Such activities marked a shift of language policy, which covertly promoted Amharic over Ge’ez. As a result, the status of Amharic was gradually boosted from being just an oral language to a literary language. Amharic then effectively became the successor to Ge’ez and has remained to be at the most dominant language in the county till this day.

3.2 Language Use in Secular Education As noted above, the history of secular education in Ethiopia dates back to 1908, when Menelik I Primary School was established in Addis Ababa. However, the introduction of secular education into the country was not a swift process, for it was critically opposed by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which believed that secular

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education would distort the social and religious values and norms of the society and/ or the church. Thus, this first school was primarily limited to teaching European languages such as English, French and Italian, with the belief that these languages would be important to keep the country sovereign by providing the country with elites who could negotiate the interests of the country through the so-called international tongues (Tekeste, 1990). It is also important to recognize the efforts of the church elites to modernize education, using Ge’ez and Amharic. Besides, the indigenous religious education schemes were also somehow complemented by efforts of missionaries and travelers to disseminate literacy among local communities. The expatriates used both local and European languages in the translation of scriptures and preaching of religious teachings. However, since the adoption of secular education, the pattern of language in education notably shifted to European languages in general, and to English and French, in particular.

3.3 Language in Education Before 1991 The tradition of using foreign languages as a medium of instruction, instituted before the Italian invasion, continued even at a larger scale afterwards. When the Italians left the country in 1941, English regained the status of being the dominant language at all levels of education until 1958/59, when Amharic was officially declared the of primary education (Grades 1–6). This was an immediate result of the promulgation of the 1955 Ethiopian constitution which stipulated that Amharic be the official language of the country. This language policy gave Amharic the higher status of being an academic language, and it also offered a partial linguistic and cultural freedom from the hegemony of English language and culture in the entire education system. The implication of this policy was to provide a partial linguistic and cultural relevance by bridging the linguistic, cultural and content gap between the children’s home and the school, at least for speakers of Amharic. The challenge, however, remained for speakers of other Ethiopian languages. In this respect, the policy failed to recognize the linguistic and cultural diversity of the country, which gradually yielded deep discontent and grievances among non-Amharic speaking groups across the country. The last few years of the Haile Selassie regime in particular were full of political turmoil due to opposition movements from university students and other intellectuals, in particular, and from the society at large. The causes of the opposition were both political and social. Among the various demands that students and intellectuals proclaimed was the rights to use and have recognized all ethnic languages and cultures in the country. This question is quite commonly referred to as one of the longstanding issues of the Ethiopian nationalities. The rights of nationalities in general and the linguistic rights were among the issues which were at the center of the then Ethiopian student movements. These and other basic political and social based student questions, which were widespread throughout society and the military, resulted in massive protests at Addis Ababa

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University and throughout the capital, leading to the overthrow of the Emperor from power in 1974. The monarchy was then replaced by a Marxist-Leninist military regime, which did not make any significant change to the policies of language use in the education system, i.e., both governments generally advocated and practiced monolingual educational policies. However, the Marxist-Leninist regime slightly demonstrated some level of willingness to embrace diversity through various gestures, including the use of about 15 local languages for literacy dissemination campaigns; the establishment of the “Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities’‘(ISEN) to study and make an inventory of the Ethiopian nationalities, document their ethnographic profiles, demarcate territories and generate maps with internal boundaries.

3.4 Language in Education Since 1991 As noted above, the government which replaced the Marxist military regime proclaimed a new Education and Training Policy in 1994, which, among many other aspects, put the use of mother tongues into primary education (Grades 1–8). In relation to the quality and relevance of the past education system, the government described it as follows: In the last 30 years [or more] the objective and relevance of education in Ethiopia has become questionable. Though the curriculum was broadly based on international standards its usefulness to the objective situation in Ethiopia is contentious. It is generally agreed that the impact of modern education on the day-to-day life of the society has been negligible (Government of Ethiopia, 1994:1).

This marked shift to a multilingual and multicultural system was driven by various factors. The main reason was that multilingualism, if reflected in most of public life, is the best approach towards solving the long-standing demands of various ethnicities in the country for the right to use and develop their languages cultures. Accordingly, article 3.5 of the Education Policy in particular sets out the new approach to language in education: 3.5.1. Cognizant of the pedagogical advantage of the child in learning in mother tongue and the rights of nationalities to promote the use of their languages, primary education will be given in nationality languages. ... 3.5.3. The language of teacher training for kindergarten and primary education will be the nationality language [mother-tongue] used in the area. 3.5.4. Amharic shall be taught as a language of countrywide communication. 3.5.5 English will be the medium of instruction for secondary and higher education. ... 3.5.7 English will be taught as a subject starting from grade one. (Government of Ethiopia, 1994)

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Despite such generic guidelines stipulated in the Education policy, reginal states in the federal structure have over the years adopted various patterns of language use in the education system. The Table 1 below summarises language use in the education system across the 11 regional states and city administrations of Ethiopia. Ethiopia staged a wide range of reforms, since a change in leadership emerged from the same ruling party in early 2018. In addition to various transformative activities in other sectors, the government has also approved a policy that has elevated four regional languages to the status of working federal government languages alongside Amharic, which has been the only federal working language. The added four languages are: Afaan Oromo (spoken by the most populous Oromo group), Tigrinya (used by the Tigray group), Somali, and Afar (spoken by the Afar people). Moreover, English has also been included as an official federal working language as per the language use and development policy. Table 1  Ethiopian languages being used in education

Administrative No. Regions 1. Addis Ababa

2.

Afar

3.

Amhara

Grades Grades 9–12 7–8 English (MoI) Amharic (S) English Amharic Afar (MoI) (MoI)-from (MoI)-from Amharic (S) grade 8 grade 5–7 English (S) onwards Afar (S) Afar (S)-till English (S) grade 10 Amharic (S)- till grade 10 English Amharic (MoI) (MoI) Awingi (MoI) Amharic Xamtanga (MoI) (S) English (S) Awingi (S) Xamtanga (S) Oromo (MoI) (in Oromia zones English (MoI) within the Amhara regional Oromo (S) state) Amharic Amharic (as a subject)-as of (S) grade 5 Grade Grade 1–4 5–6 Amharic (MoI) English (S)

Teacher Training (Grades 1–4) (MOI & Language) English (MoI) Amharic

Teacher Training (Grades 5–8) (MoI) English Amharic

English (MoI) Afar

English

English (MoI) Amharic Xamtanga

English (MoI) Amharic

English (MoI) Oromo Amharic

English (MoI) Oromo Amharic (continued)

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Table 1 (continued)

Administrative No. Regions 4. Benshangul Gumuz

5.

Dire Dawa

6.

Gambella

7.

Harari

8.

Grade Grades Grade 1–4 5–6 7–8 Berta (MoI)-grade 1–8 Gumuz (MoI)-grade 1–8 Shinasha-grade 1–8 Mao (MoI)-grade 1–4 Komo (MoI)-grade 1–4 Amharic (S) -grade 1–12 English (S)-upto grade 8 Amharic (MoI) English (S) Oromo (S) Somali (S)

Agnuak (MoI) English (MoI) Amharic (S) Nuer (MoI) Majang (MoI) Komo (MoI) Opo (MoI) Amharic (S)-as of grade 3 English (S) (from grade 1) Amharic (MoI)-upto grade 7 Harari (S)-from grade 3 onwards Oromo (S)- from grade 3 onwards

Oromia

Oromo (as a medium of instruction) Amharic (as a subject)-as of grade 5

Southern Nations Nationalities Peoples Region (SNNPR)

37 languages (MoI) Amharic (S) Efforts are underway to introduce 7 more local language as medium of instruction

Grades 9–12 English (MoI) Amharic (S)

English (MoI) Amharic (S) Oromo (S) Somali (S)

English (MoI) Amharic (S) Harari (S) Oromo (S) English (MoI) Oromo (S) Amharic (S)

English (MoI) 37 mother-tongues (S) Amharic (S)

Teacher Training (Grades 1–4) (MOI & Language) English (MoI) Berta Gumuz Shinasha

Teacher Training (Grades 5–8) (MoI) English (MoI) Berta Gumuz Shinasha

English (MoI) Amharic

English (MoI) Amharic

English (MoI) Agnuak Nuer Majang

English

English Amharic (S) Harari (S) Oromo (S)

English

English Oromo Amharic

English Oromo Amharic

English English 37 mother-­ tongues (S)

(continued)

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Table 1 (continued)

Administrative No. Regions 9. Sidama

10. Somali

11. Tigray

a

Grade Grades Grades 9–12 Grade 1–4 5–6 7–8 Sidama (MoI) English (MoI) Amharic (S) Sidama (S) Amharic (S)-as of grade 3 English (S)-as of grade 1 English Somali (MoI) (MoI) Amharic English English-as Tigringna of grade 7 Amharic (S)- as of grade 3 Tigringna English (S)-as of grade 1 Amharic

Teacher Training (Grades 1–4) (MOI & Language) English Sidama

Teacher Training (Grades 5–8) (MoI) English

English Somali

English

English Tigrigna

English

MoI serves as a medium of instruction, S as a subject

The promotion of mother tongue education (MTE) has generally been widely accepted by the public and political elite. However, the implementation of MTE is not without problems. As most of the languages have only recently become written languages, problems related to language- and orthography standardization, teacher development, provision of textbooks, and supplementary reading materials have overshadowed the success of MTE in Ethiopia. These and other factors have impacted the quality of education from the primary all the way to the tertiary levels. As a result, parents in various parts of the country express their concerns about the future of their children who are receiving their education in MTE. Having reviewed the massive problems associated with the practice of MTE, MoE has long been working on addressing the challenges and enhancing the quality of education.

4 Common Features of Ethiopian Languages There are more than 80 distinct languages in today’s Ethiopia. Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of four language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoisan. Ethiopian languages fall into the Afroasiatic and Nilo-­ Saharan language families. The Afroasiatic family includes languages grouped under Ethiopian Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic linguistic branches. The Nilo-Saharan family also contains a number of languages falling under various linguistic branches. Omotic languages are spoken only in Ethiopia. In sections that follow, summaries of common phonological and grammatical features of Ethiopian languages are provided.

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4.1 Common Phonological Features of Ethiopian Languages Ferguson (1976) identified eight phonological features as common properties shared by Ethiopian languages. These features are: (1) the use of the phoneme/f/ in place of the phoneme/p/; (2) widespread palatal realisations; (3) prevalent ejectives; (4) presence of the implosive /ɗ/, (5) presence of the pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and /ʕ/; and (6) Gemination; presence of central vowels /ɨ/ and /ə/; and insertion of a helping (an epenthetic) vowel between consonants. Below each of these phonological features are briefly described with examples. 1. Replacements of /p/ with /f/ In many Ethiopian languages, /p/ and /v/ are quite rare and found in loan words. In many languages /p/ is replaced with /f/. Below are a few examples from Amharic. → → →

/apl/ /pant/ /ampol/

[afl] [fant] [amfol]

‘apple’ ‘Underwear’ ‘Bulb’

2. Palatal realisations Most Ethiopian languages have a series of palatal (alveopalatal) contrastive consonants, namely, /ʧ, ʤ, j, ɲ, ʧ’/. These phonemes become allophones of some alveolar phonemes, when the latter are followed by high or front vowels /i/ and /e/. Consider the examples below taken from Amharic, where alveolars are realized as palatals when they occur after the vowels /a/ and /ə/. wətəwətə səddədə k’ət’t’a bəlla ammənə

‘he nagged’ ‘he sent’ ‘he punished’ ‘he ate’ ‘he believed’

wətwaʧ sədaʤ k’əʧʧ’ bəjj amaɲɲ

‘one who nags’ ‘one who sends’ ‘one who punishes’ ‘one he eats [is corrupt]’ ‘a believer’

3. The ejectives Most Ethiopian languages have ejective consonants as part of their phonemic inventories. These ejective consonants that are most prevalent in Ethiopian languages are: /t’ k’ ʧ’ s’/, while /p’/ is less common than the others. Below are a few examples of words having these ejective consonants: p’ap’p’as t’ɨt’ s’əhaj ʧ’ərek’a k’ən

‘bishop’ ‘cotton’ ‘the sun’ ‘the moon’ ‘day’

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4. The implosive /ɗ/ In addition to the pulmonic and glottalic egressive consonants, many Ethiopian languages have the implosive stop /ɗ/, which is common across the Ethiopian Cushitic language, used contrastively with /t/, /t’/ and /d/. Consider the examples below from Oromo. taʔa: ‘the sun’ dawa: ‘healthy’ ɗaɗa: ‘the moon’

5. The pharyngeal fricatives /ħ/ and /ʕ/ Many Ethiopian languages have the pharyngeal fricatives /ħ/ and /ʕ/ in addition to the glottal voiceless fricative /h/. Consider the examples below taken from Somali. ʕaðaw ʕala:l ħo:ʃ ħo:lo

‘enemy’ ‘stomach’ ‘grey hair’ ‘cattle/wealth’

6. Gemination Contrastive gemination is another phonological feature commonly used in many Ethiopian languages. Below are a few examples taken from Amharic. k’əna k’ənna ləma ləmma

‘upright’ ‘he envied’ ‘for/to who?’ ‘developed/well-done’

7. The central vowels In addition to the /a/, many Ethiopian languages also have one or both of the central vowels: /ɨ/ and /ə/. The examples below are taken from Amharic. ‘work/job’ sɨra zəllələ ‘he jumped’

8. Insertion of an epenthetic vowel between consonants In Ethiopian languages, consonant clusters are restricted to word medial or final positions. Word or syllable initial positions are taken by a single consonant or a vowel; and no consonant clusters are allowed in these positions. However, when clusters occur initially in the word or syllable, a vowel is inserted to break the impermissible sequence. The examples below are taken from Amharic. /sport/ sɨnt-nəw

→ →

‘ɨsport’ sɨntɨnəw

‘sport’ ‘how much is it?’

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The sentence /sɨnt-nəw/ is made of /sɨnt/, ‘how much’ and /nəw/, ‘(it) is’. When these two words are uttered consecutively, three consonants, i.e., /-ntn-/ come in the middle, which necessitate the insertion of the epenthetic vowel /ɨ/ in order to avoid the impermissible three consonant clustering in this particular position.

4.2 Common Grammatical Features of Ethiopian Languages Ferguson (1976) has also claimed that Ethiopian languages commonly share around 18 grammatical features. He notes that most of these features are exclusive to Ethiopian languages, while some of them are also found in languages spoken elsewhere. For instance, the first eight features can also be found in other languages such as Turkish, Bengalese and Japanese. The Table 2 below provides a summary of the common grammatical features shared by Ethiopian languages. Linguistic descriptions of Ethiopian languages have been carried out by local and expatriate linguists, although most of the languages still merit comprehensive descriptions. Such descriptive and theoretical studies will be the basis for writing pedagogical grammars, which are lacking particularly for many of the new languages introduced to the school system. It is also important to note that rigorous linguistic descriptions better inform the development and reform of orthographies and other learning materials in ways that make it easier for children to acquire literacy in such a multi- lingual and script context. Table 2  Common grammatical features of Ethiopian languages Shared Grammatical No. features 1. SOV word order

2.

Subordinate clauses precede main clauses

Description Subject + Object + Verb (SOV) is the most common and typical order of a declarative sentence in Ethiopian languages. In sentences containing main and subordinate clauses, the subordinate clause comes before the main clause.

3.

Gerund constructions showing series of action

Commonly, Ethiopian languages show a sequence of actions with various constructions (gerund or con verb) that have person markers attached to them.

4.

Presence of postpositions

In is common in Ethiopia languages that spatial and temporal relations are expressed using postpositions in stead of prepositions.

Example Oromo: /ʧ’a:la konkola:ta bite:/ “Chala bought a car.” Amharic: abbate simət’a ɨjəblahu nəbbər/ “I was dining when my father came.” Sidama: irbateeki itte mineeki harte ɡot’aato/ “You will go to your house and sleep, having eaten your dinner.” Gedeo: /farado i:ma gulufe/ “He has mounted on a horse.” (continued)

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Table 2 (continued) Shared Grammatical No. features 5. Quoting clauses with the verb ‘say’

Description Reporting a speech without using the verb ‘say’ is also common in Ethiopian languages.

6.

Compound verbs In addition, to simple verbs, there are verbs that are formed with the verbs / alə/‘(he) said’ and /adərrəgə/ ‘(he) did’.

7.

Negative copula

Ethiopian languages commonly employ negative markers with verbs.

8.

Singular with numbers

9.

Possessive suffixes

In Ethiopian languages, often plural markers are not used when there is a word modifying number in plural constructions. In many Ethiopian languages, as is the case in English, for example, it is possible to have possessive pronouns to mark possession. Possession could also be marked with suffixes attached to nouns. It is common that Ethiopian languages mark gender and person differently in the verb forms.

10. Person-gender pattern

11. Prefix tense

12. Root and pattern

13. Reduplicated intensives

14. Broken plurals

Example Sidama: /famaʔajja diko hari jitinoʔe/ “My mother said “go to market.”” Aharic: /arəf alə/, “he took rest”; /k’uʧ’ʧ’ adərrəɡə/, “He put (down) something.” Oromo: /ɲa:te/, “he ate”; /hin-ɲa:te/, “He did not eat” Amharic: /bəɡ/ ‘sheep; /hulət bəɡ/ ‘two sheep. Amharic: /bet/ ‘house’; /bet-e/ ‘my house’.

Amharic: /hed-ə/ ‘he went’; / hed-ə-ʧʧ/ ‘she went’; / hed-hu/ ‘I went’; /hed-h/ ‘You went’; /hed-n/ ‘We went’; /hed-a-ʧʧ-hu/ ‘You (plu.) went’ Amharic: Ethiopian languages have prefixes that /ɨ-hed/ ‘that I go’; / show person in imperfective tɨ-hed/‘that you go’; constructions. Amharic: Words in many of the Ethiopian languages can be reduced to consonants /səra/ ‘he did/worked’; /sɨra/ called roots, that carry the basic meaning, ‘work/job’; /səri/ ‘one who and a series of vowels that bring about a does/works’; /sərto/ ‘(he/it) change in meaning and the lexical having done/worked’; category of the word. Oromo: Using verb reduplication as a means of /ʧ’abse/ ‘he broke’; intensifying actions or showing frequency and repetition is also common /ʧ’a-ʧ’a-bse/ ‘he broke (something) into pieces’; in Ethiopian languages. Amharic: In many languages, in addition to With suffix: /bet/ ‘house/ marking plurals using suffixes, it common to pluralize nouns by changing home’; /bet-oʧʧ/ ‘houses’; the internal structures of the noun itself. without suffix: /anbəssa/ ‘lion’; /anabɨst/ ‘lions.’ (continued)

226 Table 2 (continued) Shared Grammatical No. features 15. Independent and subordinate present

16. Plural feminine singular concord

17. Imperative of come 18. Singulative

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Description In many Ethiopian languages, the present tense of the subordinate clause is not used independently of the main clause, but may show aspect like completion before the action stated in the main verb. In some cases, Ethiopian languages employ the feminine singular adjective, verb or pronoun to refer to a plural noun.

Example Amharic: /li-bəla yi-hed-all/; ‘He will go to eat.’

Oromo: /gagon demte/, ‘The mules went’; /gagon demani/, ‘The mules went’. /bəlla/ ‘he ate’; /bɨla/ ‘you eat’.

It is also common among Ethiopian languages to form imperatives in a regular pattern. In Ethiopian languages, inflection affixes Xamtanga: are used to mark singular form of a noun. /iefer-ā/ ‘child’; /iefer/ ‘children’; /iefer-t/ ‘crowd’.

Thus far, choice of script for newly introduced languages, for example, has to an extent been influenced more by political views than based on scientific evidence. Many of the orthographies developed also lack standardisation, particularly in representing certain phonological features such as consonant geminations and vowel length. For example, it is common in some of the languages that have adopted the Latin-based orthographies to see a word hotel spelled in various way: hoottella, hotteelaa, hotela, hootteellaa, etc. As described in the next section, in most cases, the developments of most of Latin-based orthographies were not done in a manner that facilitates the transfer of reading skills from one mother-tongue language to another and to English.

5 Scripts of Ethiopian Languages Currently, there are about 40 languages that are used as a medium of instruction at the primary level of the education system. These languages use the Geez writing system, the fidäl, and the Latin alphabet, which are written left-to-right. In the fidäl, which means “script”, “alphabet”, “letter”, or “character”, as it is used in the Amharic language, for example, each consonant has seven orders or different characters representing its combination with the seven Amharic vowels. For example, the consonant /b/ has seven different characters: በ(bä), ቡ(bu), ቢ(bi), ባ(ba), ቤ(be), ብ(b(ɨ)), ቦ(bo). The same is true for other languages that use this fidäl script. Hence, for the most part, the writing system can be considered syllabary, as each character represents a consonant and a vowel, except for the sixth order, which is sometimes realized as a consonant without a vowel and at other times a consonant with a vowel.

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The Latin alphabet is the other script that is widely used for many of the Ethiopian languages. Most of the languages using the Latin alphabets generally represent their phonemes in graphemes and digraphs, with no diacritics to mark contrastive features, except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop /ʔ/. The most commonly used diagraphs include: dh for /ɗ/, ph for /p’/, sh for /ʃ/, ny for /ɲ/, zh for /ʒ/ kh for /x/, ts for /ʦ/ in most Cushitic languages and for long vowels, e.g., /aa/. Capital letters are used at the beginning of a sentence and for proper names. In the primary cycle of the education system, children acquire literacy through their mother tongue and English as well. Children with first languages that use the Latin alphabet are expected to learn the Amharic language using the fidäl, their mother tongue using the Latin alphabet, and English. This presents a serious challenge to children in their early days of schooling. What is even more problematic is that the Latin letters used in their mother tongues represent different phonemes from the sounds the same letters stand for in the English alphabet or spelling system. In most cases, the developments of most of Latin-based orthographies were not done in a manner that facilitates the transfer of reading skills from one mother-tongue language to another and to English. For example, in most Cushitic languages, such as Oromo the letter /x/ represents the alveola ejective /t’/, in Somali the same letter represents the sound /h/, in Somali and the sounds /ks/ (as fox), /z/ (as in xylophone) and /ʒ/ as in (luxury) in English. Similarly, the letter /c/ represents the ejective affricate /ʧ’/ in many Cushitic languages and the vowel /a/ in Somal, which are different from the sounds this same character represents in English. This has been proven to be deeply confusing to children who are supposed to learn to read in at least two Latin-based orthographies (their mother tongue and English) and one syllabic writing system (Amharic). These sound-letter mismatches make it very difficult for children to quickly and effectively learn the mapping between the spoken form of one language and its written mode, which is an important foundational skill for learning to read. In addition, such inconsistent letter-sound mapping across languages has caused the transfer of reading skills from one language to the next. These issues, coupled with other pedagogical and infrastructural limitations, have negatively impacted the literacy proficiency of millions of children who are in the education system.

5.1 Teachers’ Professional Development In Ethiopia, since 2004, a centrally designed programme, referred to as Continuous Professional Development (CPD), has been introduced in a top-down fashion and implemented prescriptively across the country. However, this professional development programme has not yielded the expected outcome, as it was imposed by the government with little consideration for practical factors in the school environment (Akalu, 2016; Gemeda et al., 2013). By and large, the in-service training programme in Ethiopia, with all its positive and potential contributions, has faced various challenges, which, among others, include: contradictions between traditional

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perceptions of learning and modern teaching aspirations, scarcity of resources related to school infrastructure, and lack of adequate funding for in-service training. In order to better understand primary school teachers’ pedagogical and language skills, a READ Monitoring and Evaluation (READ, M&E) project conducted the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Competencies Assessment in 2019. Specifically, it assessed teachers’ reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills in one of the seven languages of instruction being used five regions: Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR, Somali, and Tigray regions. The results indicated that teachers’ overall performance tended to be relatively low. There tests were conducted in the teachers’ respective mother tongues, which they also teach. Significant variations were found in performance across languages, with teachers of Amharic, Oromo, and Tigrigna performing better in comparison to teachers of Hadiya, Sidama, and Wolayta. Teachers of Somali performed lowest with an average score of 40%. Furthermore, the researchers found that students from schools with teachers who had higher performance levels also scored better on an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) (American Institutes for Research, 2020). These results underscore the importance of strengthening teachers’ literacy skills in the in order to improve early learning outcomes. The results were also indicative that literacy issues were more extensive in languages that were recently introduced into the education systems, which, as stated above, have more profound limitations with their orthographies and reading instructions as well ask lack of core and supplementary reading materials and developed literature and reading culture, among others.

6 Literacy Proficiency In Ethiopia, this significant increase in access to primary education has been overshadowed by problems associated with quality. Regarding access to literacy, nearly half of all pre-primary-age children around the world are not enrolled in preschool (UNICEF, 2020). In developing countries such as Ethiopia, the picture is bleaker, with only 1 in 5 young children enrolled (ibid). Even for children who do have access, poorly trained teachers, overcrowded and unstimulating environments, and inappropriate curricula diminish the quality of their experiences, all of which require integrated interventions. A recent review of 37 private and public preschools in Addis Ababa found that all had less than adequate quality in classrooms and teaching skills; this study provides a local baseline for improvement in the proposed project (Admas, 2019). Effective partnerships with parents and community leaders are also essential in local acceptance of new programs such as preschool and level “O” classes (preparatory classes) (Dighe & Seiden, 2020). In 2010, a large scaled study, Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), was conducted in a collaborative initiative between MoE and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to assess the level of reading proficiency among Grade 2 and Grade 3 students. EGRA (2010) was developed for six local languages, in eight regions of Ethiopia. The findings of the study showed that a

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significant percentage of children assessed read very much below what was expected. The EGRA study examined children on a variety of tasks and subtasks such as phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, word decoding skills, reading fluency, reading and listening comprehension skills. Moreover, the study also looked into the relationship between childrens’ background, family background, classroom setting and community factors and students’ literacy performances. Another similar study (EGRA, 2019) was conducted more recently; it also revealed that more than 90% of grade 2 and 3 students were unable to master basics concepts of early grade reading. Such profoundly low literacy ecology is generally attributed to a wide variety of factors such as deficiency in context-relevant and evidence-­ based curricula and literacy instructions, shortage of qualified teachers and teaching-­ learning aids, social and environmental barriers, particularly to girls and those with disabilities, etc. In order to curb the literacy problems documented in the education system, MoE laid out an ambitious plan to improve access, quality, and equity within the education system in its Education Sector Development Plan (ESDP) V (2015–2020). Recognizing the implications that language of instruction has for learning outcomes, MoE outlined three primary strategies to support teachers’ language proficiency in the language of instruction. These include: (1) prioritizing local recruitment of primary school teachers to teach in national languages in order to ensure that they are fully proficient in the language of instruction; (2) providing additional preservice language training to support teachers who are not from the region in which they teach; and (3) utilizing MoE’s Teacher Management Information System to support the effective recruitment and deployment of teachers with prior knowledge of less-­ common languages to meet critical demand (MoE, 2015). More recently, the government, through MoE has developed and began to gradually implement an education roadmap (2021–2030) meant to reform the education sector in accordance with the national vision and national development goals.

7 Equity and Inclusion in Education Despite an impressive achievement in enhancing access to literacy in general, provision of basic care and education for children with disabilities still remains a challenge in Ethiopia. The dimensions of marginalization are even worse for girls with disabilities, resulting from various biases around gender and disability. For a girl, who happens to have been born into a patriarchal (and even, to an extent, misogynistic), educationally and economically disadvantaged society, life is simply unfair. In today’s Ethiopia, countless girls are still automatically subject to a wide range of inequalities, keeping them on the fringe of society (Mekonnen, 2022; Iyassu & McKinnon, 2021). A girl with dyslexia, for example, coming home from school, having endured the verbal and physical assaults that often come due to her gender; having sustained disability-based psychological and emotional anguish, would still worry about how to fit the day’s homework around the piles of house

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chores waiting for her at home. The situation of girls with severe disabilities is more agonizing. Challenges for children with disabilities include late or no identification, inaccessible schools, overloaded and unprepared teachers, and little training in teaching children with learning disabilities. Agencies committed to gender equity in education often overlook the specific situations of and added barriers faced by girls with disabilities; while those who are committed to disability inclusion and equity often fail to apply a gender perspective. As a result, girls with disabilities have limited opportunities to literacy and therefore to subsequent educational other social services. In Ethiopia, as noted above, despite some encouraging efforts in recent years (Merga, 2020), challenges regarding disability and gender parity in education are still deeply entrenched in (a) social norms; as reflected in (b) institutional constraints and (c) inadequate legislation and policies. As a result, the country has not yet lived up to its expectations in providing access to quality and equitable education for all children, particularly during the early years of their lives.

8 Early Childhood Care and Education in Ethiopia The few teachers’ professional development programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa focus more on primary and subsequent educational levels, with little or no attention to teachers working in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). This could partly be due to delays in recognition of the importance of ECCE, which result in lags in the introduction and expansion of ECCE in many of these countries. Despite some improvements, realizing adequately accessible quality ECCE in Ethiopia remains challenged for a number of reasons, including adoption of developmentally inappropriate teaching materials; use of either under- or over-qualified teaching staff; unhealthy competition among private pre-school education centers; lack of clear guidelines on the linkages between pre-school and primary education, and others. In most cases, ECCE centers are also inaccessible to children with disabilities.

9 Summary Education in Ethiopia has clearly travelled a long way, with scores of remarkable achievements and massive persistent challenges. In addition to addressing the technical and structural challenges that the education system has faced, Ethiopia needs to cherish and enrich its endogenous educational systems and integrate it with other dominant educational approaches towards devising context-relevant education system. This approach needs to start from early childhood education and care to the highest level in the formal education hierarchy. Most today’s literacy programmes, and even the first education for all goal, promoted by the development community

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and adopted in most parts of the world, including in sub-Saharan-Africa, are essentially reflections of the western culture, largely representing only a small section of the multicultural world’s early childhood (Nsamenang, 1999). This west-centric perspective is not problematic per se; but it becomes so when its universalistic claims to absolute truth deprive the majority world of the right to its own knowledge systems and practices (Moss & Petrie, 2004). It has widely been suggested that literacy (and education in general) is an effective and important strategy to address challenges around poverty reduction. Recognizing the generic benefits of the essence of literacy to children in all contexts, it is also necessary to examine the potential challenges or even harm that children in the non-western world may face when their contextual realities differ from those that inspire literacy’s transforming objectives. While it is important to underline that, not all cultural practices, in principle, are appropriate just because they conform to specific cultural values and norms, the focus of literacy-related advocacies and policies also needs to be advancing functional services that reach children in the cultural contexts in which their communities could fully participate, instead of investing further in goals that serve only a small portion of the world’s children (Lanyasunya & Lesolayia, 2001). Benefits from a high quality literacy programme do actually exist; and there need to be ways to share those benefits with all children. This can be done while respecting cultures and the wisdom gained from community members who successfully teach their children each year, passing on the important skills in that community. Evidently, culturally relevant literacy programmes could offer better insights and perspectives, drawn from rich cultures and wisdom of timeless traditions, to strengthen the existing paradigms (Callaghan, 1998). It is a universal instinctive human attribute to invest in children in recognition that their childhoods are the foundation for their adulthoods. Accordingly, all cultures, however diverse they may be, typically ensure that childrens’ basic needs are met and their initial learnings facilitated, to support survival, cognitive and personal development as well as social integration (Evans, 2002). As is the case in many other cultures, most Ethiopian homes, for example, traditionally educate their children on various cultural and religious values that help a child throughout life, but such models of literacy have seldom been considered. It is therefore important to highlight the need for revisiting Ethiopia’s literacy programmes not only to address the current technical and structural challenges, but also to make the education system context-­relevant, reflected in policy and practices. Acknowledgement  This work was supported by Direktoratet for Utviklingssamarbeid [grant number: QZA 0483 ETH-16/0028].

References Admas, F. (2019). Quality of early education in private and government preschools of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. International Journal of Early Childhood, 51, 163–176.

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Literacy in Côte d’Ivoire Kaja K. Jasińska, Mary-Claire Ball, and Sosthène Guei

Abstract  Côte d’Ivoire is a lower-middle-income country with one of West Africa’s fastest-growing economies and a fast-rising young population. However, Côte d’Ivoire ranks 162 out of 189 countries on the human development index (HDI) and has an adult literacy rate of 43.9% in 2014, which is lower than other sub-Saharan African nations and other lower-middle-income countries. Côte d’Ivoire is highly linguistically diverse, with over 70 Ivorian languages spoken, and the official language is French. In this chapter, we review Côte d’Ivoire’s languages, including the development of an orthography for Ivorian languages. We discuss the country’s literacy rates in French and various Ivorian languages, highlighting literacy in school-­ aged children, youth, and adult populations. We review education policies relevant to the inclusion of Ivorian languages as languages of instruction in school and increasing French literacy rates, and innovative programs that leverage governmental and non-governmental partnerships to increase literacy.

1 Country Profile Côte d’Ivoire is a Francophone West African country with one of the world’s fastest-­ growing economies and a fast-rising population. The population of Côte d’Ivoire is 25.8 million; about 43% of the population is under age 15, and the average number K. K. Jasińska (*) Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] M.-C. Ball Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] S. Guei Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_12

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of children is 5.1 per woman. According to the latest projections of the UN World Population Prospects, the population of Côte d’Ivoire will experience an average annual growth rate of 2.41% by 2030 (United Nations, 2019). This fast-rising young population will bring significant economic opportunities that the country can benefit from. Still, the rise in population will also bring significant challenges, specifically in expanding access to quality education for all children and, in turn, ensuring a fully literate society. Currently, Côte d’Ivoire ranks 162 out of 189 countries on the human development index (HDI) and 149 out of 159 countries on the human capital index (HCI), with low scores of 0.538 (United Nations, 2020b), and 0.378 (World Bank, 2020) respectively. A child born in Côte d’Ivoire today will only be 38% as productive as she could be when she grows up if she had access to full education and health care (World Bank, 2020). Côte d’Ivoire’s HDI and HCI are low relative to other sub-­Saharan African (SSA) countries and other low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Nevertheless, Côte d’Ivoire remains the economic hub of Francophone West Africa.

1.1 Economic and Political Context Before the global economic shocks triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Côte d’Ivoire’s economy had experienced an average annual growth of 8% since 2012 (which has since slowed to a growth rate of 1.8% in 2020; World Bank, 2021). At the same time, poverty in Côte d’Ivoire declined from 46.3% in 2015 to 39.4% in 2020. However, this decline was restricted to urban areas, and poverty increased by 2.4% in rural areas (World Bank, 2021). Côte d’Ivoire is the world-leading producer of cocoa (United Nations, 2020a). Cocoa accounts for nearly 40% of total exports in the country, with 27.9% as raw cocoa beans (United Nations, 2020a). Cocoa accounts for 74% of the average cocoa-growing household income in Côte d’Ivoire, creating a significant reliance on the crop. The pressure to produce cocoa often means that it is a family affair—it is estimated that 1.3 million school-aged children (out of a population of 3.7 million) are working in cocoa production (Tulane University, 2015), primarily concentrated in rural areas. In rural cocoa-producing communities, poverty is rampant and has reached levels as high as 61.2% (Fonds monetaire international, 2009), with many households surviving on $1–2 a day (Institut National de la Statistique du Côte d’Ivoire, 2015). In the 1960s and 1970s, Côte d’Ivoire was an economic powerhouse through cocoa (and coffee) production. This contributed to an increase in both external and internal migration, predominantly from Burkina Faso, Mali, and northern Côte d’Ivoire, to the southern ‘cocoa belt’. The net positive migration over the last few decades continued to contribute to the country’s linguistic and ethnic diversity. However, because Côte d’Ivoire does not recognize birth-right citizenship, the descendants of Burkinabe, Malian, Guinean, and other migrants have remained stateless, contributing to a significant problem of unregistered births in the country

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(Adjami, 2016). In 2016, 72% of births were registered (UNICEF, 2016), leaving one out of four children vulnerable to statelessness. Since the 1980s, Côte d’Ivoire has experienced periods of political instability during which the education system suffered from under-investments, both in human resources (i.e., teachers) and in infrastructure (i.e., schools). Following economic downturns in the 1980s, the Ivorian government was overthrown in a military coup in December 1999, leading to lasting and significant political upheaval. A second leadership challenge resulted in a second military coup in 2002 that developed into a rebellion and civil war in 2002 (UNHCR, 2017). A reunification agreement was signed by the involved parties in 2007, and the subsequent national presidential elections were held in 2010 and won by Alassane Ouattara. The elections were followed by 5 months of violent fighting and civil war. In 2011, the Ivorian economy started experiencing significant growth, supported by debt relief from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since 2011, Côte d’Ivoire’s growth rate has been ranked as one of the highest worldwide. In 2020, Alassane Ouattara won a third election (following a second victory in 2015). Côte d’Ivoire typically has a two-term presidential limit; however, because a constitutional referendum took place in 2016, Ouattara argued that the two-term limit was effectively reset. His third run for office and his victory resulted in a political crisis in late 2020 that was marked by violence and civil unrest.

2 Language and Literacy 2.1 Languages of Côte d’Ivoire Côte d’Ivoire is highly multilingual. French is the official language, and over 70 local Ivorian languages are spoken throughout the country (SIL International, 2017). However, no one language is predominant (Boutin & Kouadio, 2013). This is demonstrated in the distribution of languages by the number of language speakers as shown in Fig. 1: 34.5% of Ivorian languages have between 10,000 and 99,999 speakers, 28.7% have between 100,000 and 999,999 speakers, 23% have between 1000 and 9999 speakers, and only 5.7% and 4.6% of Ivorian languages have over one million speakers, and less than 99 speakers, respectively. Only eight languages have over 500,000 speakers. These are Baoulé, Jula, Anyin, Mooré (also spoken in Burkina Faso), Dan, Sénoufo (Cebaara), Attié, and Guro. Ivorian languages can broadly be grouped into four families: Mande, Kru, Kwa, and Gur (Ahoua, 2006), which emanate from the Niger-Congo language group (see Fig. 2). Côte d’Ivoire’s most widely spoken and official language is French; standard French and a contact variety, Nouchi, are spoken widely (N’Guessan, 2008). Ivorian French varieties spoken in Côte d’Ivoire reflect historical factors linked to colonialism, pedagogical practices, and political motivation for a unifying language. In 2018, the Francophone Demographic and Statistical Observatory (Observatoire

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Fig. 1  The Ivorian languages by major language groups

Fig. 2  Propoprtion of speakers of each Ivorian language, by language group

Démographique et Statistique de l’Espace Francophone) estimated over 8.1 million French speakers in Côte d’Ivoire, with an estimated 45,000 individuals who speak French as an L1 while the rest speak French as an L2 acquired early in childhood or later (Beck et al., 2018; SIL International, 2017). It is important to note that these estimates are based on the 43.9% national literacy rate (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2014). Therefore, they exclude illiterate French speakers and provide a significant underestimation of the number of French speakers in Côte d’Ivoire. By comparison, in 2019, the International Francophone Organization (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) reported that more than 83% of youth and 89% of adults speak French (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, 2019). In 2019, the total population of Côte d’Ivoire was 25.7 million; thus, estimates of the number of French speakers are likely above 21 million. This reflects the ubiquity of French in nearly every social stratum in Côte d’Ivoire (N’Guessan, 2008) and aligns with the historical increase in the French-speaking population; 35.9% in 1975 and 59.9% in 1990 (N’Guessan, 2008).

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While most French speakers in Côte d’Ivoire speak French as a second language (L2), some Ivorians may speak a second inter-regional local language as their third language (L3) (SIL International, 2017). Bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm, but specific language pairs feature more frequently in bilingual speakers. For example, Jula is the most common local L2, and there are few L1 speakers of Jula. It is important to note that bilingualism is not reciprocal in Ivorian languages; for example, L1 Krobu speakers speak Abé or Baoulé as an L2, but neither L1 Abe nor L1 Baoulé speakers speak Krobu as an L2, see Fig. 3. Ivorian languages can be categorized by their status within the country according to their level on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption (EGIDs) scale (Lewis & Simons, 2010). The EGIDs scale considers each language’s population, status, language use, language development, and writing. Languages’ vitality is classified as 1) institutional (0–4; used widely between nations, officially at a national level, officially at a provincial level, widely as a Lingua Franca, in education), 2) developing (5; used to write), 3) vigorous (6a; used by everyone of all

Fig. 3  Common L1-L2 language pairs in Ivorian languages

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ages), 4) in trouble (6b-7; language is losing users, youngest users are young adults), 5) moribund (8a-b; only grandparents or great-grandparents use it), or 6) extinct (9–10; only simple phrases/greetings, no longer used). The majority of Ivorian languages are classified as developing or vigorous, demonstrating the highly multilingual nature of Côte d’Ivoire. However, 15 languages are classified as threatened, shifting, moribund, or extinct. The classification of Ivorian languages according to the EGIDs scale also highlights the dynamic linguistic landscape of Côte d’Ivoire; for example, the classification of some languages as threatened, shifting, and moribund suggests a changing linguistic make-up of the country that is likely to look different in the future.

2.2 Writing System There are multiple orthographies used in West Africa, both modern and ancient. Examples include the Vai syllabary in Liberia (Hau, 1973), the Bamum syllabary in Cameroon (de Voogt, 2014), and the Nsibidi symbols in Nigeria (Azuonye, 1992; Kotei, 2015). Historically, Ivorian languages have been unwritten. However, contemporary studies indicate that approximately 75% of languages (of available data; n = 74) use a Latin script (SIL International, 2017). Moreover, Bambara, Jula, and Soninke use the Arabic (Naskh variant) and N’Ko scripts in addition to the Latin script. However, it is unclear which scripts feature most commonly in general and in Côte d’Ivoire specifically. The N’Ko script was developed in 1949 by Soulemayne Kante as a writing system for Manding languages (part of the Mande language group) (Wyrod, 2003), predominantly used in Guinea, and to a lesser extent, western Côte d’Ivoire. The association for Advancement and Coordination for Research on the N’Ko Alphabet (l’Association pour l’Impulsion et la Coordination des Recherches sur l’Alphabet N’ko) based in Guinea promotes contemporary research and use of the N’Ko script (Culy, 2013). In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers at the Ivorian Institut de Linguistique Appliquée (Institute for Applied Linguistics; ILA) at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the Société Internationale de Linguistique (SIL) worked to develop a unifying orthography for Ivorian languages. In January 1980, this research team published their work in a document entitled “Une Orthographe Pratiques des Langues Ivoiriennes” (Kokora, 1979). The Ivorian orthographic convention is shown in Table 1. This orthography was developed with the specific goals of (1) harmonizing the writing system between the four language groups (Kwa, Kru, Gur, Mande) as much as possible, (2) basing the orthography on linguistic analyses, (3) considering the practical problems of typing and printing, and lastly (4) choosing the orthographic conventions that had maximum transfer value to French, as well as orthographic conventions used in neighboring countries. However, these considerations were often in conflict. For example, the open, back vowel /ɑ/ can be transcribed as ‘aô’, according to French orthographic convention, but as ‘ä’ following orthographic principles (Sea, 2018).

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Table 1  Letter-sound mappings for Ivorian orthography Consonants Phoneme /b/ /ɓ/ /c/ /d/ /ɗ/ /dʒ/ /f/ /ɸ/ /g/ /gb/ /ɣ/, /ɠ/ /h/ /ɕ/ /ɟ/ /k/ /kp/ /l/ /m/ /n/

Grapheme b bh v d dh dzh f fh g gb gh h hy j k kp l m n

Phoneme /ɲ/ /ŋ/ /ŋm/ /p/ /ʔ/ /r/ /s/ /ʃ/ /t/ /ts/ /tʃ/ /v/ /β/ /w/ /ɥ/ /x/ /j/ /z/ /ʒ/

Grapheme ny ŋ/ŋn ny/ŋm p ʔ r s sh t ts tsh v vh w ẅ x y z zh

Vowels Phoneme /a/ /ʌ/ /ɑ/ /e/ /ə/ /ɛ/ /æ/ /i/ /ɨ/ /ɪ/ /o/ /ɤ/, /ø/, /ʊ/ /ɔ/ /u/ /y/, /ɯ/ /ō/

Grapheme a ä aɔ e ë ɛ ɛa i ï ɩ o ö ɔ u ü ʊ

Table 2  Orthographic tone markings in Ivorian languages Tone High Mid Low Very high Rising

Accent Marking ó o ò

Falling

ǒ

ô

Punctuation Marking ‘mo mo -mo “mo Low-high: -mo’ Mid-high: mo’ Mid-very high: mo” Mid-low: mo-

The Ivorian orthography developed by the ILA marks tone using two systems, namely, accents and punctuation. Ivorian languages have a rich tone system, and individual languages vary in the number of tones that are featured. Notably, the Wobé (Kru) language has 14 tones, specifically, four-level tones, five rising tones, four falling tones, and one rising-falling (Bearth & Link, 2010), whereas, for example, Baoulé has only five tones, which are high, mid, low, rising, and falling. The ILA’s Ivorian orthography marks very high, high, medium, low, three rising, and one falling tone, see Table 2.

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2.3 Literacy Literacy rates are very low among children and adults in Côte d’Ivoire. Limited data are available on literacy rates in Ivorian languages. The available data indicate very low literacy levels, which reflect the recency of the development of the Ivorian language orthographic convention and the limited availability of reading materials in Ivorian languages. As a result, literacy instruction in school most often occurs in French, yet literacy rates among youth and adults in French are low (i.e., 43.9%; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2014), particularly in comparison to other sub-­ Saharan African and other lower-middle-income countries. Literacy in Ivorian Languages Data regarding L1 literacy rates across specific Ivorian languages remains sparse— L1 literacy rates are reported for only 16 Ivorian languages (SIL International, 2017). Literacy rates in Ivorian languages are very low. L1 literacy rates in Abé, Abure, and Nyabwa are estimated to be between 5–10%; in Abidji, Anyin, Attié, Bété (Daloa), Dida (Yocoboué), Krumen (Tepo), Sénoufo (Cebaara), Wè (Northern), and Yaouré estimated between 1–5%; Baoulé and Adioukrou literacy rates are estimated 10–30% and 30–60%, respectively. Literacy rates in Ivorian languages may be low because their written forms are not commonly used, and written materials are therefore not widely available. French Literacy in Primary School Children For over a decade now, the country has remained among the lowest-performing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in all the standardized tests conducted to assess the performance of education systems. The 2019 Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems of Francophone West African states (PASEC, 2020) results showed that only 33.1% of students in grade 2 achieve the minimum proficiency level in reading, ranking 12 out of 14 countries surveyed (PASEC, 2020). The results also show that a significant proportion of children do not achieve the required minimum proficiency in literacy at the end of primary education, with 59.9% of children in grade 6 scoring below the sufficient threshold of competence in reading. Compared to the results of the 2014 assessment (PASEC, 2014), there has been an increase in the number of underperforming kids in grade 6 by 12.2% (PASEC, 2014). The PASEC2019 study, however, highlights some disparities in performance related to whether children live in rural vs. urban areas, their socio-economic background, the resources available in schools, and children’s educational trajectory (whether they have a pre-primary education or repeated grades). The literacy scores of primary school children in the PASEC2019 study, however, do not represent the full population of Ivorian children. Participation in education

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(discussed in more detail below) has increased in the past few decades. Still, almost 200,000 children are estimated to be out-of-school, and only 73% of children who enrolled in school in the first grade continue to the last grade of primary school (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019a). Therefore, literacy skills of primary school-aged children who are not enrolled in school (i.e., never enrolled, or dropped out) will be dramatically lower. French Literacy in Youth and Adulthood Youth and adult literacy rates in Côte d’Ivoire have increased over the past 30 years. In 1988, the literacy rate among the population aged 15 years or older was 34.1%; in 2014, the literacy rate was 43.9% (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019b). In 2000, literacy rates in Côte d’Ivoire were at their highest (48.7%) but declined over the next decade. Literacy rates in Côte d’Ivoire remain lower relative to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high-income countries) and other lower-­ middle-­income countries (see Fig. 4 for literacy rates in Côte d’Ivoire compared to sub-Saharan Africa and beyond). The literacy rate is higher for males than females, and the 2018 youth literacy gender parity index in Côte d’Ivoire was 0.83 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2014). Gender parity in literacy is much lower in Côte d’Ivoire relative to other sub-Saharan African countries or other lower-middle-­ income countries (see Fig. 5 for literacy gender parity in Côte d’Ivoire and beyond). Literacy rates are also considerably higher in urban versus rural populations. In 2014, the literacy rate of the urban population aged 25–64 years (averaged across both sexes) was 53.9%, whereas the literacy rate of the rural population was only 27.1% (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019a).

Adult (15y+)

Youth (15-24y)

80

Gender Female

Literacy Rate

Male Total 60

Region Cote d'lvoire Lower middle income Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high income) World 40

20

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Year

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Fig. 4  Literacy rate of Côte d’Ivoire 1988–2018 in comparison to aggregate literacy rates in sub-­ Saharan Africa (excluding high income countries), lower middle income countries, and the world. Literacy rates are show for both sexes, and by each gender

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Literacy Gender Parity Index

0.9

Region Cote d'Ivoire Lower middle income

0.8

Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high income) World

0.7

1980

1990

Year

2000

2010

2020

Fig. 5  Literacy gender parity index of Côte d’Ivoire in comparison to aggregate literacy gender parity indices in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high income countries), lower middle income countries, and the world

3 Education 3.1 Education System The education system in Côte d’Ivoire is comprised of four stages: pre-primary, primary school, which lasts 6 years (Grades CP1, CP2, CE1, CE2, CM1, CM2; the equivalent of Grades 1–6  in the North American education system), secondary school which lasts 7 years and leads to a Baccalaureat (approximately equivalent to 1 or 2 years of university study in the United States), and tertiary, which is organized according to the French national model (2-year curriculum leads to a DUEL (Diplôme Universitaire d’Etudes Littéraires), the DUES (Diplôme Universitaire d’Etudes Scientifiques), or the DEUG (Diplôme Universitaire d’Etudes Générales). An additional year of tertiary study leads to the Licence (the level of a bachelor’s degree in the United States). Two additional years lead to the Maîtrise (the equivalent of a master’s degree). Compulsory education lasts 10 years and is mandated from age 6 to age 15 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019a).

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Table 3  Participation in education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019a)

School-aged population Net enrollment rate

Pre-­ Primary 2,300,980 Female 7.8 Male 7.6 Total 7.7

Primary Secondary 4,082,734 4,154,730

Tertiary 2,477,052

88 94.3 91.1

8.5 11.4 10

Out-of-school rate

Completion rate

Adjusted net attendance rate

Female Male Total Rural Urban Female Male Total Rural Urban Female Male Total Rural Urban

n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 47.6 48.5 48.0 35.7 67.5

25.7 20.5 23 29 14.5 53.1 59.7 56.4 39.4 69.9 74.1 79.4 76.8 70.9 85.3

38.6 48.2 43.4 Lower secondary 38.1 27.2 32.5 39.9 25.6 22 36 28.3 11.1 41.8 37.6 42.8 40.3 22.6 57.0

Upper secondary 66.1 45.9 56.3 69.8 46.9 14.6 17.2 15.8 3.3 24.9 13.5 20.2 16.8 6.0 24.3

n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

3.2 Participation in Education Enrollment is high in primary school, but few children transition from primary to secondary school and pre-primary school enrollment is low. Out-of-school rates are high, and completion rates are low. There are gender disparities in school participation rates and disparities between rural and urban populations, which correspond to the gender and rural/urban inequality observed in literacy rates (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019a) (Table 3).

3.3 Education Policy Despite this most recent period of election-related unrest, Côte d’Ivoire’s government has made considerable strides since 2011 to improve and invest in education, including building schools, recruiting teachers, and making schooling compulsory for children between the ages of six and 16 years. In 2015, the Ivorian state enacted a series of measures to address inequality in education. Specifically, the compulsory

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schooling policy came into effect on September 17, 2015 through Law No. 2015–635. According to article 2.2, the state has an obligation to ensure that children between six and 16 are enrolled in the school system, including children with special needs. Moreover, the article makes a provision for the integration or reintegration of children between the ages of 9 and 16 who are outside of the school system, through bridging classes that reintegrate children as well as vocational training for the older (14–16 years old) children (Azoh & Goin Bi, 2021). The government has also made efforts to include local Ivorian languages in education, where classroom instruction has traditionally been conducted in French, due to the need to improve learning and literacy outcomes. Côte d’Ivoire passed the Education Reform Act on August 16, 1977, laying the groundwork for bilingual local language-French instruction (Kouame, 2007). It became possible to produce textbooks and pedagogical materials in the local languages through efforts by researchers from the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny to develop an orthographic system for Ivorian languages; see above (Burmeister, 1980; Kokora, 1979; Kouadio, 2013; Sea, 2018; Silué, 2002). However, the written forms of Ivorian languages are still not widely used outside of educational settings. More recently, Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Education released an education and training sector plan for 2016–2025 (“Plan Sectoriel Education/Formation 2016-2025; PSE”) that makes specific provisions to improve literacy in the country (Task Force de Ministere de l’Education Nationale, 2017). The PSE prioritizes education and training as part of a National Development Plan to “accelerate the development of human capital and social well-being”, which are central elements of the Government’s strategy to “strengthen national unity and support economic growth”. The 2016–2025 PSE focuses on improving access to and quality of education, with strategic provisions for quality preschool, quality education for children (including out-of-school children) and illiterate adolescents and adults to resume their education, including non-formal literacy programs, quality secondary school, and access to quality vocational and tertiary education. Specifically concerning illiteracy among youth and adults, the PSE aims to improve literacy rates of people aged 10 and over who are illiterate or outside the education system by increasing the number of literacy centers (including ensuring that schools districts have at least one literacy center), bridging classes to help integrate out-of-school children into the formal education system, training literacy facilitators, and increasing the number of beneficiaries of these programs. This strategy incorporates innovative literacy provisions, such as digital tools, and forms partnerships with non-governmental entities to implement and evaluate programming (i.e., the scientific community). In January of 2020, the Ivorian Ministry of Education instituted an Objectives and Performance Contract (Contrat d’Objectifs et de Performance) (Ministere de l’Education Nationale, 2020), which tracks the 2016–2015 PSE targets. The 2023 and 2025 targets include increased school enrollment and school achievement (including transition from primary to secondary school, and reduced grade repetition). About 30,000 out-of-school children enrolled in bridging classes, and 100%

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of school districts have at least one literacy center. Moreover, the 2016 literacy rate was projected to increase from 45% to 59% by 2023, and to 65% by 2025.

3.4 Bilingual Education Bilingual education programs, where children can learn in their native language alongside an official language (i.e., French), have been associated with positive learning outcomes in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa (Benson, 2020; Bühmann & Trudell, 2007) and allow children to gradually learn the official language. Many children in Côte d’Ivoire do not speak French when they enter school. The mismatch between the language spoken at home (i.e. local language) and the language of instruction at school (i.e., French) may impact children’s literacy development if they are unable to understand what they are taught in the classroom. The Ivorian government first tested a few bilingual education initiatives, notably the Preschool Project (Kamagate, 2017) and the Northern Project (Assanvo, 2017), that proved successful, allowing for a national bilingual education program called the Integrated School Project (Projet École Intégrée; PEI). The PEI program aimed to address these learning challenges by gradually introducing French throughout primary school (Amani-Allaba, 2016; Brou-Diallo, 2011; Kouame, 2007). The PEI program began with five schools in 2001 (Amani-Allaba, 2016), each using a different local language (Brou-Diallo, 2011). In the 2013–2014 school year, 76 classes and 2269 students attended PEI programs (Assanvo, 2017), out of 2,696,397 total students enrolled in primary school (Ministère de l’Education Nationale du Côte d’Ivoire, 2014). An evaluation of the 2006–2008 school years found that children from PEI schools outperformed their peers from French-only schools on standardized examinations, and more children from PEI schools were admitted to the sixth grade (Brou-Diallo, 2011). A recent study that compared Ivorian and French language and literacy skills in children who were schooled either exclusively in French or in both an Ivorian language and French found that children attending bilingual PEI schools did not show French literacy advantages relative to their peers in French-only schools (Ball et al., 2022). Overall, bilingual school children’s performance on language and reading tasks was poorer than their French-only school peers, but grade repetition was lower among children from bilingual schools. Notably, the study found that the quality of education was lower in bilingual schools. School infrastructure (i.e., electricity, canteens, toilets) was better overall in the French-only schools sampled in the study, and teachers in bilingual schools lacked adequate training in local language instruction and teaching materials in  local languages. The poorer quality of bilingual schools likely undermined children’s ability to benefit from Ivorian language instruction (Ball et al., 2022). In 2015, Côte d’Ivoire began transitioning to the School and National Language Initiative in Africa (ELAN) program, overseen by the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF). The goal is to improve bilingual education programs by

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using knowledge gained from ELAN program implementation in other Francophone sub-Saharan African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Togo (Agence Ivoirienne de Presse, 2019; Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, 2016). Côte d’Ivoire’s ELAN program currently includes one Ivorian language, Jula, but plans to extend nationally in the coming years (Agence Ivoirienne de Presse, 2019).

4 Challenges, Opportunities, and New Initiatives Teacher training is a common challenge, which can be exacerbated in bilingual schools. Teachers in bilingual classrooms receive less training in  local language instruction; instead, teachers are trained in French instruction but may be assigned to teach in bilingual classrooms (Ball et al., 2022). Teacher shortages are another challenge in both traditional French and bilingual classrooms, contributing to large class sizes and additional language-related challenges in the classroom. In a study by Ball et al. (2022), some teachers reported teaching more than one class simultaneously. Bilingual classes without a teacher were commonly combined with French-­ only classes, reducing children’s local language instruction and preventing the opportunity to benefit from bilingual education. Inadequate teaching materials and teacher training also significantly impact teachers’ ability to provide quality instruction in their classrooms. Teaching and reading materials written in local languages are not widely available compared with French (Ball et al., 2022). It is common throughout sub-Saharan Africa for materials written in a local language to be available in only a few titles, but this varies significantly by country and language. Materials are also more commonly available for more advanced readers, whereas fewer are available for emergent stages of literacy (RTI International, 2015). Efforts to produce reading materials in local languages appropriate for all reading levels will also be crucial for the success of bilingual education and improving literacy outcomes. Similarly, a lack of standardized language and literacy assessment materials in local languages makes evaluating children’s literacy and literacy-relevant skills challenging. Although language and literacy assessments in French are available (including tech-based approaches; Sobers et al., in press), evaluating children’s language skills only in French does not accurately assess bilingual children’s full language abilities. Recently, “The Ivorian Children’s Language Assessment Toolkit for Abidji, Attié, Baoulé, and Bété” has been developed to assess children’s language skills in their native language (Akpé et al., 2021; Jasińska et al., 2019, 2022). Although the Ivorian education system faces challenges in implementing quality education to ensure full literacy, a number of recent initiatives demonstrate promising results for improving education quality and children’s literacy outcomes. In 2017, Côte d’Ivoire launched an education initiative, Programme d’Enseignment Ciblé (PEC), aiming to improve children’s learning outcomes through reading and

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math instruction targeted to a child’s level. The Ivorian Ministry of Education partnered with Pratham, J-PAL Europe, and Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC) to adapt an existing program, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), to French. Children in Ivorian classrooms have varying levels of French language skills but are taught the same material regardless of their understanding. The TaRL approach groups children according to their learning level to develop strong foundational reading and numeracy skills and progress to more advanced groups when they are ready; children can gain French language skills at an appropriate pace for their level. Teachers also receive training in implementing the TaRL approach. PEC was piloted for an hour and a half each day in 50 primary schools in the Gabiadji and Méagui regions from October 2018 to May 2019, for CE1 (third grade), CE2 (fourth grade), and CM1 (fifth grade) students (Teaching at the Right Level, 2021a, 2021b). Innovations for Poverty Action evaluated PEC, and the results suggest that PEC may be a promising approach for improving children’s learning outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire. Indeed, the Ministry of Education is working to scale up PEC as a national program throughout the country (Jasińska & Guei, 2021). Building on the promising results of the PEC pilot, the Ministry of Education and TaRL Africa are working to enhance remedial education interventions, called bridging classes, by training teachers to integrate PEC child-centered learning approaches into the curriculum. Bridging classes arose from recognizing that many children, particularly in rural areas, remained out of school despite laws mandating free and compulsory education. Previously out-of-school children between the ages of 9–14 are taught an accelerated curriculum covering the first 2 years of primary school during the first 8 months of the bridging classes. This intervention allows children to catch up and be reintegrated into the formal education system (Jasińska & Guei, 2021). Although PEC has shown encouraging results for improving children’s learning outcomes, its success may partly depend on its ability to provide teachers with continued training and support for implementing the TaRL approach in their classrooms. Because many teachers are located in rural areas, providing teachers with professional development opportunities is challenging, and most schools only receive teacher professional support visits 2 days per year (Jasińska et al., 2017). However, a pilot ed-tech program called DIA, which uses a human-chatbot hybrid over a social media messaging application, may be a practical method for providing teachers with the ongoing support needed to effectively implement PEC and improve the quality of instruction in their classrooms. DIA uses AI to learn how teachers use the platform, which improves its knowledge and allows the teachers to receive more tailored content. When the AI cannot offer specific knowledge, pedagogical advisors or other teachers can offer support through the program. PEC combined with DIA has been tested during the 2020–2021 school year (Cannanure et  al., 2020; Jasińska & Guei, 2021). Ed-tech programs also provide effective and practical interventions for improving literacy for children out of school, not regularly attending, or who are attending school but are poor readers. However, for ed-tech programs to be successful, they must be practical for the context. In Côte d’Ivoire, over 50% of the population does

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not use mobile internet and therefore cannot access internet-based learning programs (GSMA, 2017). New literacy interventions that do not require internet access may effectively reach more children and parents in rural areas to improve literacy outcomes. For example, programs can use mobile phones, which have a high penetration rate in Côte d’Ivoire. Allô Alphabet, a French-language literacy training program that uses simple mobile phone SMS and audio message technology on existing 1G and 2G networks available in rural regions, supports children’s phonological awareness (i.e., the awareness of and ability to manipulate the sounds of their language) and decoding skills. Through audio messages and SMS, children are given tasks that ask them to identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest sound units of spoken language, and associate print with syllable sounds; children provide their answers by pressing number keys on the mobile phone (Chatterjee et al., 2020; Madaio et al., 2019a, b, 2020). Interventions that utilize technology readily available throughout Côte d’Ivoire may provide much-needed literacy support for families that do not have access to other technologies or whose children cannot regularly attend school.

5 Conclusion Côte d’Ivoire has a rich linguistic diversity. Over 70 languages are spoken in the country, and French is the official language. Education policies dating to the 1970s have laid the groundwork for integrating Ivorian languages as languages of instruction in the classroom. This, in turn, paved the way for the development of a universal orthography for Ivorian languages, led by the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Literacy rates in Côte d’Ivoire are relatively low, in French (43.9% for the over 15-year-old population in 2014) and especially in Ivorian languages. Although there are relatively few individuals who speak French as a first language, it is the language that the majority of children are educated in and learn to read. However, for Ivorian children, limited access to quality education and relatively low school participation, particularly at the pre-primary and secondary levels, have contributed to low reading skills. In turn, literacy rates are low in youth and adult populations, with significant gender and rural/urban disparities. There are several recent education policies and innovative programs currently underway in Côte d’Ivoire that specifically aim to improve literacy. The Ministry of Education’s Sector Plan 2016–2025 makes specific provisions for improving literacy learning in the primary school classroom, integrating out-of-­ school children into the education system, and providing illiterate adults opportunities to learn to read through a network of literacy centers. Côte d’Ivoire has invested in their bilingual education program, joining a network of other Francophone West African nations in the ELAN-Afrique School and National Language in Africa Program. New pedagogical approaches (‘Teaching at the Right Level Africa’) and educational technologies (i.e., teacher professional support and coaching online platform ‘DIA,’ simple mobile-phone literacy curriculum ‘Allô Alphabet’) have

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created new avenues for supporting literacy development in the country. The confluence of education policy, new pedagogies, and educational technologies have set the stage for improving literacy outcomes.

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Literacy in Burkina Faso Béatrice Konfe Tiendrebeogo and JeDene Reeder

Abstract  Burkina Faso, located in the Sahel of West Africa, has some of the lower literacy and school completion rates in the world, a situation that had improved in the past 30 years but has had a setback with the rise of terrorism in the Sahel since 2016. At least 60 languages, most of them tonal, from eight different language families are found in Burkina Faso. The country established a national alphabet for use in Burkinabè languages in 1979, an alphabet that is still in use today although revisions have been proposed. French is the primary language of instruction in the schools, although ten local languages have been used for formal education in the various bilingual education initiatives that have been carried out since the 1990s. Adult literacy classes have been and are being held in both French and in around 30 languages, using a variety of methods. A number of hindrances to the effectiveness and acceptance of bilingual schools are discussed, including linguistic diversity within a school, lack of parental acceptance, and resource issues. Resource issues are also a problem in classical schools.

1 Background Information on Burkina Faso Burkina Faso, which means the ‘Land of Upright People,’ is a landlocked country situated in West Africa. It is bordered by Niger to the east, by Mali to the north and west, and by Togo, Benin, Ghana and Ivory Coast to the south. According to the last census, the country’s population numbers 20,487,975 inhabitants, with 45.3% of them children under 15  years old (Institut National de la Statistique et de la B. Konfe Tiendrebeogo (*) SIL Francophone Africa and Advocacy and Alliance Building, SIL Africa, Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. Reeder SIL West Africa and SIL Francophone Africa, Port Orchard, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_13

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Démographie [INSD], 2020). Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries of the world, ranking 182nd on the 2020 UN Human Development Index (United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2020). Seventy percent of the population lives in rural areas (UNESCO Institute for Statistics [UIS], 2021). Over 80 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture (Sy, 2017). Over half the population is unable to read or write in any language (UIS, 2021). In 2019, a mere 34.2% of students participating in the PASEC1 assessment met minimum thresholds for competency in reading and writing (UIS, 2021). Although the education situation had been improving thanks to the Education for All initiative (UNESCO, 2014), Burkina Faso’s education system has suffered a major setback since 2016 because of terrorist activities in the northern and eastern areas of the country, which have led to over 1,579,976 internally displaced Burkinabè as of early 2022, over half of them children, according to the Ministry of Humanitarian Action. Additionally, in several areas, terrorists have forced the closure of local schools, often by targeting school directors and teachers during their attacks (Agence d’Information du Burkina, 2021; Solidarité Laïque, 2021).

2 Linguistic Background The number of language communities in Burkina Faso varies according to who is counting them: Kedrebeogo and Yago (1982) identify 59 languages while the Ethnologue (Eberhart et al., 2021) lists 69. These languages, several of which are cross-border with adjacent countries, represent a cross-section of the language families present in West Africa: Atlantic, Berber, Dogon, Gur, Kru, Mande, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan (Eberhart et al., 2021). Gur languages dominate, while Mande languages have a healthy representation in the west and south of the country with seven (7) larger languages, including the main language of wider communication for Western Burkina Faso, Jula. Five language families are each represented by a single language: Fulfulde (Atlantic), Tamasheq (Berber), Siamou (Kru), Jamsay Dogon (Dogon) and Songhay (Nilo-Saharan). Finally, the Afro-Asiatic language family is represented by small populations of Hausa and Zarma speakers (Eberhart et al., 2021). The four largest languages in terms of speakers are Moore, Jula, Gulmancema, and Fulfulde. The examples that are given below all come from languages with literacy programs.

 PASEC: Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN CONFEMEN: Conférence des Ministres de l’Education des Etats et Gouvernements de la Francophonie 1

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2.1 Phonology With such a great variety of language families represented in Burkina Faso, descriptions of phonology can only be general and will not apply to every language. Among the special phonological contrasts found in many Burkinabè languages are vowel length, oral and nasal vowels, and aspirated and unaspirated stops. Other phonological phenomena seen in Burkinabe languages include ATR2 vowel harmony, labialization and palatalization, and nasalization of vowels that follow a nasal consonant.

2.2 Tonology Most of these languages are tonal, with both lexical and grammatical tone being present; the exceptions are Jamsay Dogon (Dogon), Kidal Tamasheq (Berber), and Northeastern Burkina Faso Fulfulde (Atlantic). The inventory and functional load of tone in the tonal languages varies tremendously; some languages have no need to write tone at all, while, for others, particularly those with more than two tones, it is essential for reading comprehension to mark it fully (generally understood as the number of phonemic tones less one symbol—see Roberts & Walters, 2021:3). Several languages, including at least two of the Mande languages, mark tone only on certain pronouns (see below for Jula). In accordance with the national orthography, those that do mark tone use accents (á, à, â, ǎ), and if present, for contour tones ending at a mid-tone, double vowels (as in Siamou (Kru): áa = high-mid falling; Nicholson, 2016). However, detailed linguistic studies of tone in several of these languages are lacking, and it is unclear whether lexical tone needs to be written as exhaustively as it is in these (see Roberts and Walters (2021) for a general discussion of this issue). Tone writing was one of the issues under discussion at the 2018 harmonization workshop, but this issue was unresolved due to the variety of tone use among Burkinabè languages (Ministère de l’Education Nationale et de l’Alphabétisation [MENA], 2018). Neither of the two most widely used languages in Burkina Faso, Moore and Jula, write tone as a general rule, although both are tonal languages. In Jula, although the decision of a 1973 meeting established tone writing rules, in practice these rules were not generally followed. The Jula sub-commission thus establish that tone needs to be indicated in two cases. The first is to distinguish between the “he/she (sing.)” /à/ and “you (plural)” /á/, where the convention is to write the grave accent solely on the third person singular pronoun. The second case is to add a vowel on  ATR stands for Advanced Tongue Root. In ATR vowel harmony, vowels are “grouped” according to the position of the tongue root and thus only co-occur in words/morphemes (which depends on the language) with the same tongue root position. So, for example, in a 9-vowel language, /i, e, o and u/ are usually in one group, and /ɩ, ɛ, ɔ, and ʋ /are normally in another group, with /a/ usually able to co-occur with vowels of either group. Teaching the co-occurence restrictions is necessary for accurate writing. 2

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monosyllabic words to indicate the definitive marker, in principle so that the high tone that is the mark of a definitive can be written – which it should be on the final vowel of multisyllabic words as well. In practice, the accent is often omitted (Diallo, 2018).

2.3 Morphology Most of these languages are also noun class languages, a common characteristic of Niger-Congo languages. Articles follow the nouns, but may be independent morphemes or suffixes. For example, Kaansa has seven noun classes with a set of suffixed articles that distinguish between definite and indefinite nouns for each class (1 & 2), (Équipe Kaansa, 2017), while Lyélé’s articles are independent morphemes (3, 4, & 5) that change according to vowel harmony requirements (Comité de gestion pour la traduction de l’Ancien Testament en lyélé, 2021). On the other hand, Winye has an invariant (although obeying vowel harmony rules) suffixed article, ‘nu/nʋ’ that is added to the base form of the noun (6 & 7) which otherwise (unlike Kaansa) has no suffix. All three of these languages, it should be noted, are in the Gur family. Kaansa (unmarked vowels are low tone). (1) ‘child’: biye ‘child.a’, biira ‘child.the’, biibe ‘children’, biibira ‘children.the’ (2) ‘house’: duko ‘house.a’, duki ‘house.the’, duso ‘houses’ Lyélé (unmarked vowels are mid tone). (3) ‘village’: cɔ wá ‘village the’ (4) ‘market’: ya yá ‘market the’ (5) ‘chicken’: cóló wə ‘chicken the’ Winye (unmarked vowels are low tone). (6) ‘man’: bánʋ ‘man.the’ (7) ‘smith’: luguunu ‘smith.the’ Plurals are indicated by both suffixes (8) and stem changes (9). (8) Bissa-Barka (Mande) ‘pebble’: ki ‘pebbles’: kiro (9) Lyélé (Gur) ‘onion’: jɛ̀bɛ́ ‘onions’: jàbá Again, the variety of languages and language families means no single statement suffices to describe verb morphology. Depending on the language, tense and aspect may be indicated by tone changes (10), verb suffixes (11), verb particles (12), and/ or or stem changes (13). Negation also may be expressed in verb particles that simultaneously express tense and aspect (14). (10) tone change: (Lyélé) gál ‘to count, imperfect aspect’; gàl ‘to count, perfect aspect’.

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(11) verbal suffixes: (Bissa-Barka) tʋtɔlɛ ‘to bend, imperfect aspect’; tʋtɔŋ ‘to bend, perfect aspect. (12) verbal particles: (Winye) wɔ́ jíu ‘be eating’; kɩ́ jíu ‘will eat’. (13) stem changes: (Kaansa) ‘to do’: mɩ déma ‘I do’, dé-mini ‘I did (perfect)’ (note: in the past perfect, the subject pronoun ‘mɩ’ follows the verb radical and transforms to ‘mi’ because of vowel harmony) (14) negation and tense/aspect: (Winye) tá bɩ fa ‘not running’, bɩ́ fa ‘will not run’. Compounding word strategies are varied. Compound words may be composed of two entire words stuck together with no loss of phonemes and written as one, as in Bissa-Barka (15). Compound words are also written as a single word when the first word or words of the compound word are represented only by their radicals, and the end of the word is delimited by the noun class suffix/article of the final word, as in Kaansa (16). However, in other languages, hyphens may be used in the case of two words that create a new meaning but neither loses its affixes, as in Birifor (17). Jula generally writes compounds as single words, except for those where reduplication is involved, where it uses hyphens (Diallo, 2018). (15) Bissa-Barka: kɛlɛ ‘door’ (literally, ‘mouth of the house’) (16) Kaansa: sɛ́bɛ́ɛkhãmarsʋ̃msɩra ‘the work in peanut fields’ (sɛ́bɛ́ɛgɛ ‘peanuts’ + khãmarga ‘field’+ sʋ̃msa ‘work’, −(ɩ)ra ‘definite article’) (17) Birifor: maal-fãa ‘sin’ (‘behavior-bad’)

3 Description of the Orthographic Characteristics of the Languages The orthographies of all the national languages are based on the national alphabet of Burkina Faso that was put in place in 1976 following a workshop on the harmonization of the transcription of all Burkinabè languages. It was adopted officially by decree no 79/055/PRES/ESRS, on February 2, 1979. The alphabet, based on the Latin one, is composed of 40 symbols (29 consonants and 11 vowels). Certain conventions were also agreed on, such as writing vowel length with doubled vowels; prenasalization with a nasal consonant before the oral consonant; a slanted hash mark before a preglottalized consonant; and an on an aspirated consonant. Language groups may choose to write nasalized vowels either with an after the vowel, as in French, or with a tilde over the vowel. (Decree no 79/055/PRES/ESRS, 1979). Tone is written using diacritics as described in the tonology section above. It was up to each language sub-commission to decide which symbols would be used for the transcription of its language (Nikièma, 1996) (Table 1). However, in August of 2018, a workshop to harmonize the rules of transcription of national languages was held in Bobo-Dioulasso, as with the development of additional languages, some difficulties had arisen. For example, at least two languages, Puguli and Lobiri, use ‹Ⱳ, ⱳ›, symbols that do not appear in the national alphabet

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Table 1  National Burkinabè Alphabet (Decree no 79/055/PRES/ESRS, 1979) A a M m

B b N n

Ɓ ɓ NY ny

C c Ŋ ŋ

Ç ç ŊM ŋm

D d O o

Ɗ ɗ Ɔ ɔ

E e P p

Ə,Ǝ ə R r

Ɛ ɛ S s

F f SH sh

G g T t

GB gb U u

H h Ü ü

I i Ʋ ʋ

Ɩ ɩ V v

J j Y y

K k Ƴ ƴ

KP kp Z z

L l ZH zh

of 1979, since the sound these symbols represent is relatively rare in Burkinabè languages. Because of advances in technology, the conference made the recommendation to replace digraphs with special characters in the national alphabet, such as [ ʃ] for and [ɲ] for , (MENA, 2018) but this recommendation has not so far been formally adopted by the authorities. Nevertheless, it is important to note that before the adoption of the national orthography, there had been attempts to write local languages, most using French orthography but others using Ajami (adapted Arabic) script. Moore is one of the earliest written languages, as it is the most widely-spoken language of the country as a result of the large numbers of Mossi and of the Mossi Empire (actually several kingdoms) from the eleventh century until the nineteenth century. This language was first written by American missionaries, who arrived in what is now Burkina Faso on January 1, 1921. The New Testament in Moore was published in 1945, with the entire Bible following in 1960. The Bible was revised in 1979 in order to conform the orthography to the national standard ratified in that year (PierreJoseph, 1999).

4 Language in Education Policy and Practice As in most so-called Francophone countries in Africa, French is the medium of instruction at school even though the Education Law Guidance of 2007 states that the languages of instruction are French and the national languages (specifically, Moore, Jula, and Fulfulde). This guide also states that additional languages can be used as medium and subjects of teaching if need be (Loi 013-2007-AN du 30 juillet 2007 portant loi d’orientation d’éducation, 2007). An important element of this law is that it includes evaluations as well as pedagogical practice as part of bilingual education, but in practice, French is still the language of evaluations for graduation from primary school (Maurer, 2010). This use of French has as one result poor quality education, although other factors for Burkina Faso’s poor results on international studies have been identified, such as large class sizes, insufficient resources in materials and personnel, and difficulties in recruiting and training teachers in a time of rapid expansion (Spaull & Lilienstein, 2019). The reality is that from the opening of the first two classes in Haute-Volta (the former name of Burkina Faso) in 1898 (cf Nabaloum, 2012) until today, French has remained the language of instruction in the overwhelming majority of schools. In fact, only 5% of schools have ever been bilingual (Maurer, 2010). These include

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Franco-Arabic schools, where French and Arabic are both languages of instruction (Alidou, 2003). However, it is important to note that Burkina Faso also envisages multilingual junior high schools (collèges) which would use the L1 of the feeder primary schools, one of the three languages of wider communication (i.e., Moore, Jula or Fulfude), and French (Maurer, 2010). According to the International Bureau of Education UNESCO (IBE-UNESCO, 2017), only one (in Loumbila) was currently functional at the time of their report. According to Lavoie (2008), “During colonization schools were created in Burkina Faso for linguistic and cultural assimilation. The African languages were deliberately relegated to the status of dialects” (p. 345). Nevertheless, from 1979 to 1984 and again from 1989 on, Burkina Faso has experimented with bilingual schools (IBE-UNESCO, 2017), with the goal of putting “cultural sustainability and empowerment at the centre of the educational mission” (Lavoie, 2008, p. 345). A wide variety of NGOs, local associations, and organizations such as UNICEF and the Embassy of the Netherlands have supported the pilot projects of the various models that have been tried (Maurer, 2010). Such projects are the subject of the next section.

4.1 Local Language Literacy in Burkina Faso Schools In order to be used for formal education, the government has set the following requirements for Burkinabè languages. Each language must include an alphabet, a grammar, a lexicon, and an orthography guide. Additionally, the local community must request a bilingual program (Maurer, 2010). A total of ten local languages have been used for bilingual education (Ministry of National Education, Literacy, and the Promotion of National Languages [MENAPLN], 2021). Government teachers are prepared at the National schools for primary teachers (ENEP) and at the University of Koudougou’s Superior Normal School, which also prepares pedagogical consultants and inspectors for primary bilingual education, while teachers in the Catholic school system may be trained in bilingual education techniques in their school (Maurer, 2010). One aspect common to all the bilingual programs that has been attractive to communities is that these programs incorporate cultural aspects into the curriculum (GTENF, 2017; Somé, 2000). Parents are more likely to send their children to school when the local community’s values and heritage are valued and taught (Somé, 2000). Bilingual Schools (Governmental and Catholic) The Swiss NGO Oeuvre Suisse d’Entraide Ouvrière (Swiss Workers’ Aid Organization; OSEO) now called Solidar Suisse, in conjunction with the government and other partners, including the Catholic church, helped to develop the

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program used in most government and some private schools (Maïga et al., 2015; Maurer, 2010). Through the use of a language the students already know, the school curriculum is taught in 5 years instead of the normal six (Maurer, 2010). In these bilingual schools, the teaching of written French in grade 2 builds on the initial literacy acquired in the national language in grade 1. Students already have learned letters that are common to both languages. Thus, the focus is French letters not used, or used differently, in the local language, as well as on the spelling conventions specific to French, such as digraphs, trigraphs, silent letters and so forth. By the end of grade 2, students can read easy documents in French, even though they are still in their first year of written French. The teaching of French grammar in grade 3 also builds on the teaching of national language grammar in grade 2; phenomena such as gender distinctions, subject/verb agreements, conjugation, etc. are explained in the national language before the application exercises in French (Maurer, 2010). Banma Nuara Centers Banma Nuara Centers were started by the Tin Tua NGO (Maïga et al., 2015; Maurer, 2010). These schools use Gulmancema, the dominant language in the east of the country and the fourth largest one over all, for the initial years of schooling. There are actually three types of Banma Nuara Centers; one for children, one for adults, and one for school drop-outs (Maïga et  al., 2015). Like the bilingual schools described above, the ones for children reduce the time of primary education from 6 years to five by using students’ knowledge of their own language (Maurer, 2010). Unlike the government schools, their primary aim is to tie literacy skills to production (Maïga et al., 2015). Écoles Satellites The “satellite schools” are community-based bilingual schools, created jointly primarily to serve rural areas by the government and UNICEF (Alidou, 2004; Maurer, 2010), although at least one private school in Ouagadougou uses this model (Maurer, 2010). The program used in the satellite schools is based on the transitional model of bilingual education; its results are not as good as those of the maintenance, or additive, model of bilingual education used in the bilingual schools using the Swiss model (Maurer, 2010). In this program, schooling is conducted in the national language for 3 years, and students are expected to attend a regular school (Maïga et al., 2015), at least in theory. In practice, the upper primary grades teachers often need to explain things in the national language as well as in French (Maurer, 2010). The teachers are paid by the community, which is also expected to house them. Unfortunately, teacher turnover is a serious problem in this system (Alidou, 2003).

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4.2 Adult Literacy Because only one third of Burkinabè children completed primary school in 2006 (INSD, 2020), it is important to also look at adult literacy programs. According to the Assises Nationales de l’Education (MENAPLAN, 2021), 25 national languages are used in literacy classes, although a former minister of education (Tiemtoré, 2019) as well as Maïga et al. (2015) put the number at around 30. Several programs only teach adults French literacy skills, but many introduce literacy skills first in the local languages and then introduce basic French in the third year of their program, which is encouraged by the government through FONAENF3 and the faire-faire strategy, which depends on local associations to organize literacy programs while relying on government agents to certify results (UNESCO, 2016). The method used for adult literacy varies from group to group; some use phonics-type methods, others use modified analytic-synthetic methods, while at least one uses a whole language method (Pédagogie du texte). However, our experience on the ground indicates that motivation for local language literacy is generally quite low, although Maïga et al. (2015)‘s research indicated that well over 50% of their 800+ interviewees wanted to be literate. The primary reason identified by most studies and informal interviews is that it is not directly economically beneficial (Alidou, 2003; Napon, 2007, cited in Maïga et al., 2015, Tiemtoré, 2019). So, programs that address that issue by incorporating income-generating activities into their literacy program, such as the Bible Society of Burkina Faso (in Moore) and Aide et Action (in Nuni) are attracting students (Aide et Action, 2022; Ouédraogo, 2021). Otherwise, the segment of the population that is most interested in local language literacy is those who wish to read a translated Bible in their language (Trudell & Cheffy, 2019). Both these motivational factors for local language literacy are supported by research and observation in other parts of West Africa (Davison, 2008; Reeder, 2013). However, the three official national languages, Moore, Jula and Fulfulde, are used in regional administration (Maïga et al., 2015). As such, literacy in these languages has the potential to be social capital (Bourdieu, 1970) and so literacy in these languages is often attractive (Maïga et  al., 2015). Other factors that increase the motivation to read in these languages is in towns these languages are seen on store signs, and at least one newspaper is published in Moore (Lavoie, 2008). Nevertheless, since official documentation and hospital signs are still in French, many literacy class graduates, discouraged, have fallen back into illiteracy (Tiemtoré, 2019).

 FONAENF: Fonds à l’Alphabétisation et à l’Education Non Formelle [Funds to Literacy and Non-Formal Education] 3

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5 Issues and Difficulties with and in the Burkina Bilingual Schools One of the most significant hindrances to the use of local languages in Burkina’s schools is the choice of language in a given school. In the early years of experimentation, in the 1970’s, the country was divided into Moore-speaking, Jula-speaking and Fulfulde-speaking areas, with the expectation that children in each of these areas are able to speak these languages. Somé (2000) identifies this as linguistic imperialism. Although later other languages were introduced into the system, even rural Burkinabe villages may have multiple ethnicities. The language chosen to be the language of instruction (LOI) may not be spoken and understood by all the students. This means that students may not be proficient in the school’s local language, which can result in the same types of learning and reading difficulties that are found with using French as the LOI. This has, in fact, been a major reason for the closure of several bilingual programs in schools, such as the Catholic bilingual program in Réo, an administrative center in the Lyélé-phone area, as related to one of the authors by a former teacher in that bilingual program in 2018. A related issue is that if the teachers are not proficient in the local language used in the school, they lack the ability to help students transfer from L1 to L2 except through translation (Keita quoted by IBE-UNESCO, 2017). Due to the practice of assigning teachers to schools without taking into account the languages spoken by the teacher or the community, this is a serious problem for bilingual education in Burkina Faso (MENAPLN, 2021). Vocabulary is key to reading and comprehension as the International Bureau of Education – UNESCO ([IBE-UNESCO], 2017) states: “The objectives of vocabulary teaching in the L1 consist of knowing how words are formed (root, radical), knowing how to write words correctly, working on meaning, synonyms, opposites and derivatives, using the studied words and phrases, and being able to construct sentences with the studied words” (p.55). Nevertheless, Keita (2013), as quoted by IBE-UNESCO (2017), underlines the fact that vocabulary development is not on the program in bilingual schools for the first two years of schooling and this results in the learners having difficulties in pronouncing words and phrases taught. Maurer (2010) has noted the same difficulty in satellite schools: “Difficulties are also observed in satellite schools of Burkina Faso during transfer to French at year 3, which slows the teaching process and leads to frequent resort to national languages. This situation creates a shift between the official curriculum and the real one. This difficulty was not observed in private schools in Ouagadougou, probably because children have French plus the national languages as languages used outside school.” Another situation raised by Alidou (2003) is that of teacher turnover. The teachers of the satellite schools are not civil servants but community teachers. As such, they may quit because of dissatisfaction with their salary or living situation. This may lead satellite schools to recruit teachers that are not trained adequately to teach in a bilingual program.

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Finally, although in principle bilingual schools are only established where parents have requested them, there is still parental resistance to education in local languages. Somé (2000) identifies one issue as the perception that this is the government’s way of saving money, by offering a lower-quality education. More recently, while some parents are thrilled by the proficiency of their children in local language literacy (I. Bationo, personal communication, 2018), others have realized, as have adult new literates, that local language literacy is not opening economic doors. Only French does that. So even though most studies indicated that the pass rates of bilingual students were higher than that of students who studied only in French, and are obtained with one less year of schooling (Somé, 2000), parents still often have the belief that more years of learning French will result in better education. A final difficulty of bilingual schools is one that is found in ‘classical’(French-­ only) schools: the lack of pedagogical material available in the language of the classroom (Somé, 2000). Families are often expected to pay for the books their children use (Gerard-Reed, 2019), but those books are often difficult if not impossible to find (Somé, 2000). Instead of books, many students use notebooks to copy the teacher’s notes from the chalkboard, or use slates to show work and practice writing (Gerard-Reed, 2019). Where there are government-provided books, they usually have to be shared by two or even three students (ibid.).

6 Conclusion The language of instruction plays a major role in the success of the students. Many research studies have shown that it is beneficial to start with the language that the children speak and understand the most for it reduces the challenges of learning. As summarized by Trudell et  al. (2012), to succeed early-grade learning, especially reading and writing, the language of instruction is a key component. Added to the right choice of the language, an adequate approach, engaged teachers and communities are other factors that contribute to run successful literacy programs either for children or adults. The government also has a role to play. Despite the issues and difficulties in the bilingual schools raised and mentioned above, some experimentations have been proven to be successful and it is up to the government to have the political will to extend them to the schools of the country.

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References Agence d’Information du Burkina. (2021, October 1). Burkina: Près de 11% des écoles fermées à cause de l’insécurité (AIB) [Burkina: Close to 11% of schools closed due to insecurity]. Ouest info.net. Retrieved from https://ouest-­info.net/ burkina-­pres-­de-­11-­des-­ecoles-­fermees-­a-­cause-­de-­linsecurite-­aib/ Alidou, H. (2003). Language policies and language education in francophone Africa: A critique and a call to action. In S. Makoni, G. Smitherman, A. F. Ball, & A. K. Spears (Eds.), Black linguistics: Language, society, and politics in African and the Americas (pp. 83–102). Routledge. Alidou, H. (2004). Medium of instruction in post-colonial Africa. In J. W. Tollefson & A. B. M. Tsui, Medium of instruction policies: Which agenda ? Whose agenda ? (pp.  195-214). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publ. Alidou, H. (2006, March). Use of African languages and literacy: Conditions, factors and processes (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Tanzania and Zambia) (ADEA working document A-3.3). https://biennale.adeanet.org Association Nationale de la Traduction de la Bible et l’Alphabétisation (ANTBA). (2015). Guide d’orthographe bissa-barka [Orthography guide, Bissa-Barka]. Ouagadougou et Garango. ANTBA. Chaudenson, R. (2006). Éducation et langues: Français, créoles, langues africaines [Education et languages: French, creoles, African languages]. L’Harmattan. Comité de gestion pour la traduction de l’Ancien Testament en lyélé. (2021). Guide de transition du français au lyélé [Transition guide from French to Lyélé]. Ouagadougou and Réo: Alliance Biblique du Burkina Faso (ABBF), SIL-Burkina Faso and CGTATL. Davison, C. (2008). Literacy in cultures of oral tradition. In N. M. Mutaka (Ed.), Building capacity: Using TEFL and African languages as development-oriented literacy tools (pp. 82–87). Langaa Research and Publishing CIG. Diallo, M. (2001). Le noyau du code orthographique du dioula du Burkina Faso [The heart of the orthographic code for Jula of Burkina Faso]. Mandekan, Bulletin semestriel d’études linguistiques mandé, 37, 9–31. (lire en ligne [archive]) Diallo, M. (2018, August). Les règles de transcription orthographique du dioula au Burkina Faso [The orthographic transcription rules of Jula in Burkina Faso]. Paper presented at the atelier pour l’Harmonisation des Règles de transcription des Langues Nationales, Bobo-Dioulasso, 14-16 August, 2018. Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F. & Fennig, C. D. (Eds.). (2021). Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 24th edn. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. Équipe Kaansa. (2017). Apprenons à lire notre langue maintenant [Let’s learn to read our language now]. SIL-Burkina Faso. Gerard-Reed, G. (2019). A case study of elementary education in Burkina Faso: What’s working, what isn’t, and why it matters. Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University. Groupe de Travail sur l’Éducation Non Formelle (GTENF). (2017, June). Les sessions parallèles de la triennale 2017. Kibare, 11, 6–8. IBE-UNESCO. (2017). Teaching and learning to read in a multilingual context: Ways forward for three sub-Saharan African countries [Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal]. Report produced as part of the project « Improving learning outcomes in early grade reading: integration of curriculum, teaching, learning materials, and assessment (Nov. 2013-Jan. 2017). Geneva: Int’l Bureau of Education – UNESCO. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247533? posInSet=3&queryId=fd51dab7-­d23f-­4ccd-­818a-­f72398676f76 Ilboudou, P. T. (2012). Bilingual education Programme, Burkina Faso Institut National de la Statistique et de la Démographie (INSD). (2020, September) Cinquième recensement général de la population et de l’habitation du Burkina Faso: Résultats préliminaires du 5e RGPH, 2019. Kedrebeogo (Gérard) et Yago (Zacharia) (1982). Langues et groupes ethniques de Haute‐ Volta. CNRST.

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Lavoie, C. (2008). Developing multiliteracies through bilingual education in Burkina Faso. Educational Research and Review, 3(11), 344–350. Retrieved from https://academicjournals. org/journal/ERR/article-­abstract/4ACE94F3471 Loi 013-2007-AN du 30 juillet 2007 portant loi d’orientation de l’éducation [Law 013-2007-AN of 30 July 2007 regarding the law of orientation of education]§ 10 (2007). https://www.axl.cefan. ulaval.ca/afrique/burkina-­lois_educ.htm#Loi_013-­2007-­AN_du_30_juillet_2007_portant_ loi_dorientation_de_l%C3%A9ducation Maïga, A., Napon, A., & Soré, Z. (2015). Pour un ancrage sociologique de l’alphabétisation: Analyse des besoins langagiers des populations burkinabè. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 70, 65–75. Online version downloaded 2 July 2021. https://doi.org/10.4000/ries.4495 Maurer, B. (2010). Les langues de scolarisation en Afrique francophone: Enjeux et repères pour l’action: Rapport général. AUF. Ministère de l’économie et des finances, Comité national du recensement and Bureau central du recensement. (2009, October). Thème 4: Éducation: Instruction – alphabétisation – scolarisation. Rapport sur le Recensement général de la population et de l’habitation de 2006 (RGPJ-2006): Analyse des résultats définitifs. Ouagadougou: Ministère de l’économie et des finances, Comité national du recensement and Bureau central du recensement. Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de l’Alphabétisation. (2018). Appuyer la commission nationale des langues. Rapport général: Atelier d’harmonisation des règles de transcription en langues nationales, Bobo-Dioulasso du 14 au 16 août 2018. [Support the national language commission. General report: Harmonization workshop of the transcription rules for national languages, Bobo-Dioulasso, 14–16 Aug., 2018.] Ministère de l’Education Nationale, de l’Alphabétisation et de la Promotion des Langues Nationales [MENAPLAN]. (2021). Document de Base des Assises Nationales de l’Education Nationale. Nabaloum, A.  A. (2012, October 18). Système éducatif burkinabè: L’historique de l’école retracé par le Dr Maxime Compaoré. le faso.net. Retrieved from https://lefaso.net/spip. php?article50724 Nicholson, L. (2016). Livre d’orthographe: Projet siamou, 3rd edn. [Orthography book: Siamou project]. Electronic version. Nikièma, N. (1996). Évolution de la question de l’utilisation des langues nationales dans le système éducatif au Burkina Faso. Berichte des Sonderforschungsbereichs, 268, 187–199. Ouédraogo, B. (2021, July). Le travail de l’Alliance Biblique du Burkina Faso en alphabétisation et développement [The work of the Burkina Faso bible society in literacy and development]. Presentation at the SIL forum on literacy and development, Ouagadougou, 27–29 July, 2021. Pierre-Joseph, Laurent. (1999). L'Église des Assemblées de Dieu du Burkina-Faso. Histoire, transitions et recompositions identitaires/The Church of the Assemblies of God in Burkina-Faso: History, Transitions and Identity. In Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°105. Le Pentecôtisme: les paradoxes d'une religion transnationale de l'émotion. pp. 71–97. Reeder, J. (2013, July). Evaluating the effectiveness of literacy programs: Social representations in two Togolese groups. Paper presented at the 8th Pan-African Conference on Reading for All, Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 12–16, 2013. Roberts, D., & Walters, S. L. (Eds.). (2021). Tone orthography and literacy. The voice of evidence in ten Niger-Congo langages (Studies in written language and literacy). John Benjamins Publ.. Solidarité Laïque. (2021, May 10). L’éducation, nouvelle cible du terrorisme [Education, the new target of terrorism]. Solidarité Laïque. Retrieved from https://www.solidarite-­laique.org/pro/ actualite/leducation-­nouvelle-­cible-­du-­terrorisme/ Somé, M. Z. (2000). Enseignement du français et valorisation des langues africaines au Burkina Faso [Teaching of French and promotion of African languages in Burkina Faso]. Éducation et Sociétés Plurilingues, 9, electronic version (no page numbers. Downloaded in 2017. https:// drive.google.com/file/d/1qWtn8yBQvkyG97-­EabgNkFvf_qLG1v0d/view Spaull, N., & Lilienstein, A. (2019). Assessing early literacy outcomes in Burkina Faso and Senegal: Using DHS and PASEC to combine access and quality. In Improving early literacy

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outcomes: Curriculum, teaching, and assessment (IBE on curriculum, learning and assessment 4) (pp. 47–62). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004402379_004 Sy, A. (Ed.). (2017). Foresight Africa: Top priorities for the continent in 2017. African Growth Initiative of the Brookings Institute. Tiemtoré, Z. (2019, July). Analyse des politiques d'alphabétisation au Burkina Faso: constats et diagnostic. 3.2.2 Les problèmes du retour dans l’analphabétisme des alphabétisés. Linked-in. Consulted March 11, 2022. https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/ analyse-­des-­politiques-­dalphab%C3%A9tisation-­au-­burkina-­faso-­tiemtor%C3%A9 Trudell, J., & Cheffy, I. (2019). Local knowledge, global knowledge: The role of local language literacy for lifelong learning in rural African contexts. International Review of Education, 65, 409–445. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-­019-­09777-­2 Trudell, B. et al (2012). Early grade literacy in African classrooms: Lessons learned and future directions. ADEA. UNDP. (2020). Latest human development index ranking. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/latest-­ human-­development-­index-­ranking. Consulted Sept. 30, 2021. UNESCO. (1978). Langues africaines: Documents de la réunion d’experts sur la transcription et l’harmonisation des langues africaines, Niamey (Niger), 17–21 juillet 1978. (Archived copy on line on Bisharat.net). UNESCO. (2014). Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all. EFA global monitoring report 2013/2014. Paris:UNESCO. UNESCO. (2016). Celebrating 50 years: Reading the past, writing the future: Promoting literacy over five decades – A concise review. Paris: UNESCO. Downloaded May 21, 2021 from. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (2021). UIS statistics: Sustainable development goals. http:// data.uis.unesco.org/?lang=en&SubSessionId=1156f98a-­9458-­4a9e-­85fc-­c77abd0fef46&them etreeid=-­200#. Consulted Sept. 6, 2021. UNESCO-Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL). (2010). Pourquoi et comment l’Afrique doit investir dans les langues africaines et l’enseignement multilingue: Note de sensibilisation et d’orientation étayée par les faits et fondée sur la pratique [Why and how Africa should invest in African languages and multilingual teaching: note of awareness-raising and orientation supported by facts and based on practice]. UIL & Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA). Wikipédia. (2022). Alphabet National Burkinabè. Wikipédia. Consulted March 12, 2022. https:// fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_national_burkinab%C3%A8 Zongo, B. (2004). Parlons Mooré: langue et culture des Mossis: Burkina-Faso. L’Harmattan. ISBN 2747568024

Ghana’s Orthographies Shape Literacy Curriculum Design Leila L. Schroeder

and Mohammed Osman Nindow

Abstract  We describe some linguistic and orthographic challenges to literacy for 11 large language groups in Ghana: Fante, Akwapɛm Twi, Asante Twi, Nzema, Dagbani, Ga, Gonja, Dangme, Ewe, Dagaare and Kasem. Curriculum development was not completely uniform across these, because it had to respond to unique orthographic challenges to both fluency and comprehension. The first step preceding development of grade 1 and 2 literacy Scope and Sequences for all 11 of these languages was interviews with local linguists. Curriculum design required more than a list of letters of the alphabet; we needed phonological and morphological information and spelling rules for each language. To make learning to read seem natural and easy for a young child, curriculum and software developers did the hardest work first: designing an appropriate teaching sequence for the graphemes (letters) of each language. Literacy consultants and L1-speaking writers/teachers then carefully fleshed out each continuum of skills development, hoping to make reading of texts increasingly rewarding for the young reader.

We are grateful to USAID Ghana Partnership for Education: Learning for funding a massive literacy intervention, to FHI360 for their work with Ghana’s education infrastructure to carry it out in schools, and to SIL for its provision of nine literacy consultants to flesh out eleven Scope and Sequences for grades 1 and 2. We also thank Ghana Learning for sharing the ASER test data which are described near the end of this chapter. We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. PrimerPro, language software written by Kent Schroeder, was used in planning the Scope and Sequences for each of the 11 languages. Use of PrimerPro software is free to anyone who goes to its website: https://software.sil.org/primerpro/. L. L. Schroeder (*) Literacy Department, SIL International, Dallas, TX , USA e-mail: [email protected] M. O. Nindow Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_14

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Keywords  Comprehension · Fluency · Graphemes · Morphology · Phonemic awareness · Phonemic contrasts · Phonology · Scope and sequence · Syllable structures

1 Ghana’s Orthographies Shape Literacy Curriculum Design A total of 73 indigenous, living languages are spoken in Ghana (Eberhard et al., 2020). Because of the multiplicity of African languages spoken in the country, educators and politicians have long debated the means for giving all the children who speak them access to education in a language they know. With each successive government, the language policies seem to change, favoring either English (an L2), or a language of their greatest proficiency, which we’ll refer to as their L1 for their early years. With independence in 1955, the government of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah used English as the medium of instruction for the first 4 years in school. If a Ghanaian language had a writing system, vocabulary development and literacy could be taught as part of the school day (Anyidoho & Dakubu, 2008). With political change, in 1969 L1 use in school was recommended for a duration of 3 years, with a possibility of extension to all 6 years of primary education. However, in 2002 the director general of Education mandated: (a) English should replace vernacular as the medium of instruction in the first 3 years of Primary schooling; (b) Every Ghanaian child must read and write one local language from Primary 1 up to the senior secondary school level (Anyidoho & Dakubu, 2008). In 2016, though, national language policy was reformed with the approval of 11 languages for use in Ghanaian primary schools. This change made an early childhood literacy intervention possible, though these languages were to be used for 30–45 min per day, while the rest of the school day still mandates English as the medium of instruction. We describe the linguistic and orthographic underpinnings of a curriculum developed to promote early grade literacy in Ghana, from 2016–2017. A large literacy intervention followed a national multilingual education (MLE) reform allotting 1 h of daily reading instruction in the language of the child. Once Scope and Sequence architects had gathered some basic information about each language and its writing system, they discovered some major challenges to literacy for 7, and later 8 of the 11 languages, because they found some under-­ representations of phonemic contrasts in their writing systems. It was felt these could seriously hinder comprehension of text in some cases. We describe these phenomena below, and then present a typical Scope and Sequence developed to introduce the skills of reading to first and second grade children in public schools, some sample lesson elements, and testing data.

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2 Pedagogical Principles in a Teaching Sequence (as Explained to Writers of These Languages) In order to make learning to read easy from start to finish, careful sequencing and development of skills, exposure to new graphemes, new words and new decodable texts must be carried out in a systematic way (Nagy & Hiebert, 2011). To carefully control the rate and sequence at which GPCs (grapheme-phoneme correspondences) and words are introduced and practiced, while text remains as natural-sounding and interesting as possible, requires “controlled creativity (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011).” The philosophy underlying this curriculum development process prioritizes children learning to read independently. This means that as soon as they can recognize 3 sight words, 4 vowel letters and 1 consonant symbol, they are expected to decode some syllables and read an increasing number of controlled vocabulary words and texts for themselves, insisting upon learners figuring out nearly everything for themselves, learning by analogy. It was also assumed that when children have increasing control of their pace of learning and are expected to take something new and apply that knowledge to the schemata they are forming in their zone of proximal development (Bear et al., 2012), they will enjoy the process and want to keep adding to their skills. It is hoped they will always love learning through reading. The teaching sequences for each language were primarily determined by the productivity of letters found within a large collection of children’s stories or within a large lexicon. Our software used an elimination algorithm (Weber et al., 1994) to produce each suggested teaching sequence and to suggest “buildable” words for texts. This automated sequence must always be modified a bit for ease of grapheme recognition. The principles for adjusting the sequence were these. Avoid teaching two symbols one after the other which look very similar. For example, don’t teach right after or . Find a different-looking letter to put between them in the sequence. If the orthography has a simple digraph like , try to teach it before and are taught; otherwise there is a danger that children will decode the and the as separate sounds to be pronounced in sequence. Because most of these languages have more vowel sounds than they have symbols to represent them, we must teach those letters and their “additional” sounds twice (and we’ll have to help children use the context of a phrase to help them figure out its intended pronunciation)! We postponed introduction of the least frequent sound represented by that letter as long as possible. For example, if /e/ and also /ɪ/ are both written with , we introduced the most frequently used phoneme first. Much later, we introduced the second sound of the letter, because once learners have become fairly proficient at decoding, we hoped they would be able to use context clues to guess at the correct meaning and pronunciations of many ambiguously written words. This is not a proven method, and its effectiveness remains unsubstantiated. It was our only strategy to help learners cope with significant textual ambiguity, since the nasal-oral vowel contrast is unwritten, and it distinguishes the meanings of thousands of Ga words.

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3 Cross-Cutting Linguistic and Orthographic Issues in Ghana 3.1 Vowels Most of Ghana’s 9-vowel languages have vowel harmony (Casali, 2012; Hudu, 2010; Olawsky, 1999). This means they usually have a set of 5 vowels and another set of 4 vowels which never occur together in the same word, except for the letter . Of the 9 vowel phonemes, only 5 have a direct sound-grapheme correspondence. The other four vowel phonemes have only two symbols and must borrow graphemes which are already in use. The red letters below indicate the ambiguous ones, because inexperienced readers, especially, cannot be sure which sound they represent. It will take them time to learn how to get linguistic or contextual clues from text, helping them guess which phoneme an ambiguous grapheme represents in the word they are decoding. One set of vowels is pronounced with an advanced tongue root (+ATR) and the other has a relaxed, or retracted tongue root (−ATR) (Table 1). Every Scope and Sequence for a 9-vowel language introduced the most frequently spoken “family” of vowels at the start of year 1. This practice allowed story writers more words for use in decodable texts. It also gave learners time to become proficient at decoding before they were faced with the same letters again, representing additional sounds as well. By delaying their introduction, we hoped that more maturity and reading experience would be in their favor. Note that we did not teach reading of the +ATR allophone of /a/, which is [æ] (Casali, 2012).

3.2 Tone and Nasality The eleven languages which were our focus represent four large language families, and both lexical and grammatical tone feature in most of them, with grammatical tone making a significant meaning contrast in frequently used words and affixes. For many of these languages, grammatical tone makes a difference in the meaning of frequently used words, but its representation varies. If no grammatical tone is represented for a language, ambiguity of meaning is often the result. If we expect 6-yearolds to just guess the sound/meaning of pronouns, possessives or tenses, we may discover they have serious comprehension problems. One group’s linguists had Table 1  Vowel harmony example, Akan languages (Ballard, 2010) [−ATR] High Mid Low

Family A, ATR Front ɪ ɛ

Central

a

Back ʋ ɔ

[+ATR] High Mid Low

Family B, +ATR Front i e

Central

(æ)

Back U o

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already developed strategies to disambiguate otherwise ambiguous grammatical words by writing their vowels as long and extra-long. Since they have no long vowel sounds in their language, readers could simply memorize their meaning and read them like English speakers distinguish , and . For that language, we used morpheme recognition activities to help learners see the visual contrast and access their meanings accurately in phrases. This will be explained later. A contrast between nasal and oral vowels figures in nearly all of these languages, though it is rarely written. For some, those with short words and simple syllable structures such as the Ga languages, nasality has a high functional load, or relative importance. In other words, the fact that nasality is not currently written in Ga languages seemed to our consultants to cause ambiguity for many words in a lexicon, and therefore in texts.

3.3 Letter Combinations Some Ghanaian languages have complex syllable-initial graphemes. Digraph examples are [t∫] and [ɲ]. Many resemble consonant clusters but they actually represent one sound. The following example applies to most Akan languages, with large sets of digraphs in which each consonant sound is accompanied by lip rounding and a puff of air. We taught such phenomena in groups when possible, as shown below. Learners decode the syllables from top to bottom (Adams, 2001; Lee, 1982; Schroeder, 2013) (Fig. 1). We gave learners practice recognizing such syllable patterns by grouping sets of labial-velars and labialized consonants, all digraphs, in the manner shown above. We wanted learners to see the patterns and develop automaticity in syllable recognition, helping them decode whole words quickly. In a Scope and Sequence, we grouped similar co-articulated letters fairly closely in the sequence, so they could be remembered and contrasted in drills, for example: , and . The following is a sample drill for labial-velar digraphs. Children decode from top to bottom, using initial consonant substitution (Gudschinsky, 1973; Lee, 1982; Schroeder, 2013) (Fig. 2). Some of the Ghanaian languages also had large sets of clusters. Clusters are groups of letters, either vowels or consonants, which can be pronounced separately in sequence. Because of this, a cluster can be introduced as shown below, as long as each constituent of the cluster has been taught (Fig. 3). Fig. 1  Labial Digraphs

twa

twe

twi

swa

swe

swi

bwa

bwe

bwi

gwa

gwe

gwi

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Fig. 2 Labial-velar Digraphs

Fig. 3  Consonant clusters

Fig. 4  First syllable-final consonant taught

Fig. 5  Contrasting more syllable-final consonants

kpi

kpɔ

gbi

gbɔ

ŋmi

ŋmɔ

lo

le

la

glo

gle

gla

flo

fle

fla

shlo

shle

shla

al

il

el

mal

mil

mel

al

il

ɔl

am

im

ɔm

an

in

ɔn

3.4 Languages with Syllable-Final Consonants We tried to teach the syllable-final position of letters early in the Scope and Sequence, to prevent awkward stumbling during decoding. After the first lesson, Fig. 4, learners will need to contrast and practice the position of that letter as other syllable coda letters are introduced which can fill that slot, shown in Fig. 5. In these examples, it is syllable-final consonant substitution which the learner must recognize visually. The following linguistic and orthographic challenges to pedagogy come from my notes shared with Ghanaian L1 story writers and their consultants. I’ve grouped them by language family.

4 Families of Languages and their Orthography Challenges In the Kwa family of Niger-Congo languages is the Akan sub-family. Within Akan, our languages of focus were Asante Twi, Akuapɛm Twi, Fante and Nzema. For more detail see Stewart (1983 and 1993). A second sub-group of Kwa languages is Ga branch, consisting of Ga and Dangme. Another sub-family is Gur (see Roberts, D.,

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2003) and we developed curricula for three of these: Dagbani, Kasem and Dagaare. Last, Ewe is part of a very large language family, the Gbe.

4.1 Akan Languages All of the Akan languages we worked with have 9 vowel phonemes: two of these do double duty (Haugereid, 2011) in their orthographies. Vowel harmony divides vowels into sets. Akan vowels usually assimilate from left to right (Casali, 2012), making reading and guessing for underrepresented vowels fairly simple. The language family features syllabic nasals which usually represent morphemes such as plural markers in nouns and negative markers in verbs. All Akan syllables are open phonologically, though consonant letters seem to appear at the ends of words: word-final consonants actually represent distinct syllables, as in these examples: ‘hold it’; ‘head’. Those word-final consonants are actually syllabic: distinct syllables on their own. All of these languages have sets of labialized consonants and all have grammatical and lexical tone. For each of them, we chose the most frequently used ATR set of vowels and taught those near the start of year one. The letter , since it can be used for either set, was always taught at that stage. Akuapem Twi  This Akan language has three word-final nasal consonants, and 9 vowel contrasts, only 7 of which are represented in writing. It has 9 consonant digraphs. Certain classes of words all have the same tone, but we foresee no problems for readers. Teaching and curriculum challenges for this language primarily involve the under-represented vowel phonemes of its orthography. Reading will become challenging as soon as learners go beyond the first 7 vowel letters taught. For story-­ writers, PrimerPro is not so useful, because the software “thinks” it sees words with 7 vowel sounds, not 9. It will produce “buildable word” lists which have to be “fixed” daily by the speakers of each language, whenever letters representing two phonemes are taught (introduced and practiced). As mentioned above, the letter represents two sounds in Akuapem Twi, and the letter represents two sounds. Because Akuapem Twi words will all contain graphemes from one [ATR] set or the other, the Scope and Sequence had to respond to this. We chose the most frequently used set to teach first, enabling a maximum number of “buildable” words for use in stories and other texts. When the second set of vowels was introduced, in the second year, we hoped children would find that most under-represented vowel sounds are predictable by term 1, class 2. There are other clues to vowel sounds in the language: the final letter of Akwapem verbs gives a clue as to the set of vowels which are to be pronounced in the rest of the word, so children will hopefully learn to look at the end of a verb before they read it. Asante Twi  Asante has three word-final consonants and 9 vowel contrasts, only 7 of which are represented in writing. Like Akuapem Twi, it has nine consonant

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digraphs. The under-representation is more difficult for Asante readers, because the vowel system is changing, and readers cannot reliably predict which vowel sound to use in particular words. At the start of the curriculum, the first set of four vowels taught can all be used together, since they come from the same ATR sub-set. Another orthography challenge is that, in addition to the vowel under-­ representation, the language has three nasal vowels, too, which are not written. Only a few words, though, are confusing. For example, ‘to blow’ vs /hũ/ ‘to see’ can require use of context and re-reading for full comprehension of a text. Fante  This language has syllabic nasals at the beginning of some words. represents a plural marker on some nouns with alveolars, for example: tree, , vs. trees, /ie/; (5) < eɛ> /ɩɛ/ to pinch. We applied some special pedagogical techniques in My Language minilessons to help readers guess whether there was a syllable break between two contiguous vowels in a given word, or whether they were looking at a vowel diphthong. Orthography problems (and compensatory teaching strategies) result from under-­ representation of some phonemic contrasts used in speech. Like the Akan orthographies, the Dagaare orthography uses two graphemes, and to represent four phonemes. Tone is not written but its importance seems to be minimal (Simons & Fennig, 2020; Bodomo, 1997). Without the full 9 vowel contrasts, learners need assistance decoding accurately, especially in the first year of reading. For example, the following identically spelled

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words: ‘goat’ (-ATR vowel) high tone, vs. (+ATR vowel) ‘pour’ low tone). We tried to equip children to guess well, using context clues. Dagaare also has three nasal vowels according to our writers but Bodomo cites six, all occurring only with double length (1997). They are uncommon but written. We introduced nasal vowels in the last few weeks of year 2, using minimal pairs to heighten auditory and visual awareness. The following examples show the meaning contrasts of oral vs. nasal vowels in the language, using nouns: /daa/ chick market or /dãã/ alcoholíc drink; /dɔɔ/ man or /dɔ̃ɔ̃/ stir; /bee/ alcoholic drink or /bẽẽ/ broth. Dagbani  This Gur language has many short grammatical words. They may consist of a nasal consonant or vowels /a/ or /o/, and their meaning varies with the tone used when they are pronounced (Pazzack, 2013). This is obviously true for the nasal consonant /n/, which is often a possessive pronoun which alternates with /m/ when /n/ precedes a bilabial-initial word, for example: my house, vs. my mother. The and also represent the first person singular personal pronoun (Pazzack, 2013). Tone distinguishes these pronominal forms from an emphatic pronoun or focus marker, which is also written as either or . The hyphen makes the emphatic meaning of the pronoun clear: It is I. I noticed only one significant orthography problem (once we had gone far into writing the curriculum), and it related to ambiguous syllable structures in the language. Dagbani orthography developers haven’t yet solved it, but a research paper by Hudu and Nindow (2020) hints at the syllable problem. All Gur languages have open syllables, with a few exceptions. They always either end with a vowel, or consist of a syllabic consonant, a nasal continuant, so orthography developers decided to insert a vowel grapheme which was already in use to break up what appear to be consonant clusters. They did this by inserting an to indicate a syllable break, similar to what is done in English to accomplish to show the syllabicity of a consonant, and to prevent its being read as part of a consonant cluster: , , . Readers of English must learn to recognize a larger grain size in order to recognize the actual pronunciation and meaning. The sound of the letter /i/ has nothing to do with it. The functions as a placeholder for a syllable (Schroeder, 2013). Of course, the English orthography is very deep and inconsistent, while African orthographies, more recently developed, aim for transparency and clear sound-­ grapheme mapping, so learners, decoding syllable by syllable, will not expect to encounter the letter /i/ representing a completely new and different sound between two consonants: /ɨ/, as in toddler, pronounced /bidɨbbɨla/. Reading an otherwise shallow and transparent orthography, learners are confused and often stumble, because the two speech sounds, /i/ and / ɨ/, occur with nearly equal frequency in Dagbani words. Kasem  This language has nine vowel phonemes in speech like many of the other Gur languages (Starwalt, 1999), with [ATR] vowel harmony, important grammatical tone, and eighteen labial consonant digraphs/trigraphs, for example: , and .

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The Kasem orthography has clear phoneme-grapheme mapping, with one symbol for each vowel or consonant phoneme, though two vowel phonemes are represented with digraphs: represents /o/, and represents /e/. The other seven vowel graphemes are written contrastively to distinguish grammatical minimal pairs, via acute accents. Grammatical tone is very important for this language. Tone is not generally marked, but Kasem orthography rules promote immediate recognition and comprehension of common grammatical words, by marking pairs which differ only by tone. High tone words are the marked ones. Without tone marking, they would be homonyms with others. Tone-marked words indicate either plurality, person or future tense. For example, indicates the plural form of you; is we; is a future tense indicator; is a negative future tense indicator; and is also a future tense marker, according to a Kasem-speaking linguist we interviewed. One orthographic challenge is Kasem’s frequent vowel diphthongs. They are a common hurdle to fluent reading for beginning African readers. This is because they co-occur, often in the same words, with vowel sequences which are a series of unique syllables themselves. Very few orthographies represent this contrast, probably because marking diphthongs would require extra effort for writers and add visual clutter. Kasem does have this orthography challenge, but word-building activities can give learners scaffolded practice decoding such words via syllable-­ combining activities. Since diphthongization is a morpho-phonological process, curriculum developers hoped that more advanced readers would easily make the adjustment and pronounce the correct form in context. Readers of Kasem also need to interpret hyphens which join compound words, join adjectives with nouns, and join a pronoun object to a verb. Curriculum developers used My Language mini lessons to enable quick recognition of the meanings of these grammatical features in print.

4.3 Gbe Languages Gbe is a cluster of 21 languages, a sub-family of Kwa, and part of the very large Niger-Congo language family (Eberhard et al., 2020). Ewe  This is the only Gbe language spoken in Ghana. /Eʋe/ or /Eʋegbe/ [èβéɡ͡bé]) [2] is spoken in Togo and southeastern Ghana by approximately 4.5 million people as a first language and has a million or so more speakers as a second language (https://www.omniglot.com/writing/ewe.htm; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewe_ language#Tones). Ewe is a tonal language with four contrastive tones. This tonality impacts its orthography. In its most common orthography, rising tone is marked by an acute accent; a falling tone marked by a grave accent; a falling-rising tone marked by a caron accent (ě); and a rising-falling accent is marked by a circumflex (ê). The orthography also has a full vowel grapheme inventory including 7 oral vowel phonemes which are all

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written, and 5 of these also have a nasal form, which is also written: . The clear grapheme-phoneme mapping should make literacy acquisition straightforward. However, there is a long list of graphemes to be introduced! The inventory includes many consonant clusters and some rarer consonant phonemes. The Scope and Sequence includes some unusual consonant symbols: , , . Ewe has large sets of consonant clusters which must be taught visually: and as well as some clusters. The orthography deals with some minimal pairs in which tone changes the meaning of the words, but these are lexical rather than grammatical contrasts, making them less common in texts. The pairs are often from different parts of speech. These tones are only marked in the case of minimal pairs, making them sight words to be memorized. The tone marking system seems to be a brilliant strategy for preserving visual simplicity while facilitating comprehension. High and low tones are written, but the orthography version we followed only covers minimal pairs such as these: [tá] to draw vs. [ta] head and [tà] to wear; also [tó] ear vs. [to] mortar and [tò] buffalo. We used My Language morpheme awareness mini lessons to help learners see and hear the contrast in sound, appearance and meaning. These activities have three steps: identification, contrast, and finally cloze, in which learners predict which word belongs in a certain phrase or sentence. These activities should be short and simple, being led by the teacher before a new text is decoded by the class (see Figs. 6, 7 and 8).

Fig. 6  My Language mini-lesson sample 1, Identification (What is the same?)

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Fig. 7  My Language mini-lesson sample 2, Contrast (What is different?) Fig. 8  Dangme My Language mini-lesson sample 3, Cloze activity (Which word makes sense in the context?)

E sa nɛ waa je ____. (ma, mã) We must leave _____ in the morning. (early, dough)

4.4 Ga Languages All of the Ga languages have 7 oral vowel phonemes (Bureau of Ghana Languages and Wikipedia, accessed 01/15/2021). Five nasal vowels feature in both of the Ga languages we worked with, Ga and Dangme. For example, in Ga, /ma/ means fasten and /mã/ is build. In Dangme, /na/ is a man’s name and /nã/ is see. Each nasal vowel is used less frequently than its oral counterpart. The oral-nasal contrasts were once written, but are not, currently. Tone carries a high functional load for conveying meaning for Ga and Dangme, especially since Ga subfamily words are usually short and simple, with no syllable-final consonants. According to Kropp, 1968, every syllable in both Ga and Dangme carries phonemic tone. Tone, both lexical and grammatical, seems important for oral communication in both. Dangme  Dangme has three tones: low, mid and high. None of them are written. All syllables end in a vowel, which should make reading very easy in terms of syllable recognition.

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Unfortunately, there are quite a few readability challenges in the Dangme orthography. Since tone is important yet unwritten, this presents serious comprehension problems for readers. Readers cannot tell, for instance, whether means pursued, or did not pursue! Some way to access meaning would help readers, if 3 different tone marks are avoided over vowels. For 6-year-olds to use a context and guess what the writer intends to convey, as in the example above, is very challenging for comprehensibility of Dangme texts. Another big challenge for reader comprehension is the large frequency of nasal and oral vowel contrasts in the language. All nasal symbols were recently removed, as people felt they cluttered up the page visually. A possible solution to that, which would still allow readers to comprehend their texts, would be writing s or s at the ends of words, like the French do (and this is often done in Francophone Africa’s languages to represent nasal vowels). Since Dangme has only open syllables, the tops of letters would then be uncluttered (also keeping eye movement on the line). For our pedagogy, these two under-representations are more challenging than the vowel under-representations in the Akan languages. We know that when PrimerPro prints out a list of words containing the letter , for example, very many of the words will turn out to be unusable to us, because they actually contain the . The same thing will happen with 5 vowels < ã, ɛ̃, ĩ, ɔ̃, ũ> and their long forms. Some sample minimal pairs for nasality contrast are: /ka/ to strike vs. /kã/ to smear; /saa/ to grind’ vs. /sãã/ roasting; and /sɛ/ not deserve (v.) vs. /sɛ̃/ chair. Our pedagogical escape hatch could have been this: I noted that “The Writing of Dangme allows us to write squiggles over vowels” in cases where it is absolutely essential in order to avoid confusion between two words occurring in identical structural places and differing only with respect to vowel nasality (p. 10). But the Dangme writers chose not to write any of these contrasts. I then recommended putting sets of nasality minimal pairs in mini-morpheme lessons, just before children read a text which contains a word with a nasal vowel. This was done. Children had the opportunity to try pronouncing any ambiguous words in two ways, as an attempt to fully use context together with their phonology, to prepare them auditorily and visually to recognize the sound and meaning contrasts within a target word, though this is probably a cumbersome task for any reader, and its effectiveness is unproven. The following mini-lessons were designed hoping that nasalization could be written. Even so, this activity may help develop learners’ phonemic awareness of nasality as an (oral) vowel indicator and to encourage them to try out various pronunciations of the written word. Fluent reading will be slowed by the need for this strategy. Ga  While very similar to Dangme, Ga still has some unique features. It has lots of consonant clusters preceding , resulting in graphemes such as , and before : and . Ga has two tones. Like Dangme, it has only seven vowels, with no vowel harmony. This should make reading easy. An orthography challenge remains, however, in representing nasal vs. oral vowels and tone.

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Ga has two basic tones: high and low. Tone gives grammatical information. Negativity, for example, is indicated only by tone in speech for three tenses. Ga linguists developed a way to indicate the speech contrasts abstractly. does not ask (habitual tense) has a falling tone, making it negative, so the writing of three identical vowels indicates the negativity abstractly. simply means asks. This triple vowel spelling rule indicates negativity in the following tenses: habitual, progressive, and past. So these tenses require three vowels in a row to convey negativity. The following is one verbal example of a lexical tone contrast: /lá/ sing vs. /la/ dream. The linguist I interviewed told me they had “cleaned up” an early version of the orthography. It is true that if both tone and nasality were both marked over vowels, the level of visual complexity would be very high, though there are alternatives to visual crowding with stacking of diacritics, especially for languages with open syllable structures like these two (New Ga Spelling: A Handbook on the Writing of Ga and Word List, 1975). The Ga orthography has some clever spelling rules to preserve visual simplicity while supporting comprehension. Tone is never written over vowels, but indicated abstractly to indicate negativity, as described above. But nasal vowels are rarely if ever represented in Ga writing. For all nasal vowels in monosyllabic words, only the context guides readers! We decided to use mini-grammar lessons in the student books before each new decodable text containing ambiguous vowels. Examples of ambiguity are: /du/ to plant vs. /dũ/ to hold, and /fɔ/ give birth vs. /fɔ̃/ throw. We used a similar visual and auditory strategy to raise learners’ awareness of the triple vowel spellings used to distinguish negativity in certain verb tense indicators, though the skill needed for distinguishing grammatical words represented is a lexical one, rather than a phonological one. In English, I’d use 3 steps to develop the morpheme recognition, as shown. A Ga example of a Contrast My Language mini-­ lesson would consist of two sentences like these. The teacher would help learners read and say them reflecting the tone difference. They would then be asked, “What looks different? What sounds different? How is the meaning different?” An example is: ; Aku eats rice, and ; Aku doesn’t eat rice.

4.5 Guang Languages Guang languages are within the Niger-Congo phylum, Volta-Congo, that covers much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Niger-Congo>>Volta Congo>>Kwa>>Tano>>Guan (Nelson et al., 2016). Guang languages normally close a syllable only with /ŋ/. Gonja  Gonja is recognized as one of the official languages of Ghana. It is classified as part of the North Guang group (Snider, 1990) and has 9 vowels with contrastive vowel length. Vowel harmony is a feature of the language, so the letters in each word are from one [ATR] set or another, except for /a/, which is universal. Some of the nine phonemes overlap phonologically, but researchers have proven the existence of all nine as “clearly evident” (Nelson et al., 2016, p. 119), especially with

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use of sound-sensitive software for acoustic analysis. The vowel harmony affixes of Guang have helped linguists to identify the contrasting phonemes, because vowel harmony demonstrate all 9 of the ATR vowels evident, when “the easily identifiable [ATR] value of the affix can be used as a clue to the auditorily more elusive quality of the root vowel (Nelson et al., 2016).” Other evidence for the 9-vowel contrasts has been provided by Gonja-speaker intuition, using sorting activities based upon vowel sounds. As of 2016 Gonja did not yet have a consistent, official orthography, and Nelson et al. (2016) said that orthographic testing was needed. The linguist I interviewed, also in 2016, stated that much more phonological analysis was still needed. What I was able to learn came from the Gonja lexicon which our PrimerPro software used, from published research and also from interviews. It is described below. This tentative information gave us a start at a Scope and Sequence which evolved a bit as our literacy consultant worked with Gonja writers. As with the Akan languages, only 7 vowel graphemes are used to write the 9 Gonja vowel phonemes. Other than the letter , which is –ATR, the most frequent vowels are +ATR, so the +ATR vowel sounds plus /a/ and their graphemes were taught from the start of the Gonja curriculum. Once the –ATR vowels are introduced, readers must use cues from other vowels in those words in order to pronounce or distinguish all of the vowel sounds and comprehend the texts. Regarding consonants, Gonja is unique in that it has no voiced fricatives: no /v/ or /z/, but it has more voiceless fricatives than most, with a pre-palatal fricative /∫/. It also has voiced and voiced labial-velars (Nelson et al., 2016). Two Gonja consonants have yet to be proven as phonemes: [ʔ] and [ɾ] (Snider, 1990 and Nelson et al., 2016). Nearly every point of articulation in Gonja has a nasal consonant! Gonja’s five nasal consonants are often syllabic, and often word-initial. Nasal consonant clusters do not exist, so a word such as is disyllabic: . Consonant clusters also are used at the ends of words, so we considered teaching these word-final (syllable-­final) clusters as well as syllable-initial clusters: [l], [ɾ] and [n] followed by [ʔ] (Nelson, et al., 2016, p. 156). The approximant /w/ and its grapheme can occur word initially, or can form a cluster following other consonants, indicating labialization of those consonants. But since the orthography of the language is still a work in progress, labialization is often written using or after a consonant. It seems this will be challenging for beginning readers. A written example is fathers. The second in the word is labialized. A consonant grapheme followed by also can represent a normal, non-labialized vowel, rather than labialization of the previous consonant. But , like , must be taught as a trigraph, since the in usually indicates the /u/ sound, the syllable nucleus. Readers must attend to a larger grain size in distinguishing the two, since the letter is not used to show labialization.

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5 A Scope and Sequence for Dagbani Grade 1 5.1 Term 1 Each of the eleven Scope and Sequences began with development of pre-reading skills, though many of these continued much longer, increasing in complexity. These were the skills developed in the first four weeks: listening comprehension, vocabulary, text conventions and pre-reading skills, phonemic awareness, story sequencing, picture interpretation, visual discrimination of shapes and letters, and letter-sound knowledge, and sight word recognition alongside left-to-right directionality. The latter facilitated the use of decodable texts beginning with week 5. Most figures will show pages from Dagbani pupil books. Sight words for each language were always a girl’s name, a boy’s name, and a transitive verb such as sees. The two children’s names were selected to look very different from each other, and to become decodable fairly quickly in the learning sequence. Children would “read” along with the teacher, at first, gaining familiarity with the 3 sight words. Vowel letter-sound recognition begins with week 3, when learners name pictures, clap the syllables of pictured words, listen for the sound of a new letter, and find that letter in words. As new vowel letters were added, matching activities always aimed to provide comparison and review. For the first letter, , only one picture in each set for matching contains the sound, so learners must listen carefully and discriminate auditorily. After four vowel letters, in this case , have been taught visually, auditorily and in writing, decoding can begin with the first consonant and a key pictureable word. Spelling activities begin at this point, too. For Dagbani, that first letter is . /n/ can be a syllabic nasal on its own, even functioning as a word. It also can be a syllable onset. Syllable recognition had already begun with the four vowels, but now consonants can be added, and the sight words can be incorporated into little texts. The steps of the lesson include part-whole recognition, letter naming and letter writing, followed by top-to-bottom syllable practice using the new letter and the four vowels pupils have learned. New words which will be encountered in the story are circled to indicate they are meaningful, not simply drill. I recommend for African languages that syllables not be segmented, because syllables are intuitive for Africans to blend. The segmenting of words and blending of syllables, rather than segments, works smoothly with no awkward stumbling over awkward sequences such as /b//a//t/. Another problem results, as it did on the first consonant lesson for Dagbani. If students are told to segment the first syllable, /na/, they say /n/ /a/. Then they simply can’t “blend” it back into /na/, because when pronounced in isolation /n/ is a syllable in itself, a word, meaning I or my. The vowel following the , /a/, can also be a pronoun, so segmenting the syllable results in children pronouncing a syllabic /n/, the first singular pronoun I, followed by the second singular pronoun you! Now that they have pronounced two words, “blending” the phonemes in that

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syllable becomes impossible for them. For many African languages segmenting converts letter recognition into something else entirely (Trudell & Schroeder, 2007). Every introduction of a letter is followed later in the day by an illustration and little story. Before each story, there is a mini-lesson called My Language. It usually promotes recognition of a morpheme. The morpheme in this lesson, also a grapheme, is , the pronoun I. The word following it is , a sight word meaning see. The story illustration is always discussed and used to encourage story prediction and purposeful reading. Once they have a reason to read (Orellana et al., 2020) learners can check their predictions by decoding the story for themselves. After all have read at their own pace, the teacher asks various types of comprehension questions, all directly tied to the text and children read aloud to prove their answers. On days 3 and 4 of this week, the next consonant is introduced. This changes the structure of the “Contrast” exercise, as learners can now contrast the with , looking from top to bottom. More disyllabic words are now available from the Dagbani lexicon, and some words with the new letter which will also appear in the story are included in the ovals, the word-building activity. In the story, two sight words, the girl’s name, and the verb sees, . All other words used are decodable. Review lessons give further practice with lessons previously taught, on Day Five of each week. They always give learners a chance to read text, and often aim for fun or humor. In the scene shown in Fig. 13 below, both the girl and the ostrich say “My nut!” This activity focuses on the role of as a first person singular possessive pronoun, though such grammar terminology is not taught in the lessons. This very simple My Language mini-lesson is completely decodable, and followed by a typical short story. On page 2 of the review lesson, sight words are reviewed with a matching activity along with two decodable words which will feature in coming stories. A second consonant grapheme, , has been taught and is practiced. A spelling game is introduced and will feature in every review lesson: a syllable recognition and combining game. The teacher says, “I’m thinking of a word. See if we can write it. Let’s clap the word together.” If the word has more than one syllable, the teacher then says, “What was the first part of the word? Who can find it?”…“I will write it on the chalkboard and you can write it in your exercise book!” The game continues as pupils find and write syllables, combining them to make the words the teacher has suggested (Figs. 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13). Every tenth week of the prototype curriculum is a Review Week, featuring creative writing, spelling, whole word recognition games, and longer texts than usual. During this week, children’s reading skills were tested by their teachers. Following the third Review Week (week 30) was a Story Week. Stories still contained only letters previously taught. By the end of year 1, children had hopefully learned to read independently using letters taught that year. For the Dagbon children, these were, in sequence: in Term 1.

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Fig. 9 Left-to-right directionality combined with sight word recognition

Fig. 10  The first vowel grapheme

5.2 Term 2 In Term 2 they added: . In Term 3 of year one, children were taught to recognize: . Because of the speed of the curriculum, review activities were given a prominent role in the last weeks of year 1. By the middle of Term 2, learners recognized syllable-final nasals, the only Dagbani consonants which can be syllable codas. Surprisingly, recent research indicates that with such a rapid pace of GPC (grapheme-­ phoneme correspondence) acquisition, learning is actually most effective (Vadasy & Sanders, 2020).

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Fig. 11  The first consonant grapheme, Term 1

Fig. 12  The second consonant grapheme, Term 1

Note that while GPC was not taught by direct segmentation of all phoneme-­ graphemes in a syllable, segmentation actually is taught, daily, by either of three strategies: substitution of vowels in a syllable, as in hat, hit, hot; substitution of initial consonants as in bit, sit, kit; or substitution of syllable-final consonants, as in bed, bet, bell. This sort of activity makes a fun chalkboard game for spelling skill, if

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Fig. 13  The first review lesson

directed by the teacher. See Fig. 14, box 3 below for an example of syllable-initial consonant substitution, reading downward (Fig. 15). In the year-end Review Week at the end of each term, children play spelling games (letter substitution to make new short words, syllable “blending” to write longer words, and whole word writing and whole-word recognition speed games (Fig.15). They also silently read longer stories (Figs. 16 and 17).

6 Data 6.1 The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2017 Bismarck Owusu Adusei of Ghana Learning shared the results of ASER (Vagh, 2009) testing, which aims to categorize children’s reading skills into five levels. The testing was carried out among 21 selected schools. Teacher training was carried out, followed by baseline testing and teaching. The analysis of the prototype curriculum was conducted four times during Year 1: beginning of Term 1 (January 10); mid-­Term) (late February); beginning Term 2, and mid-term, Term 2. The data shown below are the ASER results collated from 20 selected schools for the Dagbani Prototype curriculum in Yendi Municipality, Ghana. The analysis is for the ASER test conducted at the beginning of term 1 and at the middle of the term 2, for both year 1 and year 2. According to Adusei (2017), a total of 881 grade 1 children took part in the term 2 ASER test at the beginning of the term and of those, 17% scored in level 1

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Fig. 14  Sample lesson from the middle of Term 2

Fig. 15  Sample weekly review lesson pages

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Fig. 16  Sample Review Week Game, week 20: spelling hopscotch with teacher instructions

Fig. 17  Word recognition races and story reading

(Non-­Readers), 30% were in level 2 (Letter Readers), 26% were in level 3 (Word Readers), 11% were in level 4 (Sentence Readers) and 11% in level 5 (Paragraph Story Readers). Nearly the same number of pupils took the midterm ASER test, in term 2. This was the halfway point for a normal school year. By that time, only 9% were still in level 1 (Non-Readers), 30% reached level 2 (Letter Readers), 26% reached level 3 (Word Readers), 18% reached level 4 (Sentence Readers) and 17% attained to level 5 (Paragraph Story Readers).

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According to the evaluators at the end of term 2 (with one more term remaining to complete grade 1 school year), “There has been tremendous increase in the pupils reading skills, though the ASER test was slightly modified for term 2 [in order to prevent teachers teaching children to memorize the test they gave them at the start]. There was a 44% decrease in the number of pupils whose scores put them in Level 1 at the beginning of the term 2 test compared to that of the midterm ASER test. There was also an increase of 61% of pupils who could read paragraph stories by the midterm 2 test. Table 2 shows the actual numbers of children scoring at each of the five ASER levels at each point in the year. Term 3 results are not shown because the numbers of pupils, schools and teachers involved were completely different and scale-up had begun. In Table 2, five rows represent the reading skill levels. For the first testing event, most students scored at level 1. By the time students were tested in the middle of Term 2 (out of 3 terms), 17% of children had reached Paragraph Level, and 19% had reached sentence level, 25% had reached word level, 30% had reached letter level, and less than 1% were at the pre-reading level (Fig. 18). Table 2  Numbers of students at each reading level, ASER Level L1 pre-reading L2 letter L3 word L4 sentence L5 paragraph Total #

T1 baseline 710 162 29 1 0 902

T1 midterm 298 410 170 18 0 896

T2 baseline 146 306 239 97 93 881

T2 midterm 81 269 226 156 150 882

Students tested

Levels Attained for each Assessment 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

T1 Baseline

T2 Baseline

T1 Midterm L1

L2

L3

L4

T2 Midterm

L5

Fig. 18  Bar chart showing progress across skill levels in grade 1, 2 terms (3rd term unavailable) as students were tested

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6.2 Beyond the Prototype to the Rollout, 2018–2019 Once the prototype had shown its potential with one language, the early grade reading program was expanded to serve approximately 708,000 children in 100 districts across Ghana. FHI 360 researchers, guided by Social Impact, Inc. presented an impact evaluation conducted independently, using data collected in 2019, combined with baseline and midline reports developed in 2017 and 2018 (USAID, 2019). We are sharing some of the factors which had statistically significant influence upon reading AWPM (accurate words per minute) and comprehension. Researchers acknowledged that not all children involved in the program spoke or understood the L1s used in the textbooks and this undeniably influenced the outcomes. In fact, despite the fact that treatment pupils scored 10% higher in reading comprehension, read 8.6 more WPM and were 47% less likely to be zero readers than the control group, 57% were unable to read with any comprehension. Data were collected from 470 schools, 940 teachers and 9400 pupils. The schools were statistically matched, divided into control and treatment categories. English reading was taught daily for an equal amount of time to L1 reading instruction (60 minutes), but it was never mentioned that English reading in the form of subject textbooks continued daily, so pupils were exposed to much more English reading time, yet their English understanding lagged well behind reading comprehension in the children’s L1. From the start of rollout, ASER testing was replaced by EGRA tests which evaluated listening comprehension, letter-sound identification, non-­ word reading, oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. One of the most fascinating results, from a linguistic and pedagogical perspective, is that teaching approaches were also evaluated, and there was statistical significance to two strategies we introduced: clapping by syllables and “blending” syllables, which we called word building (USAID, 2019, p. 7). Textbook layout also prioritized syllable recognition, directing the learners’ focus to the structures of each syllable. Analysis of reading results was computed two ways: the OLS model and the Tobit regression model, accounts for the high number of zero scores which seem to parallel the percentage of children who do not speak the target languages. USAID researchers tried to account for the fact that 73 indigenous languages are spoken in Ghana, yet the program was able to provide literacy materials in only 11 of the larger Ghanaian languages. That alone was a massive undertaking. The following pie chart gives some indication of the language discrepancy which could not be dealt with directly. The team measured pupil and teacher familiarity with the Ghanaian LOI.  High match pupils speak the language comfortably. Low match pupils are unable to speak it well. Teachers gave their own self-assessments, as well. The baseline pie chart indicates the disparity and seemingly the comprehension gaps for 22–32% of children (USAID, 2019, p.  100). Researchers analyzed the effect of language match. Pupils in the top 25% of treatment classrooms had a substantially better language match than pupils in the bottom 25% of treatment classrooms. For example, pupils in the top 25% of treatment classrooms, 82% had a high

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language match at Endline, compared to 62% in the comparison group (USAID, 2019, p.101). Results were similar for teachers as well. It seems to the authors that the Tobit model, therefore, is a more accurate reflection of the effectiveness of the curriculum because it takes these language gaps into account (Fig. 19). The Tobit model estimated that on average, treatment pupils read 17 words per minute more than comparison pupils in the Ghanaian LOI (language of instruction) oral reading fluency, holding all else constant. On average, treatment pupils scored 45 points higher on the Ghanaian LOI reading comprehension subtask than comparison pupils, holding all else constant (USAID, 2019). Among EGR programs worldwide, the Ghana EGR program demonstrated the largest effect size on key early grade reading skills as measured through an impact evaluation. The following is a quotation from the USAID report (2019. p. 61): • The Ghana EGR program’s impacts on Oral Reading Fluency and Letter Sounds, regardless of language, are larger than the two comparable programs included in the World Bank’s systematic review that measure two-year impacts with P1 and P2 pupils. • Despite the unprecedented scale of these improvements, however, average pupil reading levels did not meet the existing reading targets as set by the Government of Ghana in the ESP [Educational Strategic Plan]. • The unprecedented scale of programmatic achievement relative to the unmet targets indicates that, given the starting point of pupils at P1, the progress required to meet the target by P2 is difficult to achieve. This suggests that achievement of the target would require more than 2 years of pupil exposure to an EGR-style program or a more comprehensive intervention that addresses contextual factors inhibiting reading skill acquisition. Last, the evaluation team, Social Impact, compared the 2-year program effects of the Ghana EGR program to comparable programs worldwide, and they were presented in the World Bank Education Global Practice Group’s 2018 working paper “How Effective are EG Interventions? A Review of the Evidence.” Table 3 shows the midline effects, benchmarked against various EGR programs included in the World Bank’s publication while Table  4 compares L1 and L2 reading scores (USAID, 2019). While Ghana’s early grade reading performance broke records, the government and its partners wanted to compare the results with national standards. “The current Fig. 19  Language match for pupils

22% Low Match

Pupil

Medium 10% Match

High Match 68%

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Table 3  Benchmarking the Ghana EGRA program effect size in relation to other interventions 3

Effect Size

2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5

ORF

Gh Eg an yp aE t GR Gh an (O aE LS ) GR (T ob it)

M al i Ke ny a Ni ge ria

st an To ng a Lib Jo er r da ia n (E GR A Pl us ) Ug an da

C

yz

DR

rg Ky

PN So G ut h Af ric a

0

Letter Sounds

Table 4  Local language vs. English language oral reading fluency and letter sounds recognition Local Language

English Language

1.2 1.0 0.8

Ghana EGR

Kenya

Ghana EGR

Kenya

0.0

Kenya

0.2

Kenya

0.4

Ghana EGR

0.6

Ghana EGR

Letter Sounds

1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0

PNG

ORF

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national Education Strategic Plan for Ghana sets the target for Oral Reading Fluency at 35 words per minute. The targets are set for English. After two years of exposure to reading in the EGR program, pupils in the full treatment group read, on average, 19.71 words per minute in a Ghanaian language and 16.68 words per minute in English (USAID, 2019).” Considering that these first and second graders were only exposed to L1 textbooks for 30–45 min daily, while also learning to read a very different orthography via English textbooks for the rest of the day, seems quite an accomplishment on the part of everyone involved (Schroeder, 2020).

References Adams, M. (2001). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. The MIT Press. Anyidoho, A. & Dakubu, K. (2008). Ghana: Indigenous languages, English, and an emerging national identity. Language and national identity in Africa. Oxford University Press. (141-147). Ballard, L. (2010). Akan vowel harmony in optimality theory. Master’s Degree Thesis presented to the graduate school of the University of Florida. Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way. Pearson. Bodomo, A. (1997). The structure of Dagaare (Stanford Monographs in African Languages). CSLI Publications. Bureau of Ghana Languages. (1997). Kasem orthography spelling rules. Bureau of Ghana Languages, Accra. Casali, R. (2012). +ATR Dominance in Akan. Journal of West African Languages, 39(1), 33–59. Dagaare Language Committee. (1982). Guide to Dagaare Spelling. Catholic Press. Eberhard, D.  M., Simons, G.  F., & Fennig, C.  D. (eds.) (2020). Ethnologue: Languages of the world. Twenty-third edition. SIL International. https://www.ethnologue.com/country/GH. Haugereid, L. (2011). Typological features for Akan – Phonology. TypeCraft typological feature template. http://www.typecraft.org. Accessed [1/7/2021]. Hudu, F. (2010). Dagbani tongue-root harmony: A formal account with ultrasound investigation. PhD. University of British Columbia. Hudu, F., & Nindow, O. (2020). Nasality in Dagbani Prosody. Folia Linguistica 2020, 54(3), 527–550. Kropp, M. (1968). A comparative study of Gã and Dangme. University of London. Lee, E. (1982). Literacy primers: The Gudschinsky method. SIL. Nagy, W. E., & Hiebert, E. H. (2011). Toward a theory of word selection. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of Reading research (pp. 388–404). Routledge. Nelson, D., Casali, R. F., Enz, T., Francis, J., Chomiak, D., & Janzen, J. (2016). A preliminary overview of Gonja phonology. CanIL EWP, 2, 99–187. New Ga Spelling: A Handbook on the Writing of Ga and Word List. (1975). Olawsky, K. J. (1999). Aspects of Dagbani grammar- with special emphasis on phonology and morphology. LINCOM EUROPA. Orellana, P., Melo, C., Baldwin, P., Julio, S.  D., & Pezoa, J. (2020). The relationship between motivation to read and reading comprehension in Chilean elementary students. Reading and Writing., 33, 2437–2458. Pazzack, A, P. (2013). Dagbani: An introductory course for beginners. Department of Gur-Gonja Education. University of Education Winneba. Schroeder, L. (2013). Teaching and assessing independent reading skills in multilingual African countries: Not as simple as ABC. In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language issues in comparative education (pp. 245–264). Sense Publishers.

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Schroeder, L. (2020). Narrowing the language gap for Africa’s learners: A pathway for change model. Global Education Review, 7(3), 1–21. Seymour, P.  H. K. (2005). Theoretical framework for beginning Reading in different orthographies. Handbook of Orthography and Literacy, 441–462. Simons, G., & Fennig, C. D. (eds.). (2020). Dagaare, southern: A language of Ghana. n.a. 2018. SIL International. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. https://www.ethnologue.com/ language/DGA Snider, K. L. (1990). Studies in Guang phonology. University of Leiden. Starwalt, C. (1999). ATR vowel harmony in Akposso. Studies in African Linguistics, 28(2), 185–214. Trudell, B., & Schroeder, L. (2007). Reading methodologies for African languages: Avoiding linguistic and pedagogical imperialism. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 20(3), 165–180. Tunmer, W. E., & Nicholson, T. (2011). The development and teaching of word recognition skill. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 405–430). Routledge. USAID. (2019). Ghana early grade reading program impact evaluation. Vadasy, P. F., & Sanders, E. A. (2020). Introducing grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs): Exploring rate and complexity in phonics instruction for kindergarteners with limited skills. Reading and Writing, 34, 109–138. Vagh, S. B. (2009). Evaluating the reliability and validity of the ASER testing tools. ASER Centre. http://www.linguaakshara.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/ASER-­Reliability__Validity_ Evaluation.11091338.pdf Weber, D. J., McConnell, S. R., Weber, D. D., & Bryson, B. J. (1994). Primer: A tool for developing early reading materials. SIL. ISBN 0-88312-678-8.

Teaching Linguistically Diverse Students: A Case Study for Developing Early Grade Literacy Materials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Nathalie J. Louge, Fernanda Gándara, Maik Gibson, and Hali M. Thomas

Abstract  The international community highlights the importance of multilingual education to sustain linguistic diversity and improve learning outcomes. On the continent of Africa, several countries have language-in-education policies that acknowledge multiple literacies, including national and international languages. However, multilingual education presents enormous challenges to educators, especially in contexts with high linguistic diversity. Among these challenges is knowing how to best develop teaching and learning materials (TLMs) in languages that are used heterogeneously and which may not have established orthographies. This chapter presents a case study from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that describes a process for developing and revising national language TLMs. In particular, we describe how orthography guides and a computer-based language analysis software, SynPhony, were used to develop TLMs. We also describe how data from student literacy assessments and sociolinguistic mapping were used to improve the national language TLMs. The chapter concludes with lessons learned and practical recommendations for literacy practitioners and curriculum developers facing similar challenges.

N. J. Louge FHI 360, Durham, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] F. Gándara (*) Room to Read, San Francisco, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] M. Gibson SIL International, Dallas, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. M. Thomas School-to-School International, Pacifica, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_15

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1 Introduction A large proportion of children worldwide—especially in Africa,  Asia, and the Pacific—grow up using two or more languages in their daily lives. It is quite common for the language of education to differ from the language of the family home or even of the playground. As such, most African children face some level of challenge in understanding the medium of instruction at school. This challenge is especially notable when children enter school, which is also a  foundational time for establishing  essential  cognitive skills such as basic literacy and numeracy. Therefore, for children to receive an education in a language that they do not understand well, and which does not link to their broader life or experiences, puts them at a disadvantage in comparison to those who learn in a language they do understand  (Global Education Monitoring Team, 2016).  As such, there is now a greater focus in educational circles on initiating children to school in languages that are the medium of their daily life (Heugh et al., 2019). Not only does a language match enable more effective learning and skill building, but it situates education within a familiar cultural context. While recognizing the importance of home languages, this does not mean that the international languages lose their importance within the educational system. Indeed, international languages—such as French or English—are often seen as badges of educational achievement by parents and educators. Therefore, an approach which embraces both the local and the global—using more than one language in education—is often reflected in current language-in-­ education policies in African nations. The constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Cabinet du President de la Republique, 2011:6) speaks of three types of languages in use in the country: officielle ‘official’; nationale ‘national’; and autre ‘other’. First, there is the official language, French, in which the constitution is written. Then there are four langues nationales (national languages): listed as Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba. The constitution ‘assures their promotion without discrimination’. Each of these is characterized by use over a large geographical area by members of different communities, and they also happen to be frequently used as the main languages in urban centers, as well as in some levels of primary education. Other languages, numbering over 200 (Eberhard et  al., 2021) are said to ‘form part of Congolese cultural heritage of which the State assures the protection’. These languages are the main languages used in the home, especially in rural areas, and are often associated with ethnic identity. For example, in the north-western province of Sud-Ubangi, Lingala functions as the national language, and in the main town of Gemena, is also the language most commonly used, especially by young people. But outside the town the home language Ngbaka is used by all generations in their daily life, and knowledge of Lingala is restricted more to those who have some level of education or contact with urban centers. French is used more in writing, and in more formal domains by a smaller group of people. At the opposite end of the country, in the south-eastern province of Haut-Katanga, it is Kiswahili which in the functioning national language, and there is a wide variety of home languages, such as

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Lemba and Sanga, used primarily in rural contexts (again, the national language Kiswahili predominates in urban contexts like the city of Lubumbashi). Children at school in the DRC will generally use two or three languages each day between education, the family home, and interaction with others  (Gibson, 2018, 2021). The DRC’s constitution allows the use of the four national languages in education alongside French, and this provision was implemented in the case study documented in this chapter (Cabinet du President de la Republique, 2011). In particular, the DRC government allows students in Grades 1 and 2 to learn in national languages – or home languages if materials are available – with French being the official medium of instruction from Grade 3 onwards. Prior to Grade 3, French is only taught orally. Given that most children’s understanding of the national languages is greater than their understanding of French (Gibson, 2018), this provision presents an opportunity to improve children’s early educational outcomes by teaching them foundational skills in better-understood languages. Indeed, most children in the DRC tend to be more fluent in one the national languages1 or a home2 language. Despite the DRC government’s support of this multilingual approach to learning, teaching, and learning materials (TLMs) including teacher guides, student textbooks, and other language and reading support materials, in national languages have remained sparse (RTI International, 2016). The absence of TLMs in national languages remains a barrier in the implementation of DRC’s multilingual education program. A salient challenge for educational practitioners in the DRC is to develop TLMs in national languages that ensure that children acquire foundational skills that they can successfully transfer to learn to read and study in French. This challenge is further compounded by contextual and sociolinguistic factors that need to be considered. These include having (a) a solid understanding of the orthographic structures of each national language and of French, (b) the ability to structure TLMs that appropriately guide teachers in how to teach children to read and write in them, and to transfer their skills to French reading and writing, (c) an established consensus of how national language orthographies should be represented in writing the TLMs, (d) a confirmation of what languages children and teachers understand and speak, and whether these match to the national languages used for education, and (e) an evidence-based determination of the most efficient and effective instructional methods and skill sequencing for literacy instruction in national languages. Developing effective national language TLMs in the DRC is therefore challenging, yet essential to the successful implementation of its multilingual education program. Bottomline,

 In this case, national language is defined by the language assigned to a particular province by the language-in-education policy. In DRC, each province is assigned a national language for education that reflects the perception of what language most people in that province speak. This national language is standardized for education. National languages are also sometimes referred to as official languages. 2  Home language is the language the child speaks at home. This is often referred to as mother tongue. In DRCongo, there are over 200 different mother tongues. Some are linguistically similar to the national languages while others are quite divergent. 1

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a strong foundation in national languages is needed to support the multilingual development of students in the DRC. Accordingly, this chapter aims to provide insight onto the development of early literacy TLMs in linguistically diverse contexts, by describing the process of creating national language TLMs in the DRC.  Specifically, this chapter describes the development and revision of TLMs in national languages for the Accelerating Equitable Access to School, Reading, Student Retention and Accountability, Activity 1 project (ACCELERE! 1), a large-scale, donor-funded educational program in the DRC.  First, we review the process of developing TLMs in the context of other donor-funded projects. Second, we describe the methodology used in this chapter, including the characteristics and challenges faced by the ACCELERE! 1 project, as well as the guiding themes driving the analysis. Third, we present the results of our analysis and describe our experience developing and reviewing TLMs in the context of ACCELERE! 1. Finally, we discuss lessons learned from this experience and provide recommendations to other practitioners facing similar challenges.

2 Developing Teaching and Learning Materials in Donor-­Funded Educational Programs Since the 1990s, education has been at the heart of donor-funded efforts. The importance of education in development gained significant traction with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Declaration on Education for All, aimed at supporting universal access to education through the engagement of international actors (1990). This pledge was recommitted to in 2000 by the United Nations’  Millennium Development Goals, which included the achievement of universal primary education (United Nations, 2015). During that time, partnerships, programs, agendas, and funding toward reaching the education-focused Millennium Development Goals fixated on enrollment. As a result, significant progress was made in terms of access to education. However, in its 2015 progress report, UNESCO stated that “expanding opportunity for education does not necessarily impact quality” and concluded that a shift in emphasis toward quality and learning was necessary because children were not acquiring essential skills, such as basic literacy (p. 188). Accordingly, the more recent United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (2015) increased the focus on quality education as part of its broader strategy to achieve sustainable development. This strategic shift was followed by aid agencies—such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—and ministerial departments involved in the provision of aid to low-income countries—such as United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)—becoming more concerned with learning outcomes than access, especially at the lower educational levels. The most recent education strategies put forth by USAID and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID)—a forerunner to FCDO—emphasize the

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learning of basic skills as well as the need for education to be relevant, particularly for marginalized children and youth (DFID, 2018; USAID, 2018). Currently, one of the main priorities of donor-funded educational programs in low-income countries is the acquisition of essential literacy and numeracy skills. Focusing on quality education is sensible and needed; yet it creates several challenges to the design and implementation of educational projects. Focusing on quality and, therefore, learning outcomes forces stakeholders to increase their efforts on classroom activity and intervene in the “black box” of daily instruction (Black & William, 1998). Yet, the everyday classroom experience of students depends on variables that are difficult to influence, uncontrolled, or not standardized—such as teaching styles or the composition of students. Therefore, interventions at the classroom-level may be difficult to sustain as the scale of a project increases (MSI, 2012). However, one aspect of classroom activity in which projects have more control is the development of appropriate TLMs. TLMs include teacher guides, textbooks for students, and other physical materials as well as open digital resources for teachers, students, or classrooms. High-quality TLMs are essential to improving learning outcomes, especially in primary and lower-secondary schools, due to their central role in structured pedagogy (Smart & Jagannathan, 2018). High-­quality TLMs are particularly beneficial in low-income contexts as they may compensate for illiteracy among parents, lack of reading materials at home, poorly trained teachers, or other structural conditions that prevent students from learning (UNESCO, 2021). Evidence from high-income countries suggests that TLMs can be substantially more effective in boosting achievement than other interventions, such as reducing class size (Boser et al., 2015). Moreover, TLMs tend to be more cost-effective than other practices (Read, 2015), an essential advantage in donor-­ funded projects and ministries of education. The development and distribution of high-quality TLMs lie at the core of current donor-led educational strategies. To support high-quality and relevant educational experiences, TLMs need to be contextually and age appropriate (UNESCO, 2021). In many low-income or conflict-­affected countries, textbooks are too difficult for students because they are aimed at high performers, and not those struggling or performing at lower levels (DFID, 2018). Aid strategies indicate that contextually relevant TLMs also need to support parallel efforts within the sector, such as the improved experience of students with special needs or the deconstruction of negative stereotypes, including detrimental gender stereotypes (DFID, 2018). In addition, TLMs need to be available in languages that teachers and students understand (Fredriksen & Brar, 2015; USAID, 2018). Research also finds that a text is appropriate for a given student when he or she can understand at least 90% of the vocabulary on a first reading (Smart & Jagannathan, 2018). The implication for practice is that the language of TLMs needs to be well known for students and used with a level of difficulty that properly targets their developmental stage (RTI International, 2015). In the context of donor-funded projects, where the implementation relies on a close collaboration with host country governments, determining what languages to use in TLMs and which level of difficulty is appropriate, may follow widely different

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channels. Donors such as USAID encourage host governments to commit to supporting multilingual policies and implementing reading instruction in languages that students  use and understand before transitioning to a less familiar language (USAID, 2019). In some cases, country language policies reflect this recommendation but, in some cases, they do not, which adds a layer of complexity to the success of aid programs. Ultimately, donors and practitioners rely on host governments to determine the language used in TLMs, which should be decided in the context of each country’s language policy (Fredriksen & Brar, 2015). Overall, the process for developing appropriate materials in donor-funded projects is primarily driven by practitioners yet with extensive support from host country partners. While donor-agencies do not back a unique approach toward developing TLMs for multilingual contexts, they advise and guide TLM development through their funding of early grade reading projects. Specifically, donor agencies are funding literacy projects which include a TLM development component in national languages to assist ministries of education in operationalizing their language-in-­ education policy and literacy curriculum in classrooms. In addition, donors support materials developers through the dissemination of guidance documents related to the development of TLMs. For example, quality TLMs should align with “evidence-­ based developmental learning progressions” (University Research Company, LLC, 2019: 26) and USAID offers a few suggestions on ways to accomplish this goal, most notably starting with language mapping3 and establishing grade-specific scopes and sequences by language. USAID has also published guidance around what materials should include, such as recommending an outline of progression and pacing or learning skills in teacher guides (University Research Company, LLC, 2019).  Through funding and guidance, donors support practitioners and host governments in their efforts to develop TLMs that enhance students’ learning outcomes. Depending on the linguistic complexity of the environment, donor-funded educational projects have used a range of processes to engage host governments in the development of TLMs. In the Philippines, for example, the Philippines Basa Pilipinas program began by analyzing the existing K–3 language arts curricula. Based on the analysis, the program decided to use the Department of Education’s pre-established scope and sequence specific to each of the several local languages to create teachers’ guides for Grades 1–3 in English and Filipino. The Basa program focused on teacher training and materials, which introduced bridging strategies from L1 to L2 as schools treated each language separately (Education Development Center, Inc., 2018). In contrast, the Selective Integrated Reading Activity in Mali adopted a monolingual L1 policy and designed new materials in Bamanankan, an L2,  for Grade 1 and 2 students and teachers. The materials introduced new approaches to reading and writing as opposed to building upon existing curricula. Instead of working in multiple languages, the program targeted schools in which both students and teachers spoke Bamanankan. However, monolingual assumptions  Language mapping is a census or sample-based study which seeks to understand the languages spoken and understood by teachers and students in particular geographic areas. See https://pdf. usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00TRB3.pdf for details on the research process. 3

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in highly linguistically diverse contexts are unrealistic. In the case of the Selective Integrated Reading Activity, a sociolinguistic mapping exercise found that between 11% and 20% of targeted teachers used languages other than  Bamanankan  (The Mitchell Group, Inc, & EdIntersect, 2020). In other cases, host governments have gone through recent curriculum reforms that serve as the foundation for new educational projects. For example, the Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity used the Ministry’s primary curriculum and assessment reform (PCAR) materials as the starting point for donor-funded interventions (RTI International, 2014). Prior to the project, the Malawi education system conducted a six-year PCAR that included literature reviews, stakeholder meetings, surveys on language, framework development, revisions, and other activities (PCAR & UNICEF, 2008). The extensive investment and scope of the PCAR laid the foundational ground to the development of TLMs for the project. Conversely, Mozambique’s Vamos Ler! program began with a situational analysis that reported 90% of Grade 2 students in Nampula and Zambezia provinces could not read two words in Portuguese (Creative Associates International, 2017a, b). Since the early 2000s, language instruction policies in Mozambique have been decided at the provincial level, leaving a range of monolingual and multilingual programs across the country. In more recent years, the government of Mozambique pushed for country-­ wide multilingual instruction in primary schools with a focus on Portuguese alongside 16 of the more than 40 local languages. While developing TLMs in three of the local languages—Emakhuwa, Elomwe, and Echuwab—the Vamos Ler! project also conducted language mapping to better understand the oral language proficiency of students across provinces. The language mapping study discovered that 60% of classrooms have multiple L1s (Creative Associates International, 2017a, 7b). This challenge is not unique to Mozambique; many countries face the impossible dilemma of developing a limited set of TLMs while trying to address all the linguistic subgroups in the population. In particular, this challenge is prominent in the DRC, which has over 200 local languages, offering a complex landscape for language policies aimed at teaching reading and writing in each child’s L1.

3 Methodology In this chapter, we describe the experience of the authors developing and improving national language TLMs in the context of the ACCELERE! 1 project. By TMLs, we primarily mean teacher guides (containing scripted lesson plans for teachers to follow, evaluation and remediation activities, and guidance on how to teach literacy), read-alouds, student textbooks, and student take-home books.

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3.1 The Case: The ACCELERE! 1 Project The  six-year, $134-million ACCELERE! 1  project,  funded by USAID  and FCDO, worked from 2015 to 2021 to improve equitable access to education and literacy outcomes in national languages and French for more than one million boys and girls in the DRC. The project worked in nine provinces and 26 sub-provinces across the country. Specifically, the project was charged with adapting and implementing an instructional model in French as well as three of the four national languages—Kiswahili, Lingala, and Ciluba—based on international best practices. The project targeted Grades 1–4 in formal schools and Levels 1 and 24 in nonformal schools,5 also known as accelerated learning programs (ALPs). All strategies and materials were developed in partnership with technical specialists and linguists from the DRC’s ministry of education, the ministry of social affairs, and the ministry’s Centre de Linguistique Appliquée (CELTA). One of the intended goals of the ACCELERE! 1 project was to improve the quality of instruction at the primary level in the provinces where the project operated. The project aimed to implement a balanced-literacy approach that emphasized explicit instruction of key reading-writing skills, such as phonics, while prioritizing oral and reading comprehension. To do so, the project was tasked with the development of teaching materials with scripted lessons. These teaching materials, as well as students’ learning materials, were structured around USAID’s foundational skills of reading—namely phonemic awareness, phonics or the alphabetic principle, vocabulary, oral reading fluency, reading and oral comprehension, and writing, including handwriting, text conventions, encoding, grammar, conjugations, coherence, clarity, and style in writing production. The materials had to guide teachers to teach these skills following an evidence-based order of skill introduction and using instructional methodologies that ensured all children were given the opportunity to be guided, supported, and had time to practice these skills. All materials for teachers and students had to be gender-balanced, conflict-sensitive, disability-inclusive, and vetted for political, ethnic, and religious bias and violence. Textbooks had to be leveled to match students’ abilities and ensure a gradual increase in difficulty. In addition, the TLMs had to support a transference of skills between languages—from national languages to French—within the primary education cycle. For example, for letter-sound acquisition in French, students were asked to notice the similarities or differences in letter-sound pronunciation between languages. In the end, the project created teacher guides, student textbooks, student take-home books, and materials for the classroom—such as read-alouds and posters—for a total of 78 distinct TLMs (see Table 1).

 In the DRC, the non-formal education system for primary condenses two grades into one level resulting in three levels: Level 1 (Grade 1 and 2 equivalent), Level 2 (Grade 3 and 4 equivalent), Level 3 (Grade 5 and 6 equivalent). 5  Level 1 is equivalent to Grades 1 and 2, and Level 2 is equivalent to Grades 3 and 4. 4

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Table 1  TLMs developed by the ACCELERE! 1 project

Kiswahili Lingala Ciluba French (oral only in Grades 1 and 2)

Accelerated learning Grade 1, 2, 3, and program (non-formal) Levels 4 formal schools 1 and 2 Provinces X X Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, North Kivu, South Kivu X X Equateur, Sud Ubangi, Kinshasa X X Kasai Central, Kasai Oriental X X All above-mentioned provinces

3.2 Phase 1: Development of the TLMs In the context of ACCELERE! 1, the materials development team - comprised of project-recruited education specialists, ministry technical specialists and linguists initiated the process of developing TLMs by taking stock of existing materials and curricula. An extensive review of existing materials led to the conclusion that new TLMs should be developed to incorporate international and evidence-based practices for teaching early grade reading. The complexity of the linguistic landscape in the DRC mandated a different set of materials for each language. Most markedly, the fact that Kiswahili has a transparent orthography, Lingala and Ciluba  both have relatively transparent orthographies and are tonal languages, and French has a relatively opaque orthography, resulted in different approaches to teaching reading and writing in each language. Therefore, phase 1 of the development process created different scopes and sequences by language and grade level.

3.3 Phase 2: Revision of the Teaching and Learning Materials Following best practices, the new TLMs introduced by the ACCELERE! 1 project had to be piloted. In the project’s workplan, the team intended to pilot each set of TLMs during one school year and then review usage data to improve the materials. In Year 3 of the project, the project collected information on the use and impact of the national language TLMs for Grade 1, Grade 2, and ALP Level 1. At the end of Year 3, the project held a data-review workshop to allow TLM writers to identify issues and make recommendations on improvements. A similar process was planned for reviewing materials for Grade 3, Grade 4, and ALP Level 2. However, a sudden project pivot imposed by one of the funders did not allow sufficient time to make this happen. For the Grade 1, Grade 2, and ALP Level 1 materials, the project technical team – which included the authors of this chapter  - decided to use various sources of evidence to review the performance of the materials and their potential impact on

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the reading proficiency of students over one school year. This corresponds to Phase 2 of the development of the TLMs. Specifically, the project decided to use monitoring, evaluation, and research data to gain insight into the relevance and appropriateness of the newly developed TLMs. Data from literacy assessments, including the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA)  and the ACCELERE! 1 Quarterly Assessments (QAs), were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the TLMs in terms of student learning outcomes (School-to-School International 2018a, b, c). Additional monitoring data, including teacher and classroom characteristics, were used to contextualize the assessment results and examine alternative explanations for the observed results. Finally, a sociolinguistic mapping study was used to examine the extent to which students and teachers felt comfortable learning or teaching in each of the respective national languages and to ascertain which other languages students and teachers spoke. Altogether, monitoring, evaluation, and research information were used to test and revise TLMs. By doing so, material developers could review the TLMs and improve them to better meet students’ instructional and learning needs as well as teachers’ training needs.  These improvements are presented in the Results section. Data The information used in this chapter came from the direct involvement of the authors in the development, revision, and implementation of TLMs, literacy assessments, monitoring and evaluation tools, and a sociolinguistic mapping study. As part of the review, we examined several documents from the ACCELERE! 1, including the project’s technical proposal, quarterly and annual reports to the funder, meeting notes, internal memos, PowerPoint presentations, handouts summarizing research and evaluation findings, recommendations to improve TLMs and trainings, orthography guides, theories of change, dashboards summarizing monitoring data for the program, TLMs in both pre-piloted and post-piloted versions, training materials, teacher coaching materials, assessment data, evaluation reports, and the results of a sociolinguistic mapping study. The authors of this chapter were involved in the development of one or multiple of these documents. Analysis The primary aim of this chapter is to describe the process ACCELERE! 1 took to develop and revise Grade 1, Grade 2, and ALP Level 1 national language TLMs accounting for among others, language-specific considerations. The analysis of the information was approached descriptively. Specifically, we reviewed the aforementioned documents to describe the decisions made around the development (Phase 1) and revision (Phase 2) of TLMs from two perspectives: the input perspective and the analytical perspective. The input perspective refers to the set of inputs that the project used at each phase to meet its demands. We describe how these inputs were

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developed or selected, as well as the characteristics that made them suitable to meet the materials development team’s needs. In turn, the analytical perspective refers to how the team used the inputs to make decisions on improvements to the TLMs and related activities. We describe how stakeholders were involved at each phase and how the information produced by the different inputs was analyzed, shared, and used to develop (Phase 1) or revise (Phase 2) TLMs.

4 Results 4.1 The Input Perspective Phase 1: Development of the Materials At each phase, the ACCELERE! 1 team used several inputs to inform their decisions. During Phase 1, the development of scopes and sequences in each national language required the standardization of orthographies, which had not been previously done at the country level in the DRC; thus, the first step towards developing the TLMs was the creation of orthography guides. Orthography guides were necessary to ensure that the skills embedded in the TLMs reflected the linguistic structure of the national languages, enabling children to acquire literacy efficiently. Specifically, a team of linguists specializing in the national languages from a project partner, SIL LEAD,6 together with CELTA, developed these guides for Kiswahili, Lingala, and Ciluba (Kutsch Lojenga 2017a, b, c). The orthography guides included a wide range of information, from lists of language particles to recommendations for writing TLMs in these languages (see Table  2). The guides served as a key reference document for the materials development team to ensure coherence of language use in writing the TLMs and to spur necessary conversations among the team so they could make informed decisions on how to represent certain elements of each language in writing. They were also used to develop the scope and sequence of skills and content for each national language and by grade-level (1, 2, 3 and 4) and non-formal Levels 1 and 2 and instructional activity templates to teach each skill, which would later be integrated into scripted teacher guides. Because the Kiswahili, Lingala, and Ciluba share many orthographic and grammatical similarities, the scopes and sequences largely resembled one another across languages in terms of order and pacing of skill introduction. This made the process of developing TLMs easier because lesson plan templates for each grade-level looked similar regardless of language so curriculum writers could simply swap in specific language content from each language. The second set of inputs used in Phase 1 were the linguistic scope and sequences produced by the SynPhony software. SynPhony  is a computer-based software

 For more information, go to https://www.sil-lead.org.

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Table 2  Content of the orthography guides Section Alphabet Word boundaries Verbs Tables of combinations Tones (Lingala and Ciluba only) Other common terms Lists of language particles Recommendations for writing

Sub-section Vowels Consonants Nouns, numerals, demonstratives, adjectives, possessive pronouns, adjectives, associative markers, and prepositions Independent pronouns, subject and object prefixes, independent pronouns, subject and object prefixes, negative conjugations, relative clause C + V, Cw + V, and Cy + V

The days of the week, the months of the year Prefixes, suffixes and prepositions, particles and adverbs, Writing certain nouns class markers specific to the Congolese version of the Kiswahili, how to write certain letter-sounds, spellings according to careful speech (respecting spelling conventions), hyphenation, word boundaries, vocabulary inherited from other languages (e.g. Arabic words in Kiswahili), and vocabulary and phonological differences (e.g. between Congolese Kiswahili and Tanzanian Kiswahili

developed by Norbert Rennert that uses an intelligent search of word lists in any language to help material developers or teachers find teachable words to present to students (SynPhony Community Edition, 2021). As one of its many features, SynPhony can analyze text corpora in any language to propose a productivity sequence for letter introduction. A productivity sequence is defined by an order of letter-sound introduction that produces a maximum number of decodable words or words for which children have already learned the letter-sound relationships. This is useful for material developers because they have access to a larger number of words with which to create short texts for students to read. As such, children’s literacy acquisition is facilitated because they can start reading meaningful text as soon as possible in the curriculum. In the context of ACCELERE! 1, the project team travelled throughout the DRC to collect existing learning materials for Grades 1–4 in the three national languages. Thereafter, they transcribed the learning materials by grade level and language. SIL LEAD’s SynPhony expert thereafter imported these text corpora into the SynPhony software. In turn, SynPhony allowed the team to analyze the letter and word frequencies for each language and grade level (Frank & Weber, 2019). The output included a productivity sequence of letter sounds and word lists to help writers develop texts that maximized student learning. These sequences of letter sounds were inserted into the scope and sequence of skills and content for each language for Grades 1 and 2 used to guide the development of the TLMs.

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Phase 2: Revision of the Materials At the end of Year 3 of the project—and after one full school year of using the new TLMs—the team evaluated their effectiveness to boost students’ learning outcomes. To do so, the project used multiple sources of information, including student reading and writing proficiency data. Specifically, the project relied on EGRA data, that provided an overall sense of students’ proficiency, and on the ACCELERE! 1 QA data, which provided more nuanced and targeted information. The QAs were student literacy assessments that provided timely and ongoing information on if the students were learning at the intended pace provided in the TLMs. The QAs measured essential literacy skills embedded in the TLMs and were administered the last 2  weeks of each trimester to a sample of students in a sample of participating schools. The QAs were brief and contained three or four tasks depending on the grade level and trimester. The QAs focused on a single grade level each trimester7 determined by the project’s priorities, and measured skills on the languages taught, including the three national languages and French. On average, the total number of students assessed ranged between 2000 and 2500 per trimester. The QAs were administered via tablets by project personnel trained extensively to administer assessments in early grade levels. The brevity of the assessments allowed the project to administer QAs to a substantial number of students during a two-week period. Importantly, the QAs measured receptive and productive language,8 including students’ ability to write. Writing samples are often excluded in large-scale assessments because they are tedious to analyze, as they demand individualized scoring. However, ACCELERE! 1 chose to include the writing sample subtask because it could provide valuable insight into a child’s ability to (a) discriminate, identify, and order sounds they hear, known as phonological awareness; (b) their letter-sound association knowledge, known as phonics; and (c) their knowledge of text conventions such as spacing between words, directionality, punctuation, and capitalization. At the aggregated level, the writing samples also provided insight into the stages of writing followed by the children in each of the three national languages. The descriptions of a child’s writing stages are well-defined for more researched languages, such as English and French, but do not  exist  for the national languages. Insights into writing stages can help material developers identify skills and language particles that are most difficult for  the majority of  students to acquire. In turn, identifying the hardest skills and language particles could support the revision of TLMs by clarifying where to allocate instructional time and practice. Overall, by administering productive tasks—such as writing tasks—the project got a richer picture of students’ misconceptions and needs than was available with receptive data alone.

 Grade 1 or equivalent for trimesters 1 and 2 of 2017–2018, Grade 2 or equivalent for trimester 3 of 2017–2018, and Grade 3 or equivalent for trimesters 1 and 2 of 2018–2019. 8  Receptive language is the ability to understand and comprehend spoken language that you hear or read. Productive language is the ability to produce and use language. 7

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The QAs were designed to identify potential issues that students may have faced learning to read and write. The tasks were developed with the aim to identify the drivers of students’ mistakes. For example, in a task asking students to read words aloud, the length of the words, the consonant-vowel patterns in words, and the number of complex syllables in words provided reliable insight drivers of students’ incorrect responses. Therefore, the analysis of the QAs revolved mostly around identifying patterns of mistakes made by students within and across tasks. The QAs yielded a score that determined if students were mastering the curriculum. They also provided nuanced information about students’ literacy acquisition and evolution across the trimesters. Open-ended tasks, such as the writing tasks, were scored using a rubric, to provide a unique and comparable score per student. These tasks were further analyzed by a reading specialist who focused on individualized responses with the aim to identify patterns of mistakes. In particular, the reading specialist conducted multiple levels of analysis on several hundred writing samples collected in each language. These included: 1. Trends in the letter sounds Grade 1 and 2 and nonformal Level 1 misrepresentations or letter confusions (e.g. using l for r because of how similarly they are pronounced in local Kiswahili) in students’ spellings. This analysis helped to see which letters students struggled to represent correctly either because they could not discriminate the individual sound or had not yet sufficiently mastered the letter sound correspondence. 2. If students correctly represented the first and last letters in words and if they successfully represented each syllable heard in each word. This analysis helped to assess students’ overall phonological and phonemic awareness skills. 3. Students’ use of text conventions such as letter formation, word spacing, capitalization, and punctuation. This gave insight into  whether or not  these conventions had been explicitly taught and if children had a concept of word in their national language. 4. A mapping of the description of writing skills by “spelling  stage”  for  each language by classifying students’ writing samples in three stages: emergent, semi-­emergent, beginning (simple letter-sound stage), transitional (syllables, prefixes, and suffixes stage), and advanced.  These stages were determined by categorizing the writing samples by criteria. For example, children who represented words dictated as a jumble of symbols and letters were categorized as being in the “emergent” spelling stage. However, children who could correctly represent the consonant clusters, prefixes, represent all syllables in a word, and adopt the majority of text conventions were categorized as being in the transitional stage. 5. Individual analysis of each syllable, word, and sentence noting specific examples of students’ errors in spelling and specific percentages of students who misspelled the syllable or word a certain way. This was useful to help material developers understand which specific letter-sounds and length of words children were struggling with.

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Fig. 1  Writing Samples from Students, Kiswahili Grade 1. Prompt: to write (a) y. (b) m. (c) cakula. (d) mateso. (e) Ule dada ana duka. (f) Kidole ya dada

6. Triangulation of these spelling representations with the results of the sociolinguistic mapping study and for Kiswahili, with the orthographic guide section highlighting the differences in the pronunciation of the “standard” variety versus the spoken Kiswahili in the provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba. This helped material developers to see the connection between language spoken and how it could impact children’s ability to hear sounds and to correctly represent them in writing (Fig. 1). While the QAs provided data on student literacy outcomes, they were insufficient to respond to all the questions related to the TLMs. Therefore, in parallel to the QAs, the project used classroom observations to contextualize student data. Classroom observation data were collected by the same enumerators and in the same classrooms where students took the QAs, ensuring a direct link between both tools. The classroom observation protocols were structured. Enumerators used them to collect data on teachers’ fidelity of implementation of the steps described in the scripted lessons in the teacher guides. This tool also collected classroom characteristics, such as size and sex composition; teachers’ characteristics, such as sex or attending a given training; teaching instructional methods and classroom management, such as selecting students in an equitable manner; teachers’ linguistic practices, such as languages used for instruction; materials available in the classroom, such as whether or not all students had a textbook (which was the project goal); lessons and unit taught; and support teachers received in their school, such as the frequency with which they held teacher community of practice meetings. These data were imported into a dashboard to help users easily visualize and sort the data. In particular, data on teachers’ fidelity of implementation of lesson plan steps were analyzed to get a sense of how closely teachers on average adhered to the lesson plans and to identify which instructional activities seemed to be the most difficult to implement for teachers or which ones were not implemented at all. Using school and classroom identifiers, the observations were linked to individual student assessment records. A merged dataset was used to analyze students’ mastery of the content and the factors related to such achievement. The dataset allowed project personnel to gain insight into the drivers of student achievement, including the potential effectiveness of the TLMs.

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The QAs and classroom observations were used to evaluate and monitor the project but could not answer all questions about implementation. Specifically, these instruments alone did not examine the extent to which students used, understood, and valued national languages. Additionally, these instruments could neither examine teachers’ comfort in using the standard variety of a given national language nor their attitudes towards language. Given the high linguistic diversity in the DRC, the numerous groups who speak languages other than the national languages or French, and the relevance of teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the appropriateness of languages used in education, the project technical team decided to conduct a sociolinguistic mapping. The sociolinguistic mapping study consisted of observing which languages the students in different locations used and their level of proficiency in the relevant national language to the region. In addition, the sociolinguistic mapping evaluated the level of understanding of the “standard” version of the language used in the TLMs among students and teachers. Finally, the sociolinguistic mapping examined teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards national language and their language preferences. Data were collected by trained enumerators who told students a short story in the standard dialect and asked them questions about what had happened in the story. The sociolinguistic mapping relied on various methods of data collection, including direct observation, group interviews, and assessing children’s understanding of the stories told in standard variations of the national languages. As such, the sociolinguistic mapping enabled the project to triangulate information and obtain a fuller picture of the children’s proficiency and language use.

4.2 The Analytical Perspective Phase 1: Development of the Materials Material developers used the orthography guides and SynPhony outputs to develop the first version of the TLMs. Specifically, the material developers took the information in the orthography guides and combined them with research on the skills needed to learn to read. By doing so, material developers could determine the pacing and the order of skill introduction by language; subsequently, they could map them onto a scope and sequence covering 24 weeks for Grades 1–4 (Table 3). For example, phonological awareness skills development in the national languages focused on syllabic segmentation, deletion, addition, and substitution. This decision was made because the national languages, which are Bantu languages, can be easily segmented into meaningful syllables or parts, known as morphemes. For example, in Kiswahili, the morpheme“ni” in ninacheka (I laugh) means “I”, the “na” indicates the present tense, and cheka is the verb root. This is different from a focus on phonemic awareness—like initial sound identification or rime—an essential skill to develop in languages like French and English. Likewise, reading programs in English and French focus on phonics for the first few years of primary education. However, given the national languages’ transparent

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Table 3  Inputs used in each phase

Orthography guides SynPhony software Sociolinguistic mapping Early Grade Reading Assessment Quarterly assessments Classroom observations Other project operations research

Phase 1 – development of the materials Y Y

Phase 2 – revision of the materials

Y Y Y Y Y

orthographies and limited numbers of letter-sounds correspondences—21 letters in Ciluba and Lingala plus 18 consonant blends, 24 letters in Kiswahili plus 16 consonant blends—phonics instruction was sequenced through Grade 1 and half of Grade 2. Doing so enabled teachers to cover every letter sound and consonant blend correspondence with two letter sounds introduced per week. This pacing allowed students to have sufficient practice in phonics and begin focusing on decoding towards the end of Grade 2. Material developers then used  SynPhony’s productivity sequences to develop decodable books. Decodable books allow children to learn letters in a certain order and are organized in a way that a child is never asked to read syllables or words containing letters they have not explicitly learned. Writers analyzed the proposed letter sound introduction and reordered some letters based on their complexity to students. For example, the most frequent letter in Ciluba is “k” which creates a voiceless hard stop in the mouth when pronouncing it. Despite it being the most frequent letter, it is not optimal to begin teaching children to blend two sounds together to read a syllable. Therefore, the writers decided first to introduce the letter “m,” the most frequent nasal sound in Ciluba, which also blends easily with vowels. Once these letter-sound productivity sequences were agreed upon, material developers used SynPhony to generate decodable word lists and develop texts with words composed of letters children had already learned (Fig. 2). At the final stage of the development of TLMs, the orthography guides helped material developers to represent  spelling and grammar rules consistently in the TLMs.  For  example,  to  develop Grade 1, Grade 2, and  nonformal  Level 1 texts, writers had different ideas on how to transcribe certain letter sounds or if contractions in speech should be represented in writing. In one instance when writing the Kiswahili TLMs, there were arguments on when to use the letter “w” versus “u,” which indicate a similar sound. There was also debate over how to transcribe the noun—class 1 and class 3 prefix and the class 18 locative prefix written with a syllabic nasal “m” in standard Kiswahili of Tanzania. Because the original proto-Bantu form is “mu-” and because this is also the pronunciation mostly used in the DRC, the orthography guide recommended to write “mu-” in the Kiswahili TLMs. However, in the end, there was such commitment from the CELTA linguists to stick

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Fig. 2  SynPhony’s word list functionality of Ciluba

to the Tanzanian Kiswahili that it was determined to transcribe this prefix with “m” rather than “mu.” Consistency is essential when developing early grade reading materials to avoid confusion among children learning to read and spell the language. In developing the Grade 3, Grade 4, and nonformal Level 2 program, the writers used the orthography guides to develop grammar and conjugation lessons because at these grade levels, students transition to studying the morphemes and grammar that makes up the national languages. Phase 2: Revision of the Materials The project took the information from the literacy assessments, classroom observations, and sociolinguistic mapping to make sense of students’ learning outcomes and identify patterns that could inform improvements to the TLMs. To do so, ACCELERE! 1’s materials development team alongside the ministry technical specialists and linguists analyzed the information from these inputs for a collaborative diagnosis. An ACCELERE! 1 technical advisor led a four-day data review workshop. They looked at (a) EGRA data from the latest evaluation, (b) QA data collected over one school year, (c) contextual data, including teacher data, collected via classroom observations, and (d) the results of the sociolinguistic mapping study, with a focus on (b) and (d). An education technical advisor led workshop participants through graphics, handouts, and web-based dashboards summarizing the data across different trimesters. The workshop included small and group work to grapple with the data by language as well as participatory discussions to determine how to improve the TLMs and related project activities, such as teacher trainings. Throughout the process,  participants  were encouraged to note the trends in the data to answer the following key questions:

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1. How are students doing in reading by grade level and province? 2. What factors—linguistic or teacher driven—could be causing the issues with the low performance overall and specific to each province? 3. What should the ACCELERE! 1 project do to improve the teaching and learning materials and related activities to account for the factors negatively impacting students’ reading acquisition? Assessment Data The main source of assessment data used in the revision of TLMs were the QAs: they produced frequent data and were designed to conduct finer grain analyses that linked student outcomes to different elements of the program. The ACCELERE! 1 technical team presented the QA data by date and task, disaggregated by grade level, language, and province. The team presented student data on tasks that measured letter-sound identification, decoding, syllable reading, word reading, spelling, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The team spent extra time reviewing the spelling data so that participants could identify patterns in the children’s spellings of the words dictated to them—letters used, letters misused, and letter sounds correctly or incorrectly used in writing. Overall, the literacy data and analysis helped  materials developers to see what letter sounds were most difficult for students and to make consequent adjustments to the reading-writing lessons. For example, as a result of the data and analysis, writers decided to allocate more time to the double consonants, which the QA data showed to not be correctly represented for the majority of students and note for teachers which letters are most challenging for students by language. Material developers also decided to detail more explicit instructions in the teachers’ guides on how to direct students to encode using the letter-sound correspondences and how to apply text conventions when writing. Results from the Sociolinguistic Mapping The sociolinguistic mapping study was an essential source to review the TLMs: they provided insight onto the potential drivers of proficiency and onto the appropriateness of the materials, from a sociolinguistic perspective. The data on sociolinguistic mapping, reported in Gibson (2018), were presented to participants in the following order: (a) language preferences used by students, (b) students’ level of understanding of the local variety of the national language and the ‘standard’ variety for education, (c) teachers’ skills with the local variety of the national language and the ‘standard’ variety for education, and (d) teachers’ attitudes towards language education policy, specifically the use of the national language as the language of instruction. Results were shared as a group in the presentation and individually in handouts; results were presented separately by language. The data were helpful to material developers because it allowed them to appreciate the nuances of language use and comprehension in the geographic areas supported by ACCELERE! 1. In analyzing this data, they were able to determine which additional revisions needed to be made to the TLMs and which complementary resources needed to be developed, such as glossaries to account for these nuances and in some cases, lack of language match between language spoken and national language of instruction.

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In relation to students’ language preferences, participants found some unexpected and concerning results, especially in select Lingala-assigned rural areas. The percentage of students observed speaking Lingala among peers was only 2% in rural Sud Ubangi and 8% in southeast Equateur. In some Lingala-assigned areas, such as rural Sud Ubangi, children and teachers spoke Ngbaka, a non-Bantu language. The results were also lower than expected in the Kiswahili Provinces, especially in rural Lualaba where only 65% of children were observed speaking Kiswahili. For Kiswahili-assigned areas, such as rural Lualaba, the study found that the Kiswahili spoken is quite different from the Standard variety in terms of both grammar and vocabulary and that many children speak minority Bantu languages such as Bemba.  Overall, these results highlighted the complexity of developing TLMs that are accessible to all students (Table 4). In relation to the second topic, the sociolinguistic study showed that areas with higher linguistic diversity were associated with lower proficiency in the local varieties of the national languages. Linguistic diversity is defined not only in terms of the number of languages but also in terms of the structural and lexical diversity of the languages operating in a given region. For example, the lowest performance among students was observed in rural Sud Ubangi, where the local language is Ngbaka. Ngbaka is a member of the Gbaya rather than the Bantu language family, with no structural or lexical similarity to Lingala, the province’s national language of education. In Equateur, the local language in the study area is Lokondo, which is closely related to Lingala as both are part of the Bantu C group; most children, while using Lokondo among themselves, could also understand a significant amount of Lingala. Such proximity could explain the different levels of proficiency seen between students in Sud Ubangi and Equateur. Conversely, in Kiswahili areas such as Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, the local languages include Sanga and Bemba, which are Bantu. However, they belong to the L and M subgroups as opposed the subgroup G, which Kiswahili belongs. The relationship between Kiswahili and the local languages of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba is much closer than that of Ngbaka to Lingala, but it is not as close as that of Lokondo with Lingala (Fig. 3).

Table 4  Students observed speaking national languages, by province

Province Sud Ubangi Sud Ubangi Equateur Equateur Kasai Oriental Kasai Oriental Haut-Katanga Haut-Katanga Lualaba Lualaba

Urbanicity Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural

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Fig. 3  Children’s level of language use of the national language of education

Next, participants were presented with the results of students’ oral comprehension of texts written in the standardized national languages (the ones used in the TLMs). The data showed that students in urban Equateur, Kasai Oriental, and Kasai Central had the highest understanding of standard varieties. In the case of the Kasais, this is likely because Ciluba is a language native to that area, as opposed to Kiswahili in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba, where it is an “imported” language from Tanzania. In Equateur, either the majority language was Lingala or a very closely related local language, such as Lokondo. These findings also showed that in Kiswahili-speaking Haut-Katanga and Lualaba comprehension of the standard variety was significantly reduced, even in urban areas where local Kiswahili is dominant. This can be explained by the fact that the local variety of Kiswahili is radically different from the standard form (Fig. 4). The findings of the sociolinguistic mapping around students’ preferences and proficiency helped contextualize some of the findings around the QAs. For example, students in rural Sud Ubangi performed significantly lower than peers in both urban Sud Ubangi and rural areas of other provinces (Gibson, 2018). This may be explained by the linguistic differences between the Ngbaka language spoken in the region and standard Lingala, the language of instruction. Similarly, the different varieties of Kiswahili and the characteristics of the home languages across Kiswahili areas can explain some of the differences observed in students’ performance. Looking at the low comprehension results in the QAs and differences between standard and spoken national languages, material developers decided to incorporate more time in the teachers guides for vocabulary and comprehension activities. This was to allow for teachers to have the time to explain new words and terms to children who either do not speak Lingala (Ngbaka-speaking areas) or who had difficulty understanding the standard Kiswahili used in the TLMs.

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Fig. 4  Grade 1 students’ understanding of a text in standard variety

Teachers’ skills and preferences further complemented the insights from students’ language use. Almost all of the interviewed teachers were assessed by the enumerators to be competent speakers of the local variety of the corresponding national languages. However, in all five provinces studied, participants noted differences between the local variety used in the community and the standard variety used in textbooks. Most teachers used the local variety more. In the Lingala-speaking provinces of Sud Ubangi and Equateur and in Ciluba-speaking Kasai Oriental, the differences between the local variety of the national language were not significant enough to cause problems of comprehension, as difference were mainly limited to vocabulary.  In  Kiswahili-speaking Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, grammatical and vocabulary differences between the standard variety used in textbooks and the local variety were substantial. This corroborates the difficulty children in those provinces had in understanding a story in the standard form of the language. In the Kiswahili-areas, most teachers (81%) mentioned personal challenges in speaking or teaching in standard  Kiswahili, particularly their vocabulary knowledge. This was also revealed through teachers’ slight level of discomfort using standard Kiswahili as that language of the interview. A similar proportion of Grade 1 teachers in Lingala areas (74%) said there were some difficulties teaching it, but only 5% of teachers mentioned issues with vocabulary. In Kasai Oriental, only 30% of Grade 1 teachers mentioned a problem and only one Grade 1 teacher mentioned issues with vocabulary. These results surprised many of the material developers but ultimately led them to decide to develop complementary material to accompany the TLMs, namely paper-based and digital glossaries of terms in the standard national languages. Doing so aimed to help teachers explain terms that they may not understand themselves. In addition, a phonology repertoire for teachers to play letter-­sounds in each language was added to the digital glossary. Finally, some changes were made to related project activities, such as teacher trainings where TLMs were first introduced. Specifically, trainings were modified to incorporate

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information about the language mismatches and encourage the use of local languages—for example, Ngbaka in Sud Ubangi—to help their students better understand the content in the TLMs written in national languages.

5 Discussion In this chapter, we described the experience of developing and revising national language TLMs in the context of ACCELERE! 1, a large-scale, donor-funded early literacy project in the DRC. The experience with the ACCELERE! 1 TLMs is purposive to multilingual education, as the DRC is a country with high linguistic diversity, including four national languages used in instruction and a wide variety of local or home languages which may or may not be linguistically matched. In relation to the development of materials, this chapter described how the project led to the creation of orthography guides in national languages as a starting point to structure and sequence the skills and language particles that served as the basis of the literacy program. Far too often, literacy programs in Africa follow an Anglocentric methodology, focusing on the key skills needed to learn to read in English, or a Francocentric methodology, focusing on rote memorization of rules and words, well suited to acquiring French. Using either of these methodologies to develop TLMs for literacy would not have worked well with the three national languages considered in this case study, which have more transparent orthographies than English or French. Therefore, ACCELERE! 1 developed orthography guides, which, along with SynPhony, were used to develop a scope and sequence that was relevant to the DRC. Doing so enabled material developers to create TLMs that were contextually appropriate, and that built upon pre-existing resources and efforts. Our recommendation for material developers seeking to develop early grade literacy programs in languages without established orthographies is to consider investing in tools such as orthography guides and SynPhony to create texts that efficiently and appropriately teach children to read in those languages. In relation to the revision of the national language TLMs, we discussed how ACCELERE! 1 used monitoring, evaluation, and research data to refine them. Among other sources, the project drew on student performance data and a sociolinguistic mapping study to better understand what was working well, what was not working as intended, and why. By doing so, material developers had the opportunity to reflect upon the scopes and sequences on which the TLMs were based and make changes accordingly. As a result, ACCELERE! 1’s material developers incorporated more explicit guidance to teacher guides in the form of instructions and vocabulary definitions, including a paper-based and digital glossary. Doing so facilitated learning, as teachers are best positioned to help students understand the national languages. Our recommendation for practitioners is to develop monitoring, evaluation and research tools that complement each other and that enable the project to continuously reflect upon the effectiveness of their program, including TLMs. As shown in this chapter, thoughtful literacy assessments  – designed to identify

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students’ mistakes –together with sociolinguistic information on teachers and students can inform fine-grain modifications to national language TLMs and related activities. Overall, we strongly advocate for evidence-based decisions for improving literacy programs. In retrospect, we believe that ACCELERE! 1 could have approached the task of developing and revising the TLMs differently. In terms of inputs, the orthography guides were created with the input of  the  linguistic expert body  in the country. However, they were not validated by them nor were they accessible to all material developers, whose knowledge of linguistics varied. This situation led to some disagreements about the accuracy of the orthography guides in the first round of the materials development. In a country with such diversity in language and language use, it is expected that there should be some disagreements among material developers on how elements should be spelled or represented. One way to solve this is by having a body of experts provide a final recommendation on which representations to use. However, it is often the case in linguistically diverse contexts that the standard version of a language is widely different from what is locally spoken. This was certainly the case in the DRC, as shown by the sociolinguistic mapping study. Therefore, the attempt to stabilize orthographies can be complicated and create additional challenges to program implementers. For example, orthographies must be accepted by the societies and educators if they are to become established and used. Beyond linguistics, understanding attitudes concerning acceptable scripts, symbols and their use, is an important part of successful orthography development and stabilization (see Cahill, 2014, for further discussion). The proper development of orthography guides requires extensive deliberation. To mitigate the complexity, our recommendation is to follow a development process that accounts for the sociolinguistic viewpoints of beneficiaries and stakeholders, and that creates space for educating project staff and/or bridging linguistic disagreements among them. In addition, we believe that the project could have benefited from conducting the sociolinguistic mapping study earlier on. Conducting a sociolinguistic study is recommended as an initial step in the development of TLMs, and ACCELERE! 1 could have done it during Phase 1 of the development process. Doing so would have enabled the project to account for the linguistic diversity of the DRC and the linguistic differences between the local and national languages from the very beginning. An early sociolinguistic mapping would have enriched the possibilities to support meaningful teaching and learning in national languages, for example, through (a) the creation of orthography guides that recognized both standard and local variations of languages, (b) the development of materials that varied slightly by region, or (c) the provision of complementary materials to teachers, including glossaries, from day one. Conducting the sociolinguistic mapping prior or in parallel to the development of orthography guides could have enabled a richer discussion around how to approach the immense challenge of developing TLMs that were standard across schools, yet flexible enough to account for linguistic variations across provinces and groups. Our recommendation is to conduct a sociolinguistic mapping study, and to do so at the early stages of the project.

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The development of TLMs faced enormous challenges that went beyond the linguistic structure of the languages. The valuing of national languages in education in the DRC as framed in its constitution is an emblematic element of the postcolonial set of policies; yet, there are many areas in the country where no national languages are used. Therefore, in areas such as rural Sud Ubangi, the majority of children do not adequately speak the corresponding national language for instruction in it to be of benefit. Navigating such a dynamic from the perspective of an educational program can be challenging. This is heightened by the fact that linguistic choices in education, such as which languages to use for instruction and TLMs, may impact students beyond just their proficiency status. The exclusion of certain groups from schooling practices has obvious consequences for their self-esteem and wellbeing. In particular, the choice of a specific language for education reinforces a social standard about what is seen as valuable, and establishes hierarchies that impact students’ identities (Shohamy, 2006; Tollefson, 2016). Linguistic choices also impact the well-being of other stakeholders, such as teachers, who may be more proficient in certain languages or feel more valued under certain conditions. A potential solution is to engage key stakeholders—ministry officials, provincial leads, and others—early on in conversations on how to find the appropriate level of flexibility in language use when developing TLMs for literacy programs, so as to maximize learning outcomes and students’ well-being. A conversation of that sort could use sociolinguistic mapping studies as inputs to rethink the scope and rigidity with which a literacy program should operate across widely different regions and groups of students. Another solution could be to train and collaborate with educators and communities proficient in the main language of the area (e.g. Ngbaka) to develop supplementary materials such as read-alouds and books drawing upon oral stories. These materials could be used in tandem with the national language literacy program to boost children’s oral language, vocabulary, and comprehension skills while promoting their own language culture. Last, to navigate the complexity of developing TLMs, especially in languages that are used heterogeneously, we strongly recommend an iterative approach. An iterative approach to develop TLMs would allow for (a) piloting in the classrooms and (b) gathering continuous formative feedback to support revisions of the materials. Piloting the materials should focus on the experiences of teachers and students using them. In the context of multilingual literacy, particular emphasis should be placed on identifying the linguistic practices that teachers engage in, including translingual practices. Translingual practices refer to flexible actions in which teachers draw from students’ full linguistic repertoires as opposed to discrete and bounded standard versions of languages (Velasco & Garcia, 2014). Translingual practices are common in multilingual classrooms, including the DRC (Gandara, 2017), and have been found beneficial for students in multiple ways and contexts (Kiramba, 2016). Piloting the TLMs should also include evaluating which complementary materials, such as glossaries or national language reference guides, are best equipped to support teachers in negotiating different views around language and variations between standard and local varieties. After the pilot stages, and through thoughtful monitoring, evaluation and learning systems, programs can conduct

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evidence-­based revisions of the TLMs on a periodic basis. Crucially, at all stages, project implementers should engage stakeholders beyond material developers, including linguistics, ministry officials, and teachers from multiple areas and linguistic groups.

References Black, P., & William, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102 Boser, U., Chingos, M., & Straus, C. (2015). The hidden value of curriculum reform: Do states and districts receive the Most bang for their curriculum Buck? Center for American Progress. Retrieved from: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-­content/uploads/2015/10/06111518/ CurriculumMatters-­report.pdf Cabinet du President de la Republique. (2011, February 5). Journal officiel de la République Démocratique du Congo. Constitution de la République Démocratique du Congo. Retrieved from https://aceproject.org/ero-­en/regions/africa/CD/rdc-­constitution-­2011/view Cahill, M. (2014). Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Developing orthographies for unwritten languages (pp. 9–25). SIL International. Creative Associates International. (2017a). Language mapping study in Mozambique final report. United States Agency for International Development. Creative Associates International. (2017b). Vamos Ler! /Let’s Read quarterly progress report 3. United States Agency for International Development. DFID. (2018). DFID education policy 2018: Get children learning – GOV.UK. https://www.gov. uk/government/publications/dfid-­education-­policy-­2018-­get-­children-­learning Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (eds.). (2021). Ethnologue: Languages of the world. Twenty-fourth edition. SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com Education Development Center, Inc. (2018). USAID/Philippines basa pilipinas program final project report. USAID. Frank, P., & Weber, C. (2019). Report on SynPhony and Bloom training and usage for ACCELERE! 1. USAID. Fredriksen, B., & Brar, S. (2015). Getting textbooks to every child in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank. Gandara, F. (2017). Evaluating a translingual administration of the early grades math assessment (EGMA) in The Democratic Republic of the Congo. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Gibson, M. (2018). Report on operations research for ACCELERE! 1: Sociolinguistic mapping and teacher language ability. USAID.  Retrieved from https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/ PA00TRB3.pdf Gibson, M. (2021). Getting the right language information for education: Insights from a language mapping project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language issues in comparative education II: Policy and practice in multilingual education based on non-dominant languages (pp. 257–275). Brill – Sense. Global Education Monitoring Team. (2016). Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all. UNESCO. Retrieved from https://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/ education-­for-­people-­and-­planet-­creating-­sustainable-­futures-­for-­all-­gemr-­2016-­en.pdf Heugh, K., French, M., Armitage, J., Taylor-Leech, K., Billinghurst, N., & Ollerhead, S. (2019). Using multilingual approaches: Moving from theory to practice. British Council. Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Using_multilingual_approaches.pdf Kiramba, L.  K. (2016). Heteroglossic practices in a multilingual science classroom (p.  249). Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. Kutsch Lojenga, C. (2017a). Orthography guide for writers in Lingala. SIL LEAD, Inc.

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Kutsch Lojenga, C. (2017b). Orthography guide for writers in Swahili. SIL LEAD, Inc. Kutsch Lojenga, C. (2017c). Orthography guide for writers in Tshiluba. SIL LEAD, Inc. MSI. (2012). Scaling up—From vision to large-scale change. A Management Framework for Practitioners. PCAR & UNICEF. (2008). Inception and midway implementation report. Retrieved from https:// www.academia.edu/5754593/Primary_Curriculum_and_Assessment_Reform_PCAR_Media_ Campaign_Report Read, T. (2015). Where have all the textbooks gone? Toward sustainable provision of teaching and learning materials in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank. RTI International. (2014). Early grade reading activity annual report. USAID.  Retrieved from https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00KX83.pdf RTI International. (2015). Planning for language use in education: Best practices and practical steps for improving learning. Retrieved from https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pbaaf479.pdf RTI International. (2016). Survey of Children’s Reading materials in African languages in eleven countries  - final report. USAID.  Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/5cb1f6beaadd34703fcc968c/t/5fff02f3c3b83f13fc594405/1610547958320/Survey% 2Bof%2BChildren%27s%2BReading%2BMaterials%2Bin%2BAfrican%2BLanguagesGlo bal_05_2016.pdf School-to-School International. (2018a). Quarterly assessment, first trimester 2017–18. USAID. School-to-School International. (2018b). Quarterly assessment, second trimester 2017–18. USAID. School-to-School International. (2018c). Quarterly assessment, third trimester 2017–18. USAID. Shohamy, E. (2006). Imagined multilingual schools: How come we don’t deliver. In Imagining multilingual schools, de Ofelia Garcia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas y Maria E.  Torres-Guzman (pp. 171–183). Multilingual Matters LTD. Smart, A., & Jagannathan, S. (2018). Textbook policies in Asia. In Development, publishing, printing, distribution, and future implications. Asian Development Bank. SynPhony Community Edition. (2021). Canada Institute of Linguistics. Retrieved from http://call. canil.ca/index.html The Mitchell Group, Inc & EdIntersect. (2020). Mid-term performance evaluation of the selective integrated reading activity (SIRA) in Mali. USAID. Tollefson, J. (2016). Language Planning in Education. UNESCO. (2015). Education for all 2000–2015: Achievements and challenges. UNESCO. (2021). Brief 3 Learning and teaching materials. Brief. Obtenido de https:// learningportal.iiep.unesco.org/en/issue-­briefs/improve-­learning/curriculum-­and-­materials/ learning-­and-­teaching-­materials United Nations. (2015). The millennium development goals. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/ millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20Summary%20web_english.pdf United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (1990). World declaration on education for all. University Research Company, LLC. (2019). Toward the design and implementation of comprehensive primary grade literacy and numeracy programs. USAID. USAID. (2018). USAID education policy. Retrieved from https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/ files/documents/1865/2018_Education_Policy_FINAL_WEB.pdf USAID. (2019). USAID reading matters conceptual framework. Retrieved from https:// www.globalreadingnetwork.net/sites/default/files/media/file/Reading%20MATTERS%20 Conceptual%20Framework_v7_October%2026%20%281%29_final.pdf Velasco, P., & García, O. (2014). Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. Bilingual Research Journal, 37, 6–23.

Language and Literacy Practices in Kenya Brenda Aromu Wawire

Abstract Kenya is a linguistically and ethnically diverse low middle income country and has a rapidly growing youthful population. Approximately 67 living languages are spoken in communities in Kenya and English and Kiswahili are the official languages. The language of instruction policy encourages the use of mother tongue as the main medium of instruction in grades 1–3 while English and Kiswahili are taught as subjects. From fourth grade onwards, English is the main language of instruction while Kiswahili is taught as a subject. The youth and adult literacy rate of Kenya is 81.3%, which is comparable to other Sub-Saharan countries and other lower-middle income countries. This chapter gives a general overview of Kenyan languages, the language of instruction policy, and the educational reforms in Kenya. Since Kiswahili is a main instructional language, its phonological, morphological, and orthographic principles are highlighted. Next, the efforts and initiatives by educational stakeholders to make learning more inclusive through the use Kenyan mother tongues for instruction are discussed. Lastly, we discuss the literacy rates, challenges, and innovative programs implemented by government and non-­ governmental organizations to improve literacy and content area learning outcomes.

1 Country Profile Kenya is an Anglophone country that is located in the Eastern Africa Region. Kenya’s population is 47, 564,296 [see Fig. 1] (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics [KNBS], 2019) and its population is rapidly growing. Children below 15 years are 43% of the total population while youth aged 16–25 are a further 25% (KNBS, 2019). It is projected that Kenya’s population will increase to 115 million by 2065 (United Nations, 2017). Over the past decade, Kenya has made significant gains in B. A. Wawire (*) African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi Kenya, Human Development Theme, Nairobi, Kenya e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_16

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Fig. 1  Map of Kenya. (Source: Mugane, 2015)

economic growth, social development, and political stability that are attributed to successful political and economic reforms (World Bank, 2021). The major social development gains include reduction of child mortality, achieving near universal primary school enrollment, and narrowed gender gaps in education. Kenya has a prospective of developing into a high economy in Africa because of a skilled and highly innovative workforce given the youthful population, a dynamic private sector, improved infrastructure, a new constitution, as well as its fundamental geopolitical and economic role in East Africa. The country continues to face persistent challenges including poverty, inequality, climate change, weak and unstable private sector investment, as well as internal and external economic shocks which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (World Bank, 2021). Kenya is ranked 143 out of 189 countries on the human development index (HDI) with a score of 0.601. The human capital index score of Kenya is 0.55 (World Bank, 2020a), meaning that a child born in Kenya today will be 55% as productive when they grow up, as they could be if they had complete access to education and health care (World Bank, 2020a). This index is higher than the average for SubSaharan Africa region and lower middle-income countries.

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2 Economic and Political Context Kenya ranks the highest in terms of the Human Development Index in East Africa and is one of the fastest growing in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. The main contributor to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is agriculture at 33%. Agriculture accounts for 56% of formal and informal employment in Kenya and the leading export earners are tea, coffee, and horticultural products. The tourism and hospitality sector has historically contributed to approximately 9% of Kenya’s GDP. The other sectors that contribute to the country’s GDP include the manufacturing sector, construction sector, as well as real estate, financial services industry and technology, media, and telecommunication. A stable macroeconomic environment, increased investor confidence, and a resilient services sector have sustained the economic growth, which averaged 5.7% from 2015 to 2019 (World Bank, 2021). The recent discovery of oil and mineral resources is a potential economic enhancement for Kenya. In 2020, the GDP contracted by 0.3% due to the shocks of COVID-19 pandemic. The agricultural production grew robustly, while the manufacturing and services sector consisting of tourism and education were severely disrupted. Kenya is positioned strategically as the economic, commercial, and logistical hub in Eastern and Central Africa. It is a vibrant hub for entrepreneurship and human capital, which gives it a high potential for further growth, job creation opportunities, and poverty reduction.

3 Political Context Kenya is a unitary state, which gained independence in 1963 from British colonial rule. The country has a parliamentary democracy and it utilizes the multi-party political system. Historically, Kenya’s political context has been shaped by ethnic tensions associated with centralization of powers and resources. There was a failed coup attempt in 1982, which was followed by episodes of post-election violence. A new constitution was proclaimed in 2010 after two decades of constitutional review. The new constitution introduced a bicameral legislative house, a devolved county government, and a constitutionally tenured judiciary and electoral body. The first election held under this new constitution in 2013 was peaceful. However, the Supreme Court nullified the August 8th, 2017 elections and a new presidential election was held on September 1st, 2017. President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in as the president for the second and final term (Table 1).

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Table 1  Distribution of languages by language family Language family Afro-Asiatic Creole Indo-European Niger-Congo Nilo-Saharan Sign language Total

Count 13 1 4 34 15 1 68

Living languages Percent 19.1 1.5 5.9 50.0 22.1 1.5 100

Number of speakers Total Percent Mean Median 3,767,990 9.0 289,845 27,000 21,300 .01 21,300 21,300 336,600 0.8 84,150 59,500 24,821,200 59.4 730,035 155,500 12,587,350 30.1 839,157 392,000 260,000 0.6 260,000 260,000 41,794,440 100.0

Source: Eberhard et al., 2021

4 Language and Literacy 4.1 Languages of Kenya Kenya is a multilingual and multiethnic country; the exact number of languages spoken in Kenya remains speculative. Some linguists define codes based on ethnicity and argue that there are 42 codes while other researchers who seek to capture the sociolinguistic situation in Kenya indicate there are 67 living languages that are spoken (Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, 2000; Eberhard et al., 2021). This number of languages is debatable as it is difficult to establish clear boundaries between languages and dialects found in Kenya particularly where the notable dialect boundaries are not distinct languages based on geographic boundaries of linguistic features but rather dialect continua (Githiora, 2008). A majority of the languages spoken locally in Kenya belong to the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Cushitic language families [see Fig. 2] (Ogechi & Bosire-Ogechi, 2002; Omondi, 1999). The Niger-Congo languages are comprised of the Mande languages and the Atlantic-Congo languages. The Niger-Congo phylum has the largest representation as approximately 65% of Kenyans from the Coastal, Central, and Western regions of Kenya speak the Niger-Congo phylum of Bantu languages (Heine & Mohlig, 1980). Kiswahili is the largest Bantu language spoken by more than 100 million people speaking it as a first or second language. Nilotic languages that fall into three sub-families  – Western Nilotic, Eastern Nilotic, and Southern Nilotic – are spoken by up 30% of the Kenyan population. Cushitic languages, a branch of Afro-Asiatic languages, are spoken by a minority of the population in Kenya with approximately 3% of the population speaking them. Other minority languages are mainly spoken by descendants of speakers from the Indo-European language family and include Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and English. A few indigenous languages such as El Molo and Okiek have now become extinct while languages such as Sengewer, Njemps, and Subad are endangered and threatened with extinction as speakers of these minority languages have assimilated into larger communities of Maa, Kalenjin, and Gikuyu (Ogechi et al., 2012). Arabic is used along the coastal areas because of the strong influence of the Islamic culture. Japanese,

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Fig. 2  Language Map of Kenya. (Source: Eberhard et al., 2021)

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Chinese, and Korean are used in urban communities mainly due to growing global business relations (Ogechi et al., 2012). British colonial history had a major influence on the linguistic diversity in Kenya (Gorman, 1974; Nabea, 2009; Omondi, 1999). The linguistic stratification was influenced by several factors including social prestige, historic cultural ties, economic linkages, political fluctuations, and state boundaries (Githiora, 2008). For example, the Luhya language classification is not an amalgamated language but rather a cluster of 16–26 closely related dialects spoken in the Western region of Kenya. The Luhya language and cultural identity is based on the mutual intelligibility of languages and cultural practices and separation between dialects is based on political rather than ethno-linguistic boundaries. Similarly, for political and cultural reasons, the Kipsigis, Keiyo, and Nandi languages subgroups are grouped as a single language  – Kalenjin  – ignoring the internal differences among the languages (Githiora, 2008). The morphological, phonetic, phonological, syntactic, and pragmatic structures of the Kenyan Bantu, Cushitic, and Nilotic languages are very distinct (Omondi, 1999). Kiswahili has five vowels whereas Nilotic languages like Turkana, Maa, and Luo have 10 vowels. Within the language families, some languages have closer relations than others i.e. Olusamia and Khayo have a closer genetic distance compared to Khayo and Lulogooli. Cohesiveness and mutual intelligibility between languages is a function of cognates and similarities in syntactic, phonological, morphological and semantic structures (Omondi, 1999). Also notable is the existence of an unstable language code known as Sheng that is widely used in urban and rural settings in East Africa. Sheng is a mixed language code that originated in the less affluent and slum areas of Eastlands in Nairobi from the complex multilingual situation of Nairobi city (Abdulaziz & Osinde, 1997; Githiora, 2002; Ogechi, 2005). The linguistic code is a marker of personal identity, modernity, urbanity and coolness among the youth. According to Githiora (2018), Sheng serves several functions including fulfilling the cognitive and pragmatic needs of its speakers as a language of contact. It is used by diverse populations as a tool to enhance globalization and demographic transformation; it acts as a language of change and innovation and is a symbol of resistance to the dominant ex-colonial languages. Sheng has grown extensively to become a vernacular for urban youth in rural and urban cities of East Africa and is widely used in formal adult speech register, homesteads, university campuses, social media texting, banking halls, police stations, mainstream media, and politics (Githiora, 2002, 2018; Momanyi, 2009; Ogechi, 2005). The expansion of cities across Kenya because of improved infrastructure has led to increased rural-urban migration and enhanced links with rural areas has facilitated the use of Sheng in rural and peri-urban areas. Due to its strong influence on the mass culture, Sheng is no longer restricted to estate gangs, street boys, and hawkers but has also attracted membership from elite classes and is a primary language in many households (Iraki, 2010). Sheng is based on Kiswahili structure and grammar with a lexicon drawn from Kiswahili, English, and the various ethnic languages mostly spoken in towns and other urban areas in the Eastern African region. Sheng does not share mutual intelligibility with English, Kiswahili, or other indigenous Kenyan languages. Over

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time, the mixed code has developed to have more systematic patterns of usage at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels (Githiora, 2002; Ogechi, 2005). Empirical evidence indicates that the mass culture of Sheng has had adverse effects of subtractive bilingualism or semilingualism as its speakers do not know or are not fluent in the languages of their ethnicity and may not speak English and Kiswahili fluently (Momanyi, 2009). Moreover, Sheng has promotes antagonistic attitudes and behaviors toward particularism and traditionalism by standardizing products and homogenizing tastes among its speakers. People in the mass culture operate in the subtraction and exclusions rather than addition of their cultural orientation and have a tendency to and one their ethnic languages. Educators criticize the massive spread and use of Sheng in society through its use as a household and street language as it has interfered with students’ grammatical competence, oral fluency, and vocabulary development in Kiswahili and English. Sheng’s language structures, including rules of phonological processes, deletion of consonants, reduplication of stem forms, morphological realignment, and code-switching has negatively effective learning and usage of standard English and Kiswahili (Githiora, 2018; Momanyi, 2009; Mutiga, 2013).

4.2 Language Acquisition in Kenya On average, a Kenyan typically speaks at least three languages - an aspect that is motivated by their individual, societal, and national goals. The mother tongue (L1) is the first language acquired by children from family and immediate environment. Eighty percent of Kenyans have native competence in the indigenous Kenyan languages that are considered the languages of acculturation, identity formation, and daily communication. Acquisition of the second language (L2) for many is through either an informal process (i.e. at the border of speech communities when people with different first languages live together in communities and members of such communities are forced to learn each other’s language in order to have a common language of communication) or through formal immersive contexts in schools. Knowledge, fluency, and competence in English is measured based on levels of education and exposure to the language (Omondi, 1999). Fluency in Kiswahili ranges from native competence by L1 speakers to the various proficiency levels exhibited by L2 speakers through its wide usage and spread as a result of nationalist support and it being a medium of instruction in schools. There is a high concentration of Kiswahili speakers in multi ethnic urban and peri-urban regions. In homogenous rural areas, indigenous languages are widely used with notably different patterns in the border regions compared to the urban areas. Code-mixing/switching entails switching from one language to another is a widely practiced phenomenon among Kenyans (Mazrui, 1995; Ogechi, 2003). A majority of the population typically shuttle between languages or use of the languages in their linguistic repertoire simultaneously to make sense of their bilingual world. The plural linguistic practices characterize the daily communication

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practices in families and communities in Kenya. They are generally acceptable in formal and informal social settings except in educational settings where policy mandates use of the official languages.

4.3 Orthography of Kenyan Languages Most of the languages spoken in Kenya are typically used for oral communication since Kenya has a long history of oral culture. The Christian missionaries were at the forefront of designing orthographies of Kenyan languages and the same efforts continue to be facilitated by individual and private organizations (Omondi, 1999). The first orthography was developed in Kiswahili after the introduction of Islamic and Christian religions. Kiswahili was first written in the Arabic script, but in the early 1980s a Latin script was developed by missionaries so that they could use the language conveniently for their missionary work; hence, it has a standardized orthography (Mazrui & Mazrui, 1995; Mbaabu, 1996). By 1999, only 22 languages in Kenya had an orthography and had publications for teaching them (ROK, 1999). Recent reports indicate that 35 of the 67 living languages have a written orthography as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development uses them (Eberhard et  al.,  2021; Research Triangle Institute [RTI] International, 2015). While all the indigenous Kenyan languages are written using the Latin script, there is also an Arabic script for Afro-asiatic languages and Braille/Devanagari scripts for Hindi and Gujarati (Eberhard et  al., 2021). The common texts in these indigenous languages include grammar books, videos, the Bible, and literature texts. Several researchers note that the development of the orthographies, which was managed through the colonial method, was problematic as it was based on a Eurocentric framework, meaning that the orthographies are based on the consonant and vowel system of English and ignore the properties of Kenyan languages such as tone (Ogechi et al., 2012; Omondi, 1999). Ongoing efforts initiated and spearheaded by institutions such as the Bible Translation and Literacy Project, the Center for Advanced Study of African Society (CASAS), Summer Institute of Linguistics [SIL],Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (CHAKITA), and community groups (the Gikuyu Language Committee) continue to promote languages, split and develop new orthographies, and standardize and harmonize orthographies of mutually intelligible languages such as Bantu (Ogechi et al., 2012; RTI, 2015; Simala et al., 2014). The CASAS has proposed grouping the three main language families in Kenya Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic - into 11 clusters for harmonization and standardization purposes (Ogechi et al., 2012) (Table 2). The poor language development and standardization are due to a lack of systematic language planning supported and lead by the government. The efforts of development, standardization, and harmonization of orthographies of Kenyan languages have hindered or stopped due to several reasons. Firstly, the grouping of dialects and languages without considering the ethnolinguistic boundaries means that there are 68 living languages which makes it both uneconomical and near

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Table 2  Proposed Harmonization Clusters and Linguistic Codes of Kenyan Languages Harmonization Cluster Thagicu Luhya

Linguistic codes Gikuyu, Meru, Mbeere, Embu Isukha, Bukusu, Maragoli, Banyala, Banyore, Batsotso, Gisu, Idakho, Kabras, Khayo, Kisa, Marachi, Marama, Masaaba, Samia, Tachoni, Tiriki, Wanga 3 Mijikenda Giriama, Kambe, Kauma, Duruma, Digo, Chonyi Ribe, Rabai, Jibana 4 Gusii and Kuria EkeGusii, Kuria 5 Watani Taita, Taveta, pare, Chagga 6 Maa Maasai, Njemps, Samburu 7 Kalenjin Nandi, Tugen, Pokot, Kipsigis, Marakwet, Keiyo, Sengwer, and Sabaot 8 Turkana and Teso Karamajong, Toposa 9 Somali Somali 10 Cushitic Rendile, Oromo/Borana 1 2

impossible to use them for faster education and technological advancement. Secondly, the failure to effectively implement the mother tongue policy infuses demotivation to standardize and harmonize the codes (Ogechi et al., 2012). There is a need for in-depth research by linguistic experts in the various languages and commitment to promote the use of these languages by various stakeholders in society (i.e. media and communication, government offices, and the education sector among others) in order for these efforts to be successful. Since Kiswahili is the African language utilized as a medium of instruction, an in-depth overview of its morphological, phonological, and orthographic structure will be presented.

4.4 History of Kiswahili Kiswahili is an African Lingua Franca that is widely spoken in East, Central, and Southern Africa by over 100 million people as a first or second language. It is the official language in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda and is the working language of the African Union. Kiswahili holds strategic importance for social, political, and economic engagement across Africa and the African Union. It is a language of instruction in primary schools in Tanzania and Kenya and is taught in schools in Uganda. Its wide usage across East Africa and other parts of Africa was mainly through formal and informal trade, governance, education, and religion (Mugane, 2015). Speakers of Kiswahili as a first language were originally inhabitants of the coastal regions of Kenya and Tanzania and the islands of Zanzibar, and they traded with the Arabic peninsula from approximately 800 C.E. Kiswahili vocabulary was greatly influenced by interactions, therefore; it has the highest number of loan words compared to other Bantu languages (Legère, 1992). The Kiswahili language has a variety of dialects including Kiamu, Kivumba, Kitumbatu, Kingazija, Kipemba, Kipate, Kimgao, Kigwana, Kitikuu, Chimbalazi, Kijomvi, Chichifundi, Kimtangáta,

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and Kinguja (Mugane, 2015). These regional dialects have variations in pronunciation and vocabulary as spoken and understood in the specific regions. Standard Kiswahili based on the Kiunguja dialect is the official dialect that is used among Kiswahili speakers from different regions.

4.5 Phonological Principles of Kiswahili Standard Kiswahili has 26 consonant phonemes with eight of the phonemes presented as digraphs [see Table 3 for the grapheme and their phonetic realization]. Kiswahili has five vowels (Table 4); all Kiswahili vowels occur in the initial or final positions or medially preceding or after a vowel or consonant phonemes. Consonant phonemes take the initial or the pre and postvocalic medial position except for the voiceless aspirates that occur in prevocalic initial positions only. The nasal + consonant and consonant +/j/ or /w/ occur in words of Bantu origin (Polomé, 1967). However, non-Bantu loan words and other consonantal sequences may occur, for example /lf/, /rt./, /sk/. The syllable is the most salient phonological unit and most words comprise an open syllable. Each vowel is a syllable; longer syllables have a vowel preceded by one or more consonants [cha]. In Bantu origin words, syllable boundaries are marked between a vowel and syllabic nasal, and the consonant that follows; in contrast, for loan words, the boundary is marked after the first of the two consonants i.e. between /k/ and /r/ in the word shukrani. Typically, there is a correspondence in the phonological realization of a grammatical morpheme and its graphemic form (Alcock & Ngorosho, 2007). In Bantu origin words, stress is placed on the penultimate syllable while in loanwords it occurs on the antepenultimate syllable.

Table 3  Phonemes and graphemes of Kiswahili Consonants Grapheme B

Phoneme /b/

Grapheme NG

Phoneme /ᵑɡ/

CH D

NG’ NY

/ŋ/ /ᶮ /

DH

/tʃ/ /d/ /ð/

P

/p/

F G GH

/f/ /g/ /Ɣ/

R S SH

/r/ /s/ / ᶴ/

H J

/h/ /j/

T TH

/t/ /ᶿ/

K L M N

/k/ /l/ /m/ /n/

V W Y Z

/v/ /w/ /y/ /z/

Language and Literacy Practices in Kenya Table 4  Phonemes and graphemes of Kiswahili Vowels

337 Grapheme Phoneme A /a/ E /ᵋ/ I /i/ O /ᵓ/ U

/u/

4.6 Morphophonemic Principles of Kiswahili Kiswahili is an agglutinative language with a morphological structure based on prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. The prefixes, suffixes, and infixes are appended mainly to verbs but also to derived nouns and adjectives. They are an obligatory grammatical component; however, some can be optional depending on stylistic variation. Kiswahili, like most Bantu languages, is based on the noun class system with between 10 and 20 noun classes. The noun class system distinguishes plural and singular nouns as distinct noun classes. The prefixes and infixes must be in agreement with the relevant noun as well as other grammatical components in a phrase or sentence including verbs, pronouns, or adjectives. The subject agreement marker is obligatory, and the word order is subject-verb-object (SVO).

4.7 Writing System/Orthography and the Orthographic Principles of Kiswahili Kiswahili was first written using the Arabic script from the eighteenth century; however, the colonial committee and the missionaries transcribed the language into a Latin script so as to de-Islamize it (Mugane, 2015). The first publications were books on religion as well as vernacular non-religious texts. Thus, Kiswahili is a shallow orthographic language with a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence and uses the Latin alphabet. The highest number of written materials in the Kenyan languages are in Kiswahili. The Data for Education Research and Programming [DERP] in Africa- reports indicated that 42% of the 1009 early literacy titles in indigenous Kenyan languages were in Kiswahili (RTI, 2015). Reading materials are available for 35 out of the 67 living languages.

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4.8 Language of Instruction Policy in Kenya The current language policy in Kenya is based on the colonial language policy after the scramble for Africa by European powers in the nineteenth century, during which Kenya was part of the British Protectorate (Nabea, 2009). During the colonial period, the relationship between language and education was dynamic as a function of the colonial power, colonial management system, and the missionary education system (Mazrui & Mazrui, 1995, 1998; Nabea, 2009). During the colonial British system, there were many educational opportunities; however, local Kenyan languages were marginalized as there was emphasis on the use of English only for educational purposes. The use of the indirect-rule method of management subjugated some ethnic groups to others and thus led to the preference for the languages of the favored groups. Lastly, due to the education system having been established by missionaries, some local languages were used for instruction in the early grades in primary school. From the start of the colonial period, English was the preferred language of some Sub-Saharan countries and was the instructional medium in upper primary, secondary and tertiary level education (Ngugi, 1986). Over the years, several educational reform commissions have been established in an attempt to address the language of instruction issues in Kenya spanning colonial and post-colonial education (Eshiwani, 1990). The first educational reform was the Phelps-Stoke Commission founded in 1924. The Phelps-Stoke commission recommended the use of mother tongue as the Language of Instruction (LOI) in first through third grades and endorsed Kiswahili to be dropped as an LOI except in regions where it was the community’s first language (the Republic of Kenya, 1976). Next, in 1951–1952 the Department of Education report proposed the introduction of English in lower primary schools to be taught alongside the Mother Tongue (MT). Additionally, the report retained the previous recommendation of dropping Kiswahili from the curriculum except for regions where Kiswahili was a MT (Nabea, 2009); this policy was effective from 1953 to 1955 (Gorman, 1974). The Prator-Hutasoit commission enacted a major shift of the LOI policy in 1965. The Prator-Hutasoit commission endorsed English as the universal and only medium of instruction for all grade levels and Kiswahili was introduced as a compulsory subject in fourth grade (Hutasoit & Prator, 1965). The commission report notes that vernacular languages were essential for verbal communication only; therefore it was not necessary to adopt them for educational purposes in the curriculum. The status of MT in educational policy was not revived when Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1964. Instead, English was conventionalized as a symbol of power and was considered a significant tool that Kenyan students were required to learn in order to be considered for white-collar jobs. The Ominde commission’s report in 1964 advocated for the integration of the educational system to provide equal opportunities for Africans, Indians, and whites and instituted English as the LOI in all schools. A significant advancement occurred in 1964 when English was made the nation’s official language but Kiswahili was included to be taught as a subject (Ominde, 1964). The Gachathi commission report of 1976

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recommended the use of vernacular languages for instruction from grades one through three and simultaneously introduced Kiswahili both as an examinable subject and as a compulsory subject (the Republic of Kenya, 1976). The implementation of the Gachathi report was actualized in 1984 during the launch of the 8-4-4 (eight years of primary education, four years of secondary education, and four years of university education) system that was recommended in the Mackay Report. The first formal establishment of the curriculum implementation guidelines for language policy was in 1992 (Kenya Institute of Education, 1992). In 1994, the Koech report cited crucial information on how to improve the educational system but did not make any new recommendations about the LOI despite obvious contradictions and challenges in LOI policy. The current Kenyan constitution enacted in 2010 reaffirms the preexisting LOI policy that supports the use of mother tongues (the Republic of Kenya, 2010). The policy mandates that children in first through third grades receive instruction in the language of the catchment areas (the Republic of Kenya, 2010), while English should be introduced and taught as a subject. From fourth grade onwards, English is the dominant language of instruction and Kiswahili is taught as a subject. The policy has been reaffirmed in the most recent educational white paper and the educational sector plan of 2014 (the Republic of Kenya, 2012; MoEST, 2014). Unfortunately, even the most recent global education reform continues to ignore the language policy; for example, the issues were not addressed in the World Bank Education Strategy 2020 Learning for All (World Bank, 2020b). Kenya, like other African countries, continues to struggle with the language policy implementation which is faced with challenges of avoidance, vagueness, arbitrariness, fluctuation, and lack of effective implementation strategies and frameworks (Bamgbose, 1994).

4.9 Language Use in Schools in Kenya Several studies conducted in Kenya highlight this practice of the use of English as the dominant language of instruction in primary schools despite students’ low level of oral fluency in it (see Bunyi et al., 2013, Muthwii, 2004; Trudell & Piper, 2014; Trudell, 2016). This is due to a high preference for the use of English as medium of instruction across all the grade levels by families and communities in Kenya (Muthwii, 2004; Piper & Zuilkowski, 2015; Trudell, 2009). This preference is attributable to several reasons including the fact that English is the language of high-stakes school leaving examinations such as the Kenya Certificate of Primary and Secondary Education [K.C.P.E; K.C.S.E]. Other reasons for the preference include the fact that English is viewed as an indicator of prestige, is associated with economic prosperity and global citizenship, enables an increased ability for interethnic communication, represents entrenched colonial legacies, and is the language of technological tools. Additionally, resistance is due to post-­election violence which was attributed to distrust among ethnic communities and the use of local languages to instigate violence among communities. Also notable is that schools

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across the country implement policy to prevent the use of mother tongue in school; students are punished for using it (Spernes, 2012; Wangia et al., 2014). To illustrate, Piper and Miksic (2011) used classroom observation data and early grade reading assessment outcomes to examine the relationships between the LOI policy and reading outcomes and the extent to which Kenya and Uganda implement the LOI policy. In Kenya, classroom observations were conducted for the following subjects: English, mathematics, Kiswahili, mother tongue, science, social studies, life skills, and Christian religious education. The findings indicated that in early and upper primary school, English was the dominant language of instruction (58.1%), and mother tongue was used less significantly (14.1%). Grades 1–3 saw usage results of: English 58.1%, Kiswahili 27.9%, and mother tongue 14.1%. In upper primary (grades 4–8), English usage was at 76.9%, Kiswahili 20.35%, and mother tongue 2.8%. They observed a higher adherence to policy in upper primary as compared to lower primary. The findings further revealed that in grades 1–3, English was predominantly used for instruction more than 70% of the time in all the content areas including English, social studies, mathematics, life skills, Christian religious education, and science. Kiswahili and mother tongue dominated only their respective classes. The use of second language (L2) as the main medium of instruction does not align with research evidence which highlights the numerous benefits and importance of early literacy instruction in a child’s first language, as the component skills of reading such as phonemic awareness, and decoding transfer cross-linguistically (August & Shanahan, 2006; Cummins 1979; Hungi et al., 2018; Kim & Piper, 2019; Piper & Miksic,  2011; Piper et  al., 2016b; Wawire & Kim, 2018; Wawire & Zuilkowski, 2021). Moreover, instruction in mother tongue enhances community participation as parents and community members are involved in the co-curation of educational materials by providing home literacy support (Trudell & Ndunde, 2015). In contrast, other researchers have argued that educational institutions in Kenya could benefit from well-structured L2 instruction instead (Piper et al., 2015b, 2016a, 2018a, b). These researchers examined the influence of mother tongue added as a component to the main literacy intervention in English and Kiswahili and reported a non-significant or negative effect of learning in mother tongue on the reading comprehension outcomes.

4.10 Literacy Practices in Primary Schools in Kenya The Kenya national curriculum does not outline specific methods for teaching reading in the early grades. However, it emphasizes that teachers utilize teaching methods that support students’ needs, specified lesson objectives, creativity, innovation, critical thinking, inclusivity, and sustainable development (Ministry of Education Science and Technology [MOEST], 2005, 2015). Relatively few studies have examined the literacy pedagogical practices in Kenya. Commeyras and Inyega (2007) did a comprehensive review of literacy instruction in primary schools in

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Kenya. Evidence from several studies that surveyed in-service teachers indicated that they utilized the syllabic method, teacher lecture, and whole-class repetition to teach reading in English and Kiswahili (Ackers & Hardman, 2001; Pontefract & Hardman, 2005). Teachers were not familiar with the phonics instructional approach and lacked effective pedagogical skills to teach other component skills of reading such as reading comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and spelling (Munyeki, 1997; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000; Onyamwaro, 1990). Dubeck et  al. (2012) examined English and Kiswahili literacy practices in 24 schools in the coastal region of Kenya. Specifically, they examined whether instructional practices used in the early grade classrooms aligned with the research based international literacy instruction standards. The findings indicated that teachers emphasized oral language instruction and utilized choral repetition, look and say strategies. Bunyi et  al., 2013 reported that the poor reading outcomes in Kenyan primary schools could be attributed to teachers’ lack of adequate content knowledge of the component skills of reading and pedagogical content knowledge to teach reading. These instructional challenges contribute to the persistent challenges in children’s mastery of reading skills in Kenya as many children have very low reading competence after several years of being in school (Uwezo, 2011, 2014, 2015; Wasanga et al., 2010).

5 Literacy in Kenya Rates in Kenya 5.1 Literacy Rates among Children Evidence from recent research reports indicate that there are persistent literacy challenges in primary schools in Kenya. A large number of children have severe reading difficulties or are at-risk of reading failure. The reports have indicated that after being in school for several years only 3 out of 10 third grade children can do second grade work and 1 out of 10 children complete eighth grade without acquiring basic competencies expected of a second grader (Uwezo, 2011, 2015; Wasanga et al., 2010). Recent reports from a national Tusome literacy activity implemented through the partnership of the ministry of education and the United States Agency for International Development [USAID] indicated that 53% of first grade children could not read a single word correctly. After 1 year of being in school, 23% of these children were still non-readers. Additionally, 38% of children in second grade were non-readers and 12% of students were still non-readers after being in school for 2  years (Freudenberger & Davis, 2017). The National Assessment System for Monitoring Learner Achievement [NASMLA] report of 2020 also noted the high percentages of third grade pupils not attaining pre-reading competencies that include applying knowledge of the alphabet to arrange words as they would appear in the dictionary in Kiswahili (87.5%) and English (86.9%)[see Table 5 for literacy

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Table 5  Literacy Rates for Children 2013 Primary School Age Population (aged 6 – 11 years) 2013 Primary School Gross Enrollment Rate 2013 Pre-primary School Gross Enrollment Rate Oral Reading Fluency

Reading Comprehension Sample EGRA Results

7.3 million 114% up from 91% in 1999 60% up from 43% in 1999 Mean: 15.7 correct words per minute Standard Deviation: 15.4% 35% zero scores 0% reading come >/ 80% comprehension 43% zero scores Language: Kiswahili; When: 2009; Where: Nairobi, Thika, Nakuru

Note: EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment Sources: UNESCO (2015)

rates among children]. This study also highlighted the fact that more than half of the learners did not attain reading for meaning competencies in both English and Kiswahili at 58.8% and 51.3% respectively. This indicates that the majority of third grade pupils in Kenya are not able to read with comprehension or make inferences (Kenya National Examinations Council, 2019). The poor performance in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education is due to the poor reading foundation, instructional challenges, and the language of instruction (Wasanga et al., 2010, 2012). A poor literacy foundation affects learning outcomes in the later grades. The NASMLA achievement report of 10th grade (form two) students indicated low achievement scores in the content areas assessed. Specifically, mathematics (algebra and geometry) 98.3% and biology 93.2% of form two students did not achieve the minimum benchmark. In English, 99% of the students did not attain the 50% benchmark in oral literature, while in Kiswahili 93.2% students did not attain the benchmark in reading comprehension (KNEC, 2022). The poor literacy and learning outcomes are attributed to several reasons including the fact that teachers are poorly trained and thus do not have mastery of effective pedagogical skills to teach early literacy, lack of in-service professional development training, high student and teacher absenteeism rates, the use of L2 as the main language of instruction, limited resources (such as books, furniture, papers, pencils), large class sizes, overcrowded classrooms, limited learning resources, understaffed schools, and a lack of home literacy support (Akyeampong et al., 2013; Bunyi et al., 2013; Dubeck et al., 2012, 2015; Wawire, 2021). These low learning outcomes among high school students are also exhibited in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education as well as the high school Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exit examination (KNEC, 2022).

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5.2 Literacy Rates among Youths and Adults Kenya generally has high literacy rates among adults and youths. This implies that a high percentage of adults 15 years and above can read and write a short simple statement about their everyday life with understanding. In 2018, the literacy rate was 81.54%, which was an increase of 2.8% from 2014 (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2019). In 2000, the literacy rate was at its peak at 82. 23% but declined to 72.16% in 2002; however, it improved to 78.73% in 2007 [see Table 6]. In 2018, the adult literacy rate was higher for males than females whereas the youth literacy gender parity index in Kenya was 1.01 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019) which is comparable to other low-, middle-, and upper-income countries.

5.3 Education in Kenya The government of Kenya has recognized education as a basic human right as well as a tool for achieving socio-economic development since its independence in 1963. This is reaffirmed in the constitution of Kenya 2010 Article 43 (1) (f) which states that every citizen has a right to basic education as a human right. Furthermore, Article 53 (1) (b) stipulates that every child has a right to free education (Government of Kenya, 2010). The education sector in Kenya has had several historical reforms since the nation gained independence with the government placing more emphasis on improving access and quality of education. This movement began with the drafting of the Sessional Paper Number 10 in 1965, which documented the immediate educational needs and goals of post-independence Kenya. The other historical reforms include the Ominde Commision of 1964, Gathachi report, 1978, Mackay Report 1981, Kamunge Report 1988, and Koech Commision 1999 (Republic of Kenya 1976, 1981, 1988, 1999). The most recent reform, Free Primary Education, enacted in 2003, led to over 100% increased enrollment. Currently, over 13 million children are enrolled in primary and secondary schools with an additional 4 million youth in post-secondary training. Research further indicates that both enrollment rates and dropout rates increased within 1–2  years of abolishing fees (Oketch & Somerset, 2010). This was attributed to the challenges of declining quality of learning as a result of increased enrollments, overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks Table 6  Kenya Youth and Adult Literacy Rates Kenya Literacy Rates Adult Adult Year female male 2018 78.19% 84.99% 2014 74.01% 83.78% 2007 66.86% 78.08% 2000 77.89% 87.48%

Adult literacy rate 81,53% 78.73% 72.16% 82.23%

Youth 15–24 female 88.08% 86.14% 81.63% 91.94%

Youth 15–24 male 87.59% 86.94% 83.21% 93.31%

Youth 15–24 87.83% 86.53% 82.39% 92.53%

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and learning materials, and understaffed schools (Oketch et al., 2010). Consequently, the core literacy skills declined as the increased enrollments were not accompanied by increased personnel services and resources. The efforts to improve quality are evident through various initiatives such as infrastructure development, in-service and preservice teacher training, and countrywide assessments that target learning outcomes (Ministry of Education Science and Technology [MOEST], 2005; Kenya National Examinations Council, 2016). To address the persistent educational challenges, the Government of Kenya established the National Education Sector Plan (NSEP) in 2014. The key objectives of the NSEP were to improve access and ensure provision of quality basic and secondary education and improve learning outcomes on numeracy, literacy, as well as other content areas as part of efforts to ensure provision of quality education (Ministry of Education Science Technology Kenya, 2015).

5.4 Challenges, Opportunities, and New Initiatives Despite the several efforts made by different education stakeholders to improve the quality of literacy competencies in Kenya, there remain persistent challenges. The failure to effectively implement the language of instruction policy that encourages the use of mother tongue in the early grades makes mastery of literacy skills as well as academic content challenging for children in the early grades. In order for children to master literacy skills as well as academic content, it is important for them to receive comprehensible input in a familiar language (Kim et al., 2020). As a result of use of English as the dominant language of instruction many children who advance to upper grades continue to struggle in their schooling and are thus at a high risk of academic failure, dropping out, unemployment, low income, engagement in crime, and poor health (Christenson & Thurlow, 2004; Daniel et al., 2006; Francis et al., 1996). The poor implementation of the mother tongue policy is attributed to teachers’ lack of competencies in mother tongue and lack of support to implement the LOI policy; fast-paced classrooms; lack of instructional resources, assessments, and learning materials in the mother tongue; and a lack of community support (Muthwii, 2004; Piper & Miksic, 2011; Wawire, 2021). In relation to this, research indicates that children have poor oral language skills in the dominant language of instruction, which impedes their reading comprehension. There is a lack of oral language proficiency assessments in English and Kiswahili, which leads to no real understanding of students’ achievements and deficiencies in this area. An understanding of students’ oral language proficiency is critical for classroom practitioners to support students learning needs based on their language competence. Evidence indicates that pre-service teacher training programs in Kenya do not adequately prepare pre-service teachers to teach reading effectively. Teachers lack foundational knowledge on reading development and pedagogical content knowledge for reading instruction (Akyeampong et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2016; Wawire, 2021). Moreover, there is also a lack of continuous professional development support for in-service teachers even though evidence indicates that when teachers in

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these settings received professional development training their students had significantly higher learning outcomes (Akyeampong et al., 2013; Dubeck et al., 2015). Empirical evidence suggests that an effective model of improving literacy outcomes should encompass professional development training, teacher instructional support and coaching, providing teachers with structured lesson plans, and providing students with student books (Piper et al., 2018c; Piper & Zuilkowski, 2015; Dubeck et al., 2015). The use of technology to support literacy outcomes is an aspect that is lacking in the Kenyan education systems due to a lack of available resources. The limited evidence there is sheds light on the potential contribution of information and communication technology [ICT] to the literacy learning outcomes. Studies reported improved instructional competencies of teachers as tablet personal computers (PCs) were used by trained tutors to upload classroom observation and support instructional coaches (Piper et  al., 2016b, RTI, 2015). However, the ICT investments, including the e-readers for students, did not significantly improve learning outcomes for students. Many recent initiatives to improve literacy outcomes have been implemented in Kenya. The ministry of Education Kenya, along with other local and international education stakeholders, have combined efforts to enhance/improve literacy outcomes through use of evidence-based practices to teach the component skills of reading. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in partnership with the Ministry of Education Kenya, implemented the Tusome Early Literacy Program [TELP] countrywide from 2014–2019. The main goal of this program was to achieve basic literacy levels for approximately seven million Kenyan children enrolled in grades 1–3  in over 23,000 public primary schools and 1500 low-cost private schools. Evidence based pedagogical practices were used including the direct instruction method (I do, we do, you do) and daily instructional sessions in Kiswahili and English focused on the component skills of reading (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing). The program also provided students and teachers with core and supplemental reading instructional materials and resources including students’ textbooks to the ratio of 1:1 as well as teaching aides such as guides, lesson plans, letter cards, and pocket charts. The TELP was effective as some of the key learner outcome indicators showed significant improvement in reading comprehension and fluency scores in English and Kiswahili as well as an increase in the number of fluent and emergent readers in English and Kiswahili at midline evaluation (Freudenberg & Davis, 2017). Specifically, the number of fluent readers in English doubled from 12% to 27% with the portion of non-readers reducing from 38% to 12%. In Kiswahili, the percentage. of non-readers in grade two reduced from 43% to 19% while fluent readers increased from 4% to 12%. Other experimental studies conducted in Kenya prior to this such as the Health and Literacy Intervention program (HALI) and the Primary Math and Reading Initiative (PRIMR), focused on literacy instruction in English and Kiswahili using effective research based pedagogical practices with the provision of professional development training for teacher in Kenya. They reported improved outcomes in the

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fluency and reading comprehension among early grade learners from low resource primary schools, with high effect sizes reported for the emergent literacy skills - letter knowledge and phonological awareness (Kim et al., 2016; Lucas et al., 2014; Piper et al., 2014; Piper et al., 2016a; Wolf et al., 2018). From 2014–2019, the evidence based Tusome reading curriculum was implemented countrywide and reports indicate that there was a positive impact on students’ learning outcomes (Keaveney et al., 2021). At the end line of the TUSOME program, there were 14% and 35% first and second graders were emergent readers in English and 22% and 46% emergent readers in Kiswahili respectively. There was statistically significant improvement in students’ scores on all the early grade-­ reading assessments in English and Kiswahili. Despite these initiatives, evidence indicates that many children are reading below the minimum competencies – less than 8% of first grade students can read at the appropriate grade level in Kiswahili. These literacy challenges are compounded by several factors including the curriculum changes, reduced time for teaching English, Kiswahili, and literacy on the calendar, inadequate preparation of the teaching personnel, and extended school closures due to COVID-19 continue to inhibit the learning progress. Research reports indicate that TUSOME materials and teaching methods were integrated in the new Competence Based Curriculum introduced nationally in 2019. Reports further highlight that there some teachers do not have clarity on how the Tusome materials and methods translates into teaching in the CBC classrooms, specifically the use of learning materials and the amount of allocated for teaching literacy in English and Kiswahili. Therefore, teachers find it difficult to transition or teach the new curriculum without adequate preparation. Additionally, the current curriculum has initiated an effort to promote learning beyond the school settings through initiatives that encourage children’s caregivers and community members to participate and support their learning by assisting children to complete their school projects. Lastly, despite the fact that many learners lack minimal competencies in reading, there are limited efforts of screening children for reading difficulties or efforts to support the struggling readers or students at-risk of reading failure. All these efforts will contribute towards making education and learning inclusive and equitable.

6 Conclusion Kenya has very rich multiethnic and linguistic diversity. Since its independence in 1963, the government, through the various education reforms, has made concerted efforts to improve the quality of learning as well as to integrate Kenyan languages as a medium of instruction in schools. Historically, Kenya had an oral culture; however, the coming of missionaries played a major role in developing orthographies for some native languages. The majority of the native languages do not have a written orthography, which makes it challenging for these languages to be used as a medium of instruction. Kiswahili, which is the dominant language in many urban and peri-urban regions, is also an instructional language in the early grades but is

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taught as a subject from fourth grade. Although English is spoken fluently only by highly educated individuals, it is used as the principal medium of instruction in schools, resulting in many children in primary school learning to read and write in an unfamiliar language. Comprehensible input is a critical aspect that facilitates acquisition and mastery of content knowledge and literacy skills. Thus, the language of instruction challenges contribute immensely to the persistent poor literacy outcomes in lower and upper primary schools in Kenya. The ministry of education in their most recent white paper continues to reiterate the mother tongue policy; however, there are limited efforts to follow up to ensure effective implementation including in the new Competence Based Curriculum. Finally, there are key initiatives to improve the quality of learning as well as literacy and learning outcomes in English, Kiswahili, and mother tongue in the country exhibited through various initiatives in partnership with bilateral donors including the Primary Math Reading Initiative (2012–2014) and TUSOME literacy activity (2014–2019). These initiatives have reported improved literacy outcomes due to the use of evidence based pedagogical practices, professional development training for teachers, development of high-quality scripted lesson plans for teachers, students’ textbooks and a variety of reading materials, and incorporation of ICT as a teaching and learning tool. The education policies, evidence based pedagogical approaches, use of ICT, investment in professional development and learning materials have set the stage for the promotion of literacy outcomes in Kenya.

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Malawi Chichewa Language: Handbook of Literacy in Africa Amos Moses Chauma

Abstract  Indigenous languages are crucial in the development of language and literacy of peoples of a nation. They facilitate communication and the dissemination of information, knowledge, skills and values in the process of social, economic and national development. Malawian languages as a means of communication have not been given space in the fight against the three enemies; hunger, disease and envy. To the present, Malawi does not have linguistic information on all of its languages spoken in the country and this has impacted negatively on formulation of school language policies in Malawi. Absence of such policies has created challenges for its implementation in order to achieve the intended goals of literacy education in Malawi which are laid down in the following policy documents: the Malawi Poverty Reduction Paper, the Vision 2020 and The Policy and Investment Framework (PIF). These policy documents and credible information on languages serve to guide government policy makers and development agencies working on language and literacy issues. Bearing the foregoing in mind, the author presents a chapter on orthographic, morphological, and syntactical principles of Chichewa language in Malawi and studies relating to literacy developments and associated challenges.

1 Background Information Malawi is located in the central and southern part of Africa. The countries bordering Malawi are Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique. According to the 2018 national statistics, the population of Malawi is 17 million. Of these 85% are literate. Out of the 17 million, 89% live in the villages. The official language in Malawi is English and it is taught in school as a second language. Chichewa, which is spoken by over 85% of the population, is the national language. Other languages spoken are the A. M. Chauma (*) Department of Curriculum and Teaching Studies, School of Education, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_17

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Nyanja with 12.8%speakers, Chiyao with 10.1% speakers, and Chitumbuka with 9.5% speakers. There are also minority languages spoken as follows: 250,000 speak Chilomwe in the southeastern part of Malawi and in the south of Lake Chilwa; 200,000 speak Kokola in the southeastern border and in the southern districts of Thyolo and Mulanje as well as Chiromo in Chikwawa district; 270,000 speak Sena in Nsanje. In the northern region of Malawi there are also minority languages spoken statistically as follows. 45,000 speak Lambya in the northwest part of Malawi; 70,000 speak Ndali; 300,000 speak Nyakyusa; 300,000 speak Ngonde in the north of Chitipa district and 17,000 speak Tonga in Nkhatabay and Likoma districts. Chichewa language is the widely spoken language in Malawi. The widely spoken language in Malawi is Chichewa. Other languages spoken in different regions of the country are Chitumbuka, Chitonga, Chilambia and Chinkhonde in the north; Chiyao in the Eastern region mainly in Mangochi district regions of Lake Malawi and some parts of the southern region; and Chilomwe mainly in Chiradzulu, Thyolo and Mulanje.

2 Languages in Malawi In Malawi, there are about 16 indigenous languages, some of which are dialects. This section describes the orthographic characteristics of Chichewa language in Malawi encompassing its alphabet, phonology and syntax. The basic grammatical structure is almost the same for all the languages. The difference is in vocabulary, intonation, and pronunciation. The letters of the alphabet “Q” and “X” do not exist in Chichewa. Also, the letter “C” always carries an “h”. This brief introduction is meant to give you a synopsis of the Chichewa Language. Chichewa is a member of the Bantu family of languages spoken in Southern, Southeast, and East Africa. The naming of the languages takes the prefix chi- and the language is called Chichewa and/or Chinyanja. The name changed from Chinyanja to Chichewa in 1968 during a political ruling party annual meeting where participants resolved to change the name from Chinyanja to Chichewa. The name Chichewa is most commonly used today (Hyman et al., 1999). Although the Chichewa language is spoken and understood by about 85% of the population, as regards functional literacy and active command of the language, the figure is at 65%. The promotion of the Chichewa language has been facilitated by including it as a subject in the school curriculum and is taught and examined at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education.

3 Orthographical Principles of Chichewa Language The discussion on orthographic principles will centre on phonological, morphological, and syntactical principles of the Chichewa language.

Malawi Chichewa Language: Handbook of Literacy in Africa

(a) Chichewa alphabet and pronunciation

4 Phonological and Orthographic Principles of the Chichewa Language (a) Chichewa language vowel and consonantal system (i) Vowels The vowel sounds of the Chichewa language are five: /a/ /e//i/ /o/u/ In Chichewa they are written as: a, e, i, o, u. These are short vowels. Vowels that are long are produced by doubling and are written as: aa, ee, ii, oo, uu. e.g. ááng’ono ‘small’; kubúula ‘to groan’ (Yip, 2002). There are some non-Chichewa names such as Buthe’rezi or words like ófesi, where the penultimate vowel always remains short. The penultimate vowel tends to be lengthened when at the end. Note the added ‘u’ or ‘i’ in borrowed words like lo’lipopu ‘lolipop’ or ‘intachenji ‘interchange’ (Downing & Mtenje, 2017). (ii) Consonantal sounds The following is a list of categories of consonants. Labial Examples are: /ɓ/ba; /p/pa; /ph/ pha; /mb/ mba; /mph/ mpha; /m/ ma

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Dental Examples are: /ɗ/ da; /t/ ta; /th/ tha; /nd//nd/; /n/ na; /ɽ/ la/ra Velar/palatal Examples are: /g/ ga; /k/ ka; /kh/ kha; /ŋg/ nga; /ŋkh/ nkha; /ŋ/ ng’a Labio-dental Examples are: /v/ va; /f/ fa; /ɱv/ mva; /ɱf/ mfa Sibilant Examples are:/z/ za; /s/sa; /nz/ nza; /ns/ nsa Affricate Examples are:/d͡z/ dza; /t͡s/ tsa; /nd͡z/(ndza); /d͡z w/(dzwe); /t͡s w/ tswa Glottal Example: /h/(ha) Other consonats are voiced, unvoiced, aspirated, nasalised, or continuant: bo, do, go / pi, ti, ki / phu, thu, khu / me, ne, ng’e / we, le, he (Mtenje, 1986; Downing & Mtenje, 2017).

5 Morphological and Syntactical Principles of Chichewa Language (a) Chichewa Syllables A syllable in Chichewa is the smallest grammatical unit. The smallest grammatical unit in Chichewa, as an example, is a vowel. The vowel is defined as the basic phonological unit. In Chichewa, every syllable contains one syllabic phoneme which is usually produced as one sound with homogeneous articulatory movements. In our own terms, a syllable is a basic phonological unit which has one syllabic phoneme articulated as one sound. Examples are: a, ba, kha, me (Mchombo, 2004). (b) Chichewa syllable structure In Chichewa syllables are open, that is, they end in a vowel. A basic or typical structure or pattern is CV [consonant +Vowel]. A phoneme is the smallest sound unit that can be pronounced. Vowels and consonants fall under the segment of the phoneme. A vowel is regarded as a single phoneme called vocalic phoneme. Sometimes there might be a consonant and a vowel or a cluster of consonants and a vowel. These are monophonematic because they are produced by homogenous articulatory movements. Examples are: V CV [1 consonat + vowel] CCV [2 consonants + vowel] CCCV [3 consonants + vowel] CCCCV [4 consonants + vowel]

a ba pha nkho mkhwa

e da kha mpha

i ma tha ntha ntcha

o ka nda nkha mphwe (Mtenje, 1987)

u

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The Chichewa writing system is based on the Roman alphabet and is phonologically transparent, i.e., words are written in the same way as they are spoken. For example, in Chichewa the word for boy is written as mnyamata, and it is pronounced as [mnyamata]. The word ophunzira refers to (and sounds like [ophunzira]). In sum, the grapheme a can only be read as /a/, and the phoneme /a/ can only be spelled as a. This is applicable to other graphemes in the Chichewa writing system (Chilimanjira et al., 2015).

5.1 The Medium of Instruction and Literacy Practices in Malawi Schools This section discusses pre-school and literacy development in Malawi education system. (a) Pre-school and Poor development of literacy levels among learners in Malawi rural pre and primary school

5.2 A Brief History of Pre-school Literacy Development in Malawi Pre-schools were started by institutions run by the Church in the 1960s to assist women who were in full time employment. The women needed care and recreation for their children while they were at work. By 1969, a number of these schools were opened but they lacked proper coordination and direction. Consequently, the University of Malawi organised a seminar aimed at mobilising the communities and townships to support preschools. This led to the creation of an organisation in 1970 called Association of Preschool Playgroups in Blantyre (APPB). According to Ministry of Gender and Children’s Services (MoGCS) (2011), the main purpose of Early Childhood Development (ECD) services in Malawi was to develop the children’s cognitive, emotional, social and physical potential to the full extent while protecting their rights. With the understanding of this comprehensive nature of ECD the name was changed again to the Association of Early Childhood Development in Malawi (AECDM). At the time of formation, the purpose of the APPM was to coordinate preschool services in the country, train caregivers who work in preschools, and mobilise communities to establish pre-schools within their localities (Kholowa, 2007; Saka, 2007). As seen from the way the playgroups started, these ECD centres were mostly found in towns where employed women were found; thus, children in rural areas were disadvantaged. This continued until later in the 1980s when UNICEF showed increased interest and helped in the establishment of pre-schools in rural Malawi. However, because the rural communities were not sensitised on the advantages of

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early learning as well as the fact that fees were attached to them (Kholowa, 2007) the pre-schools were not supported and, hence, did not succeed. The April 2000 Dakar Forum on Education for All (EFA) singled out those children in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and proposed that early child care and education be expanded and improved (EFA, GMR, 2015). Accordingly, UNICEF assisted Malawi to launch Community Based Child Care (CBCC) programmes under Community Based Organisations (CBOs) in rural areas. These are now functioning under the support of the Local Government with UNICEF as a major donor. These (CBOs) in Malawi are responsible for the formation of Community Based Child Care (CBCC) centres which are an organised, centre-based arrangement that aims at providing ECD programmes including literacy education to children below the age of 6 years within the community and are run by that community (Kholowa, 2007). However, not all children have the opportunity to enrol in (ECD) centres due to their susceptibility. Most children are not exposed to such early education due to reasons such as parental ignorance, lack of interest, poverty, beliefs and many more. Consequently, there are two groups of children who join the formal schooling at primary level in Malawi: the group that comes straight from home into formal school and the one that graduates from ECD centres to formal schools. Children from the latter group are expected to have acquired some basic literacy skills or have advanced emergent literacy skills before entering primary school. However, this concept has been challenged with research by Kholowa (2007) who revealed that the CBCCs involved provided limited quality early literacy development opportunities; moreover, where such opportunities were provided, it was by chance. This suggest that children are not be benefiting much from the general early learning literacy experiences provided in CBCCs, graduate with literacy problems and carry those problems into their primary school experiences. In view of the fact that poor quality ECD programmes contribute to poor quality learning outcomes in primary school (MEFA, GMR, 2015a, b), this presentation therefore explores children’s early literacy environment and experiences in their homes and the Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres which can shape their literacy development in primary school. Whitehead (1996) believes that the experiences children bring to school and the new experiences they find there must be acknowledged and understood clearly because these are the foundations of early literacy that fill in the gap that exists between what prevails in the home and in the pre-school; such experiences also make the children feel at home in the world and in culture of the school. ECD in Malawi is provided using a holistic or comprehensive approach. In other words, service areas and programmes are not compartmentalised into health, nutrition, early literacy learning and stimulation, emotional and spiritual development or protection. Rather, they are interwoven to support the development of the “whole” child (MoGCSW, 2011). Teachers who teach in Malawi primary schools undergo initial training in colleges that train primary school teachers. Apart from the initial training that the teachers undergo, in the field, they also undergo what is called in-service training where they are taught different teaching methodologies and techniques to facilitate literacy learning. Despite all of these initiatives, Malawi faces challenges as regards literacy promotion in the learners (Kholowa, 2007; Chilimanjira et al. 2015).

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5.3 Literacy Development in Malawi Primary Schools Malawi is aware and mindful of the need to improve literacy among its citizen in order to realise quality education through advocacy for teaching methods that facilitate learners’ understanding especially in the literacy domain. For instance, the curriculum for primary schools in Malawi underwent reform, with a change from a curriculum that was objectives based to one that is outcome based (Ministry of Education, 2004) in order to improve the primary education system’s internal efficiency, which had been regarded to be examination oriented (Chilimanjira, 2012). The thinking was that through reforming the curriculum, Malawi would achieve high levels of literacy. However, the situation on the ground is different (Chilimanjira, 2012; Kholowa, 2007) as learners’ performance in reading is persistently poor. Multiple literacy interventions, one of which is to train and expose the teachers to different methods and strategies of teaching language have been put in place countrywide in Malawi. The Government of Malawi in collaboration with development partners and non-governmental organisations prefer participatory approaches because learners become active participants in their own learning. When learners are immersed in the learning activities they end up developing basic literacy skills. Children learn to read, write and become numerate through activities like games and stories in the local language of Chichewa (Hoffman et al., 2014). The following are some of the intervention project studies carried out in Malawi. First, a USAID funded project called Improving Educational Quality (IEQ) was carried out in Mangochi and Balaka districts aimed at finding researchbased methods for how to improve literacy education quality in Malawian schools following the accelerated decline of educational standards from the time primary education was made free for all, a policy adopted in 1994. The policy was called Free Primary Education (FPE). The results revealed that standard 2, 3 and 4 learners could not read, indicating poor literacy at that level. Second, the Malawi Breakthrough to Literacy (MBTL) which was conducted in 2004 was a project that systemised the language experience approach in learning how to read and write. BTL was basically a methodology that was used to help children to learn initial reading and writing skills in their Chichewa much faster. This approach utilised the aural/oral language skills which a child brought into the classroom from home (Chilora et al., 2014). Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) and Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) Program evaluation Reports noted that teachers used fewer materials or they did not use any teaching materials to support the teaching and learning of literacy. Thus, despite provision of teaching and learning materials, some teachers were not using them adequately. Literacy opportunities were not provided to the learners to facilitate reading which is one way of improving literacy levels in learners. The evaluators of the project pointed out that such a tendency was happening in many schools where stacks of books were withheld in offices for future usage while pupils went out without books, in the process hampering increased literacy levels.

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Apart from the challenges highlighted above, research findings also reveal some other challenges that are regarded as hampering literacy development in Malawi. These include class size, understaffing, teacher and pupil absenteeism, lack of classroom space, and ineffectual head teachers and teachers’ practices employed in the teaching of literacy (Chilimanjira et al., 2015). To be more precise, “teaching practices that are regarded to hamper literacy development in learners include insufficient time on the task, poor teaching methodologies, and also poor use of teaching and learning materials” (Banda & Mwabungulu, 2019). Another study was carried out by the Malawi Education Support Activity (MESA). This was a baseline study done in some districts of the country. The study revealed that the majority of learners were at non-mastery levels of literacy skills in reading, comprehension and writing (MESA, 2004 as cited in Kholowa, 2007). MESA was a USAID funded project which was built upon the literacy experiences of other USAID funded projects. The project assessed the literacy situation among standards 3 and 6 learners. The findings revealed that the majority of learners in both classes displayed non-mastery levels of reading, comprehension, and writing skills for their class levels. For instance, the study findings showed that using a passage from their class-level textbooks, 98% of the Standard 3 girls and boys were not able to read. Similarly, only 40% of the Standard 6 pupils were able to read, which meant that 60% were not able to read a passage from their class-level textbooks. Some of the reasons that were found were that pupils were not exposed to supplementary reading materials at home or school, and failure of parents or the community to encourage the pupils in literacy practices which increases literacy levels. Furthermore, it was observed that 99% of the learners in standard 3 could hardly comprehend what they had just read. An additional Malawian study comes from Chimombo et  al. (2005) who presented an analysis of studies conducted under the Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ). This research project showed that the overall literacy performance of pupils in both SACMEQ I and SACMEQ II were very poor and that the performance in reading had significantly decreased. Many pupils were not reaching the minimum skills and the number of pupils not doing so had significantly increased between SACMEQ I and II. The studies were carried out in 15 African countries, and Malawi was the lowest scoring in both literacy and numeracy achievement. Although the SACMEQ III report showed that there was improvement at the educational division level, the performance of pupils in both reading and mathematics between 2000 and 2007 remained below the SACMEQ mean score of 500 (Milner et al., 2011). Another research study relevant to understanding literacy in Malawi was a USAID/Malawi funded 3-year Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) Project conducted in 2010. The project was intended to achieve two objectives. First, it was supposed to improve educational outcomes by building capacity in the Ministry of Education. Second, the research was intended to improve teacher capacity for school management and leadership and to teach reading. The project benefitted 34,000 lower primary school teachers who were provided continuous professional development (CPD) across the country. Moreover, higher-­

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intensity literacy programming was provided to teachers in seven districts in Malawi (Early Grade Reading Activity Impact Evaluation Baseline Report, 2013, p. 2). The Early Grade Reading Activity (EGRA) Project was carried out in 2010 (USAID/ Malawi Report, 2013). This project was a multifaceted educational development approach which intended to enable sustained literacy. In 2015, World Vision Malawi (WVM) conducted yet another project to improve outcomes in children’s learning by providing learners in early grades with a quality literacy program. The Early Grade Reading Assessment (USAID/Malawi Report, 2013) Evaluation on reading assessment findings showed that only 7.7% of standard 2 learners and 12.5% of standard 4 learners reached the reading fluency EGRA Coordinating Committee benchmarks for familiar-word reading. The poor reading performance on that subtask was further illustrated by a large number of zero scores. In standard 2, where learners were supposed to read approximately 32 words per minute (calculated as the midpoint between Standard 1 and Standard 3 EGRA Coordinating Committee benchmarks), 70% of the children tested across 10 districts were not able to read a single word. Furthermore, the same districts had high percentages of zero scores on other initial reading subtasks such as letter name recognition, syllable segmentation, initial sound identification, and syllable reading. In tandem with this sentiment, Early Grade Reading (EGRA) baseline Report (USAID/Malawi, 2013) revealed that on initial sound identification, learners achieved poor scores particularly because teachers were employing syllabic method of teaching. Furthermore, it was also observed that “initial sound identification was not a skill that was currently taught in Malawi classrooms and it was for the first time the evaluation team saw that learners were asked to do that activity” (p. 6). The scores proved to be very low. Indeed, 25% of standard 4 learners in another district could not read even a single word. This was worrisome considering the fact that learners should be reading between 45 and 60-words per minute in standard 4. On the same portrayal of learners’ poor performance, the United Nations’ 2015 Human Development Report Index shows that Malawi, despite its efforts to improve literacy education quality, as a government is below average on worldwide education indices. For instance, Malawi ranks 173rd out of 188 countries for the quality of its literacy education (National Statistical Office, 2015, p. 244). Yet another important study is the National Reading Program (NRP) that was implemented in all primary schools in Malawi from 2015 to March, 2021. As its name suggests, it targeted all primary schools from standard 1 up to standard 4 (Kaunda et al., 2017). The aim of this intervention was to promote literacy skills in English and Chichewa languages. Despite all the initiatives put in place, it has proved a challenge as learners’ literacy competencies are still at non-mastery levels of literacy development (Kaunda et al., 2017). Thus, in several literacy studies, it has been demonstrated that learners show low literacy performance levels. The problem of literacy development has been a challenge in Malawi for a long time and that is the reason educationists go for one theory after another in order to bring change; yet change has not been forthcoming. Despite the interventions of some projects presented, such as MBTL, LAC and EGRA that equipped the teachers with new ways and skills of teaching, literacy development in young learners

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still remains a big problem in Malawi. There are still so many learners who cannot read and write. While there could be many reasons for this, it is clear that teachers’ methodologies play a central role in the failure of the learners’ development in basic literacy skills. Hence, teachers’ methodologies have been identified already as the cause. The following are some challenges and suggestions for improving literacy levels.

5.4 Adult Literacy as a Driving Force for Children’s Literacy Development Our definition of adult literacy is the proportion of the population from the age of 15 years and above who are able to read, write, and understand a statement that is short and simple on a day to day basis (2014/2015 ESP Report). According to the Integrated Household Survey of the National Statistical Office (IHS 2010–2013 as cited in 2014/2015 ESP Report), the adult literacy rate in Malawi grew from 65% in 2010 to 71% in 2013 and there has been an increase in rural adult literacy rates from 59.6 in 2010 to 67.6 in 2013.This means that 32.4% of the rural population experienced illiteracy existed in the rural areas in 2013. Thus, among children entering standard one in rural schools of Malawi, there was be a 32.4% chance that their parents or guardians would not read and write. Such children tend to receive little or no support from their parents because literacy improves adults’ commitment in educating their children. Moreover, the more educated parents are, the more they are involved in their children’s education (MEFA, 2015a, b). In addition, according to Canadian Council on Learning, research to investigate the trend of how the impact of levels of maternal education and socio-economic status affect comprehension, language development, and literacy skills has been carried out. It was intended to identify and mitigate the causes that lead to primary school pupils to perform poorly in literacy. Results showed that learners in such situations usually meet with challenges that make their literacy development a low priority.

5.5 Methods of Teaching Literacy and Associated Challenges in Malawi In Malawi, issues of literacy have been a challenge for a long time, because there are problems among learners in developing basic literacy skills throughout the country (Hoffman et al., 2014). The Government of Malawi as well as non-governmental organisations, such as World Vision International, have been trying to equip teachers with various methods of teaching or initiating effective literacy interventions in the early grades but have not been successful. Despite the fact that literacy

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was introduced in Malawian education during colonialism, the challenge of illiteracy still exists. To fight against this challenge, the country, development partners, policy makers, and other stakeholders, have been trying to change one approach after another in order to get a better method of teaching literacy. Furthermore, many teachers have been trained so that they employ effective teaching strategies to teaching reading and writing but still in vain. According to research by Chilora et al. (2014), learners in Malawi reach standard four or six with reading problems in that many learners are able just to read a single word in standard four. Thus, they reach upper classes while they are still at a basic level. Literacy challenges are prevalent in Malawian primary schools despite initial teacher training, as well as curriculum reforms in order to improve and achieve high levels of literacy (Chilimanjira, 2012). Interventions by the government of Malawi, Nongovernmental Organisations and some development partners such as USAID and World Bank have also proved futile as literacy development promotion in young learners remains a challenge. For instance, for some years, there has been a general outcry at the low quality of education in Malawi especially in the primary school sector (USAID/Malawi, 2010; USAID/Malawi, 2013; SACMEQ, I, II, and III; MoEST, 2015). This deterioration of standards of education in Malawi primary schools has also been reflected in such documents as the Policy and Investment Framework (2000), Education For All (MEFA, 2015a, b), the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the Language in Education policy, SACMEQ Report, and USAID/Malawi (2013). According to the United Nations Human Development Report Index Malawi ranks 153 out of 187 countries for the quality of its education, behind Zimbabwe, Congo, and Iraq. Low achievement levels, high drop-out rates, repetition, high teacher pupil ratio, high student textbook ratio and absenteeism rates have been some of the explanations for the lowering standards of education in Malawi (MoEST, 2008, 2015). Low achievement levels have been more pronounced in literacy and attributed to failure of the learners to acquire basic literacy skills (USAID/Malawi, 2010; Milner et al., 2011). For example, Quality Education through Supporting Teachers (QUEST) in Anzar et al. (2004) was a project which aimed at improving the quality of education in Malawi. The results of the project revealed that learners’ performances in literacy were very low. Furthermore the 2010 Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) baseline study conducted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) Project revealed that learners consistently and dramatically underperformed in measures of basic literacy. Specifically, test results showed that 73% of Standard 2 pupils could not read a single word of a prompted story, and 97% could not answer a single comprehension question. Another study was the USAID/Malawi (2013) Early Grade Reading Activity (EGRA). This study found that standard 2 and 4 learners achieved very low scores on the reading fluency and reading comprehension subtasks; about 60% of learners in Standards 2 and 4 met the EGRA Coordinating Committee benchmarks for Standards 1 and 3, respectively and that two-thirds of Standard 4 learners were

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unable to recognise letters of the alphabet at a pace necessary for oral reading fluency. The findings also show that 41% of learners in Standard 2 could not name one single letter of the Chichewa alphabet and that 30% of learners in Standard 2 and 19% of learners in Standard 4 could not read even one syllable. There were five districts where more than one third of Standard 2 learners received a score of zero. In four out of five of the districts, between 19% and 21% of Standard 4 learners received a zero on syllable segmentation. Yet another study by Chilimanjira (2012) found that (the low level of literacy in primary schools involved was due to school practices such as teaching children English literacy (which is a foreign language) before they mastered Chichewa literacy a familiar language), the whole word approach of teaching, poor literacy environment in schools, limited time allocated to literacy lessons, and teacher preparation, among other factors. Although there are other factors contributing to the challenges of literacy development at the primary school level, such as a lack of teaching and learning materials and lack of professional staff (Chimombo et  al., 2005; USAID/Malawi, 2013), poor literacy levels in primary schools can also be a reflection of poor language and literacy background preparation that the children may have had at home and probably in pre-schools. Research by Kholowa (2007) shows that early literacy development in children is key to academic success in the future. According to Naudeau et  al. exposing children to literacy in the first 5 years from birth has implications that are deemed critical for the well-being and success in the later years in school, in the work place, and in the community than exposing children to literacy in any other stage of life after the first 5 years. The promotion of education in early childhood in a country is key in making sure that parents, guardians, a and the community at large appreciate the advantages of early childhood development services (EFA, GMR, 2015). Campaigns carried out in the years that followed in Malawi, have encouraged families to enroll their children in early child development (ECD) centres resulting in an increase in access. Nevertheless, provision of quality early child literacy development remains a critical challenge. This is because there are many caregivers that are untrained and are not paid because they work on a voluntary basis (2014/2015 ESP Report). Early childhood care means more than the safety and feeding of children but also the support given to those children in order for them to prosper in their literacy endeavours. Research (USAID/Malawi, 2013) also found that the earlier parents become involved in early childhood literacy education of their children, quite rewarding are the effects. When parents are engaged in working directly with their children on literacy learning activities at home, this involvement becomes most effective. Support for pupil reading consists of assisting learners to read at home and checking school work as well as teaching reading at home. The parents encourage the learners to read, and also tell folk stories. Even non-literate parents are especially motivated to educate their children because they do not want their children to end up in their shoes, which they attribute to lack of education (Kachiwanda, 2012; Kaunda, 2015).

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In Malawi, Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) 2006–2011 goal No. 3 is to build an educated and highly skilled population which will contribute to the socioeconomic development of the country. Although the Government of Malawi (GoM) has been working to improve the quality of education in its schools, the country still remains well below average on worldwide education indices (USAID/Malawi, 2013). The situation analysis shows that most of the Malawian children live under very difficult circumstances which facilitate the violation of their rights and impede their good start in life. A lot of research findings indicate that the performance of pupils in Malawian primary schools in both reading and mathematics remains low (USAID/Malawi, 2013; SACMEQ, I, II, and III). This implies that the quality of education in Malawi is still low. One reason for this is probably the fact that children start formal schooling before they are ready for it or before the schools are ready for the children. This means that there is a need for children and schools to be ready for each other in order for children to succeed in school. The objective of the national policy on (ECD) in Malawi is to enhance the provision of high quality ECD services to the children in Malawi for them to survive, grow, and develop so that they actively participate in the development of the nation (MoGCC, 2005). It has been noted that there are no stipulated actions as to what the Government would do to empower the households, the community, institutions and organisations in order to assist them in providing early stimulation and more emergent literacy skills to preschool children. For instance, there are no Government operated ECD centres in Malawi and it is important that the policy state explicitly how the parents will be trained in the provision of early literacy development to their children, be it by introducing parental training programmes. In outlining the roles and responsibilities for different stakeholders in ECD provision the policy does not mention anything on how families and households should support the government in early literacy development.

5.6 How Literacy Challenges Are Being Dealt with in Malawi Education System Attempts are being made in overcoming literacy challenges as presented in the following sections.

5.7 Provision of Literacy-Rich Home Environment While we must acknowledge the fact that literacy-rich home environments are a major factor that influences the overall literacy development of the children, in Malawi such environments are hard to come by. Within the home, children are

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expected to have early interactions with family members. The nature of these interactions is determined by the quality of the available resources for literacy encounters. According to literacy studies’ findings in Malawi, “the challenge can be overcome if ideally, literacy resources required such as objects, books, and play materials that can stimulate the children and motivate them within the home are provided in the schools to boost the overall quality of a literacy-friendly home environment” (Kaunda, 2015). In addition, parents can influence the literacy development of their children by creating an environment that supports children’s efforts to read and write. The environment in the home should be the source of three broad categories of children’s experiences in literacy: (a) children interacting with adults in situations that involve reading and writing; (b) experiences that involve children exploring print on their own; and (c) children observing adults modelling literate behaviours, e.g., reading the newspaper. By and large, researchers have conceptualised the home literacy environment by investigating the frequency of shared book reading between parents and children and the concurrent availability of reading materials in the home.

5.8 Adults’ Role in Promoting Environmental Print Adults (parents, siblings and community members) play a crucial role in children’s emergent literacy development. Research by Nutbrown and Hannon (1997) indicates that parents are powerful influences on children’s literacy development. Children learn about literacy through their literacy encounters when they actively engage with someone more skilled than they are. In this way parents, caregivers and members of the community are facilitators and role models in their support of children’s literacy development. However, most of parents in rural Malawi cannot read and write; even for those who can, it may not be easy for them to provide support because of other factors like poverty, attitudes towards literacy and availability of literacy materials. All the same, the roles that parents involved play can assist their pre-school children develop emergent literacy. Hence, parents in Malawi are encouraged to act as such.

5.9 Organising the Classroom Environment to Promote Literacy The primary school classrooms in Malawi should provide rich and dynamic literacy environments to children with opportunities to read, write for the promotion of literacy (Browne, 2001). From research studies available, it is clear that the quality of the classroom environment in Malawi classrooms has an impact on the development of children’s literacy skills (Hutchison, 2008). Factors such as classroom structure

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and materials, the quality of the teacher and practices in the classroom, activities in the classroom, and the interactions between the teacher and students all contribute to the classroom environment (O’Connor et al., 2005).

5.10 Supporting Parents’ Perception about Home Literacy Practices Parents in Malawi are encouraged to have a positive perception towards literacy. In most communities, being able to read and write (literacy) is important and critical to a complete adaptation, s well as making a contribution in the community (Bruce & Spratt, 2008 in Altiparmak, 2010). The value that is given to literacy in every society affects the way that society encourages the development of their children’s literacy. Kachiwanda (2015) states that parents’ beliefs about the skills their children need for success in school influence what their children engage in that is related to literacy in the home. Parents should be aware that early literacy development is part of a socially motivated process embedded in the relationships of children with their parents, brothers, sisters, grandmothers and fathers, playmates and caretakers. Parents should therefore become the first teachers of their children in regard to literacy because they are the ones who know their children better than anyone else. Research has established that children start the process of becoming literate from birth, with parents as their first teachers and one of the important sources of developing literacy skills is the language and literacy environment in the home (Morrow, 1993; Browne, 2001; Early Childhood Learning Division, 2011). To this effect, Malawi has an advantage because many parents are caregivers of their children except for a few who are employed and leave the care of their children in the hands of house maids. Children gain literacy skills through the caregivers who provide linguistic input and become role models when they respond and communicate with them in different social interactions. Parents also find it easy for them to teach their children basics about reading and writing through their daily interaction with print in front of the children. However, according to MoEST (2015) adult literacy levels in rural areas in Malawi are 67.6% while urban is at 89.9%; thus, many in rural areas cannot read and write hence cannot teach their children emergent literacy skills in the home. No wonder, then, that 42% of the children who participated in Early Grade Reading Activity (EGRA) baseline survey reported that they were not read to at home (USAID, 2013). As evidenced from research in primary schools in Malawi, the development of literacy in different grades of that level is challenging with only a small proportion of school leavers achieving minimum mastery levels (USAID, 2013; MEFA, 2015a, b). The trend is more prominent in rural areas where more children are disadvantaged because of poor social economic backgrounds. In summary, the major aim of the presentation in this section was to explore the challenges that parents’ home literacy environment and practices in rural areas of Malawi face and how parents in those homes can assist their children to develop early literacy.

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5.11 Establishment of Reading Camps Reading camps have been established in order to encourage learners to read after school. Parents are advised to send the children to their respective reading camps soon after school. In each and every village that surrounds a school, there are reading camps that were initiated by World Vision International. Some villages have one camp, and others have three or four camps. The number of camps is determined by the size of the village.

5.12 Teaching the Writing Skill as an Aspect of Literacy in Malawi Primary Schools Communication is carried out through language. Language integrates the language learning skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Children’s literacy and language development are key to wider communication with their peers and the world at large. Through language and communication, individuals share their thoughts, ideas and feelings with one another. For the information to be communicated, a child should develop an ability to identify concepts, understand, interpret, create and compute, using printed and written materials associating with varying contexts and Browne (2001) describes this ability as literacy. Children in Malawi enter school with a wide range of oral skills. The teacher has to make use of these abilities when teaching writing in order to integrate the basic language skills of writing, reading, listening and speaking in the Malawi primary classroom (Browne, 2001). The ability to read and write well is crucial to children’s academic achievement. Hence, a good understanding of language requires skills to communicate to a wider range of audience for different purposes. The Primary Curriculum and Assessment Reform (PCAR) as indicated in the Chichewa syllabus for the senior primary section outlines the primary writing outcome which is to enable the learner to write legible, factual and imaginative texts for a wide range of purposes (MoEST, 2006). Writing as a literacy skill on its own is productive. Browne (2001) stress that the key to writing successfully is to understand what the situation calls for, either academic or personal, and having a writing process that helps the writer meet expectations of writing. In this case, for teachers in Malawi, writing is dependent on the rhetorical situation that mainly focuses on the occasion for writing, the purpose for writing the topic, the audience, and the writer himself or herself. Therefore, success in writing is brought about by analysing the rhetorical situation and making conscious writing decisions based on careful analysis. Successful writers get involved in a thinking process the connection between reading and writing has been examined formally through research and theoretical explanations (Shanahan, 1990; Tierney & Shanahan, 1991). Some of the research about the relationships between writing and reading concludes that learners who are

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good readers are also good writers and the opposite is true. It is further argued that learners who write well read more books than those who are not good writers (Shanahan, 1990; Tierney & Shanahan, 1991). Loban’s research findings in Lapp and Flood (1983) commenting on deficiencies in reading and writing indicate that a learner who has low abilities in oral language also has difficulties in learning how to read and write. The central point is that oral activities such as storytelling and wide reading are more effective in improving the writing skill as actual practice in writing can be. Writers and readers who are good are more likely to engage in independent reading and writing, because they have confidence in themselves that they can read and write. In literacy circles, it is a clear fact that oral communication, reading and writing are closely linked because writing and reading support each other. This is to say, what is learnt through listening, speaking and reading becomes a resource for writing and what is learnt through writing assists the reader to construct meaning from the text (Scarborough, 2001). Farris (2001) also supports the integration of reading and writing when teaching because these skills develop concurrently. Integration is also centrally considered in teaching languages in the primary school language teaching syllabus in Malawi.

5.13 Writing Challenges Faced by Learners in Malawi Schools Malawian primary school learners are motivated to learn basic skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. This is done in the learning of Chichewa language which is a national language and medium of communication in Malawi. However, the process of learning basic language and literacy skills is done with difficulty. In most cases, learners in Malawi face challenges in various aspects of writing, ranging from linguistic skills to producing responses that are appropriate in different forms and function as observed by Mbano (2004). For example, in linguistic skills, the learners’ construction of sentences is riddled or confused with fragments and run-on sentences. Similarly, in rhetorical skills, organisation of ideas to develop a coherent paragraph is difficult. Malawian children often have difficulties in the use of different forms and functions of writing and choosing an appropriate style which matches the text. Their language therefore fails to achieve lucidity of language and thought (Mbano, 2004). The Ministry of Education Science and Technology (2006) concurs by stressing that the quality of children’s writing in most Malawian primary schools is not logical because their stories are not based on familiar structures. Their writings contain undeveloped events following one another in rapid succession which in most cases lack coherence and conclusions. This is against the background that Malawian children learn structural conventions of narrative at an early age as they play, as well as listen to stories and hear others read stories before they start reading by themselves. However, children find it difficult to put the very same

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stories in written form (Kishindo et al., 2005). Thus, development of the writing literacy skill is an issue to contend with. One of the most critical and useful emphases of the 1980s and early 2000s has been the attempt to integrate the teaching of literacy and all the literacy elements of speaking and listening, reading and writing. For example, in the past, reading and writing have been taught in most elementary primary schools in Malawi as separate entities with most emphasis on reading instruction. More resources are spent on children’s ability to receive information, rather than on their power to send it through writing. Even today, after the recent renewed emphasis on the integration of the teaching of literacy and the increased time and effort being spent in the teaching of writing, reading instruction receives more stress with both competent and disabled teachers (Miller, 1995).

5.14 Approaches and Stages of Teaching Writing That Teachers Follow in Malawian Primary Schools In order to teach and learn writing, it is vital to consider the stages in development of writing. Browne (2001) argues that children at school can easily tell elaborate stories, but when it comes to writing the same on paper, they struggle and sometimes they are only able to produce one sentence. Therefore teachers should regard the process of writing as a road map for monitoring learners’ thoughts and actions from the drafting stage to the end product (Tomkins, 2004). The map offers the structure of the learners’ piece of writing (Reimer, 2001). The writing process in upper primary school in Malawi is based on a 5 staged hierarchical process of how real authors write. These stages, according to Tomkins (2004), are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and producing the final product to be read by an audience. Teachers in Malawi teach learners that writing goes through stages which involve selecting a topic, generating ideas, drafting, proofreading and editing before the final product is produced; hence, writing is dynamic and recursive consisting of cycles. This can be achieved by using mainly two approaches that are used to teach learners the writing process in primary schools. These are product approach or shared writing and process approach or guided writing. Shared writing, according to Browne (2001), is when a group of learners during the lesson composes a text together with the teacher who writes for the class or group. Shared writing in a Malawian writing lesson class follows the following stages: • Teacher and learners discuss the topic for the writing by generating ideas from the class. • Teacher together with learners write the generated ideas on chalkboard. • Teacher and learners number the ideas to form a coherent plan and begin to compose the piece of writing. • Teacher together with learners write the first draft on chalkboard which is read and re-drafted.

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• Teacher and learners write the final draft of the text on chalkboard and read it. • Learners copy the final draft in their exercise books. • Learners compose their own piece of writing basing on the model. From the Malawi experience, shared writing encourages learners to reflect on different aspects of process of writing. At the same time, shared writing enables learners to work together and encourage one another, resulting in knowledge sharing. The process approach or guided writing is best. When presenting guided writing lessons, the teacher works with a group of learners. The writing sessions are carefully planned with a clear objective for learning. Pupils are grouped according to their learning needs. The writing session begins with a brief teaching about the process the pupils are expected to go through and to do. Learners are encouraged to apply experience and skills acquired during the shared session; the role of the teacher is to scaffold where support is needed in order to encourage the pupils to think about what they are writing. As the pupils write, they focus on a paragraph which is developed from a topic and supporting sentences. The teacher’s main task is to help learners with content and organisation of their writing. Browne (2001) emphasises that teachers should organise writing conferences to provide feedback about learners’ writing and to provide help for the difficulties that the learner encountered. The Malawian teacher understands that writing is dynamic and recursive, consisting of cycles of viewing and reviewing up to a perfected written product (Byrne, 1988).

5.15 Challenges and Threats in Writing Creatively in Malawi Primary Schools Writing creatively has a number of challenges. First, there is a need for creativity in order to write about something sufficiently interesting or important to justify the effort that must go into written work. Additionally, a number of sub-skills used in writing creatively such as spellings, punctuation, and legible handwriting, logical organisation of ideas the piece of writing and that de- and knowledge of structure are not easy to come up with. Second, it is lack of creativity by most of the teachers in coming up with writing tasks that can motivate learners. Some teachers also value the product rather than the process the learner has gone through in producing motivates learners. Furthermore, lack of exposure to a print rich environment in the home contributes to children getting enrolled in schools with different knowledge level backgrounds. Komarek (2003) states that learners who come from home environments that foster literacy become good readers and writers while those who come from home environments that are lacking in printed materials find it more of a challenge to read and write. Third, findings from research carried out in Malawi clearly indicate deficiencies in writing competencies in most of the primary school learners. For instance, Kholowa (1999) carried out research on teaching, learning and examinations. The

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results were that there is lack of competence in English among learners due to several factors, one of them being inadequate opportunities given to learners to put into practice what they have learnt in reflection to their experiences through writing. This is so because teachers neglect the role of motivation in developing the attitude in learners to write creative texts. The teachers are more interested in teaching the learners what is examinable than assisting them to be able to communicate through speaking and writing. Ormrod (2003) defines motivation as the internal processes that activate, guide, and maintain behaviour especially goal-directed behaviour. Motivation in this study is defined as the cause of actions which may be externally imposed in the learner through use of rewards (extrinsic motivation) or self imposed (internal or intrinsic). Franken (1994) argues that motivation is internal when one wants to do something out of a sense of need or enjoyment. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the student or from factors inherent in the task being performed. For example, students who love to read are intrinsically motivated to read because there is something about reading that they enjoy. They read even if there is no “reward” for it. Extrinsic motivation comes from sources external to the student and the task. It can come through praise, recognition, or a system of rewards (Oxford et al., 1991). Fourth, Mbano (2004) also conducted a study on how writing is taught in schools. The study revealed challenges about how primary school learners are prepared as they progress into purposeful writing in secondary school. The results indicated poor writing background right away from primary school. Even at secondary school, the students’ pieces of writing often contained an undeveloped writing style which in most cases lacked originality of ideas, coherence, and conclusions. Pupils face challenges in various aspects of writing that range from linguistic or rhetorical skills, to production of responses that are appropriate in different forms and use. Different findings from research studies carried out in lower and upper primary in Malawi have indicated substandard achievement in assessment of learner achievement in Chichewa in standards three, five, and seven in primary schools as well as learners’ poorer performance in literacy skills (Kishindo et al., 2005). These findings indicate deficiencies in writing competencies in most of the primary school learners in Malawi. The authors argue that this has been due to an increased overemphasis on the knowledge of the fundamental literacy skills at the neglect of text writing which has resulted into increased criticism on the quality of writings by learners in Malawi primary schools.

6 Conclusion Low achievement levels pronounced in literacy are attributed to failure of learners to acquire basic literacy skills. For quite sometime there have been poor reading skills among children in primary schools in Malawi. This has affected the quality of education in general and literacy in particular. Through research it has been

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established that learners in Malawi are not achieving well in basic literacy skills which are critical for literacy development. This is because many of the learners can not read and write simple words and sentences. The greatest challenges observed in literacy teaching, however, were absence of classroom displays to provide a print rich environment, large classes, in adequate reading materials, and the in ability of many parents to provide extra learning opportunities in the homes. Hence, further studies would be useful to establish whether the teacher training modules on how to teach letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension using the national curriculum are truly changing the instruction that children are receiving in the classrooms.

References Anzar, U., Harping. S., Cohen. and Leu. E (2004) Education Quality Improvement Program: Retrospective Pilot Study of USAID funded Projects in Malawi. USAID  Altiparmak, S. (2010) Parental perceptions on emergent literacy in early childhood years. Master’s thesis. Middle East Technical University.  Banda, N., & Mwabungulu, E. (2019). Information literacy research trend in Malawi: A guide for future research. University of Dar Es Salaam Library Journal, 14(1), 23–37. Browne, A. (2001). Developing language and literacy 3–8 (2nd ed.). Sage. Byrne, D. (1988). Teaching writing skills. Longman. Chilimanjira, M. T. (2012). The extent to which the primary curriculum and assessment reform (PCAR) language and literacy curriculum facilitates the acquisition of literacy skills in standard four learners: The case of four schools in Blantyre district (Master’s thesis). University of Malawi. Chilimanjira, M., McClung, N., Sailors, M., & Shin, J. (2015). The case of Chichewa and English in Malawi the impact of first language reading and writing on learning English as a second language. Bilingual Research Journal, 38, 255–274. Chilora, A., Kambankadzanja, D., Mapondera, A., & Sailors, M. (2014). Promoting reading achievement in Malawian primary schools. Information Age Publishers. Chimombo, J,. C. Dzimadzi, D. Kunje, and K. Lewin. (2005). The development of private sector providers of Education services in Malawi: panacea or problem? Zomba, Malawi: CERT.  Downing, L. J., & Mtenje, A. D. (2017). The phonology of Chichewa. Oxford University Press. Early Childhood Learning Division, (2011) Developing provincial early childhood  Learning strategy: Literature review, foundland: Department of Education  Farris, P. J. (2001). Language arts: Process product and assessment (3rd ed.). Library of Congress. Franken, R. (1994). Human motivation. Brooks/Cole. Hoffman, J. V., McClung, N., Mwale-Phiri, L., Sailors, M., Saka, T., & Shin, J. (2014). Supporting change in literacy instruction in Malawi. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 209–231. Hutchison, L. A. (2008). Home and preschool literacy environments of children from low-income, linguistically diverse families: Relations with early literacy outcomes (Unpublished Master’s thesis). George Mason University. Hyman, N., Larry, M., & Mtenje, Al. D. (1999). “Prosodic morphology and tone: the case of Chichewa” in Rene Kager, Harry Van der Hulst and Win Zonneveld (eds.) The prosody-­ morphology interface. Cambridge University Press, 90-133 Kachiwanda, S.  O. (2012). Everyday Literacy practices among Minority Language speakers of Ciyao in Malawi: issues of language choice in written Texts. (PhD thesis) Lancaster: Lancaster University. 

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Kachiwanda, S. (2015). Gender disparity in the acquisition of literacy in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Malawi. Journal of Humanities, 22, 24–43. Kaunda, Z., (2015). Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity: Scripting Study Report. Lilongwe, Malawi.  Kaunda, Z., Piper, B., & Slade, T.S. (2017). Is ‘summer’ reading loss universal? Using ongoing literacy assessment in Malawi to estimate the loss from grade-transition breaks. Retrieved 12 February, 2022, from: https://doi.org/10.1177/1745499917740657 Kholowa, F.  A. C. (1999). Between two worlds: Conflict between Malawi teachers’ pedagogic paradigm and assessment needs of their context: How do they resolve it? University of East Anglia, School of Education and Professional Development. Kholowa, F. A. C. (2007). Early literacy development opportunities for rural preschool children in Malawi: Case study of four preschools in Zomba district (PhD. thesis). University of Malawi. Kishindo, E., Susuwere, W., Ndalama, L. J., & Mwale, L. (2005). Pupils’ achievement levels in Malawi primary schools: A case study of twelve districts. Drafted Report. Komarek, M. (2003). Literacy at stake: teaching reading and writing in Africa Schools. Windhoek: John Meinert.  Lapp, D., & Flood, J. (1983). Teaching reading to every child (2nd ed.). Macmillan. Malawi Education for all (MEFA). (2015a). Post reflections for the education sect-2005–2015. Ministry of Education. MEFA. (2015b). Ministry of Education & Technology Report. Lilongwe, Malawi. Mbano, B. (2004). The teaching of writing in large classes: A study of how writing in English is taught in community day secondary schools (Masters’ dissertation). University of Malawi. Mchombo, S. (2004). The syntax of Chichewa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Miller, W. (1995). Alternative assessment techniques for reading and writing. Library of Congress Cataloging-Publication Data. Milner, G., Mulera, D., Chimuzu-Banda, T., Matale, E., & Chimombo, J. (2011). Trends in achievement levels of grade 6 learners in Malawi. SACMEC Brief Number 1. Ministry of Education. (2004). Education for all: Republic of Malawi Government: Office of ministry of Education. Ministry of Education Science and Technology. (2006). Primary schools teaching syllabus. MIE. Ministry of Education Science and Technology. (2008). National Education Sector Plan 2008–2017. MOEST. Ministry of Education Science & Technology. (2015). Malawi Education for all (EFA) Report, Lilongwe, Malawi.  Ministry of Education Sports and Culture (2000). Policy and Investment Framework (PIF): Malawi Education Sector. Lilongwe   Ministry of Gender Child Welfare and Community Development (MoGCC). (2005). Early childhood development in Malawi. Paper presented at the National Education Conference, Lilongwe, 29 March–1 April 2005. Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare. (2011). Early childhood development training manual. MoGCSW. Moira Yip. (2002). Tone (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.) Cambridge University Press. Morrow, L. M. (1993). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write (2nd ed.). Allyn and Bacon. Mtenje, A. D. (1986). Issues in the non-linear phonology of Chichewa part 1. Issues in the non-­ linear phonology of Chichewa part 2 (PhD thesis). University College. Mtenje, A. D. (1987). Tone shift principles in the Chichewa verb: A case for a tone lexicon. Lingua, 72, 169–207. National Statistical Office (NSO). (2015). Human capital development. Government Printer. Nutbrown, C., & Hannon, P. (Eds.). (1997). Preparing for early literacy education with parents. REAL Project/NES Arnold. O’Connor, R.E., Harty, R.R & Fulmer, D (2005). Tiers of intervention in kindergarten through third grade. Journal of Learning disabilities, 33, 532-538

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Ormrod, J. E. (2003). Educational Psychology: Developing learners (4th ed.). Merrill Prentice Hall. Oxford, R., M. Ehman and R. Lavine. (1991). “Style Wars: Teache-student style conflicts in the language classroom,” in S. Magnan, ed., challenges in the 1990’s for college foreign programs. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.  Reimer, C.  N. (2001). Strategies for teaching to primary students using the writing process (Unpublished Masters thesis). Biola University. Saka, T.  W. (2007). An assessment of preschool in education in Mzuzu City (Master’s thesis). University of Malawi, Chancellor College. Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and Literacy to later reading (dis) abilities: Evidence, Theory and practice. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickison (2001). Handbook of early Literacy research, l3, (pp.118-135). New York: the Guilford Press.  Shanahan, T. (1990). Reading and writing together: New perspectives for the classroom. Christopher-Gordon Publishers. Tierney, R., & Shanahan, T. (1991). Research on reading-writing relationships: Interactions, transactions, and outcomes. In P.  D. Pearson, R.  Barr, M.  Kamil, & P.  Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (2nd ed., pp. 246–280). Longman. Tomkins, G. E. (2004). Teaching writing: Balancing product and process. Prentice Hall. USAID/Malawi. (2010). Early grade reading assessment: National baseline report. USAID. USAID/Malawi. (2013). Early grade reading activity (EGRA) impact evaluation. USAID. Whitehead, M. (1996). The development of languages and literacy. Great Britain: Hodder & Stoughton Educational. 

Parent and Literate Helper-Child Writing Interaction in Zambian Children Sylvia Chanda Kalindi and Catherine McBride

Abstract  The importance of writing in contemporary society has continued to be emphasised and has also received attention in policy documents. Thus, this study sought to examine the nature of parent and/or literate helper mediation of Zambian second graders’ word writing and its associations with the student’s independent Bemba literacy ability. Children’s independent literacy skills were assessed in their schools. During home visits, 57 children and their parents or literate helpers were videotaped while writing word items in Bemba. The nature of interactions underwent analysis for literate mediation and general (socioemotional) mediation measures (atmosphere, feedback and mutuality). Documentation of literate mediation was at the letter level, while general (socioemotional) mediation was coded at the word level. Results revealed variations in the writing mediation strategies parents and/or literate helpers employed to facilitate children’s writing. With children’s ages, non-verbal reasoning, and parent’s education statistically controlled in a regression equation, the typical literate mediation uniquely explained 15% variance in children’s word writing. Separate hierarchical regression equations involving the general (socioemotional) mediation showed that the process category, tapping specific writing mediation uniquely explained 21% of the variance in word writing while the mutuality category explained up to 8% in word writing variance. Findings demonstrate the importance of parent and literate helper writing support for augmenting children’s literacy skills in an orthography and region not commonly investigated (i.e., Bemba in sub-Saharan Africa). Keywords  Bemba · Shared joint writing · Invented spelling · Early literacy · Scaffolding S. C. Kalindi Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: [email protected] C. McBride (*) Department of Human Development and Family Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. M. Joshi et al. (eds.), Handbook of Literacy in Africa, Literacy Studies 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0_18

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1 Parent and Literate Helper-Child Writing Interaction in Zambian Children The present study focused on the association of writing support strategies granted to early learners for early literacy acquisition among Zambian children. Considering previous reports of low reading levels in Zambia (Sampa et al., 2018), undertaking this study is particularly important for Zambian early learners as studies indicate that writing activities provide a unique opportunity to practise fundamental literacy skills in a meaningful and engaging context (Levin et al., 1996). Also, writing activities lay the foundation for later literacy skills and play a critical role in predicting later reading achievement (Bindman et  al., 2014; Ehri, 1989; Gerde et  al., 2012; Lonigan et al., 2000; Shatil et al., 2000). Though writing is generally a complex task, early writing experiences and activities can be more beneficial in early learners when accompanied by support from competent parents or caregivers (DeBaryshe et al., 1996). Across the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region however, there is a relative dearth of early literacy research which highlights the need to examine the writing support strategies provided by literate helpers (e.g., parents, caregivers, adults or siblings) in joint writing tasks. Studies of this nature are crucial in informing research and practise, given the obtaining low literacy levels in the SSA region (Makuwa, 2010; UNESCO, 2015). This study investigates the writing support strategies of ‘more’ literate helpers in a shared writing task and how it is associated with children’s independent word writing skills in Bemba, a Zambian native language. Please note that throughout this article, we focus only on word writing, specifically invented spelling, as a narrow representation of the broader concept of literacy. Also, joint writing specifically refers to Bemba word writing, and not to passage writing. Furthermore, in line with Africentric views and common African proverbs like ‘It takes a village’ (Sanders, 2001; Serpell & Nsamengang, 2014), literate helper-writing mediation, here, refers to the writing assistance given to a child by an individual with considerable levels of literacy competence including, but not limited to, a parent, aunt, or grandparent in some cases working along with a neighbor or an older sibling (Kalindi et al., 2018; Llyod & Blanc, 1996).

1.1 Theoretical Framework As highlighted in Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model and its application to children’s literacy acquisition, children’s literacy development takes place in a socio-cultural context (e.g., Aram & Levin, 2001). Sociocultural theorists emphasize that child development progresses in social interaction with more skilled individuals. As such, children become competent at complex tasks such as writing, during interactions with skilled individuals, when the competent adults/individuals, through their remarks and actions, scaffold the learning process. Vygotsky’s (1978)

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zone of proximal development elaborates on this idea by pointing out that children’s optimal development depends on the expert scaffolding, which enables children to efficiently complete tasks that they could not initially do on their own. Other sociocultural theorists emphasize that the cultural values and beliefs held by parents further influence the nature and frequency of scaffolding during joint activities (Harkness et  al., 2011). As for the African context, the focus of this study, this implies that the parents, older siblings, family friends and extended family members, who are all viewed as potential trainers of culturally held values (Chansa-­ Kabali, 2014; Och & Schieffelin, 1984; Serpell & Nsamenang, 2014), together regulate and guide these activities in line with what is regarded as culturally appropriate expectations and developmental goals. The main principles of the simple view of writing (Berninger, 2000; Berninger & Amtmann, 2003) also guided this study’s focus on joint writing and associated invented spelling skills. According to this view, writing development is dependent on transcription skills and self-regulation executive functions. Thus, in order to generate text, for example at the word level, there is a need for explicit tutor modelling and scaffolding of these two processes. Since transcription skills have to do with handwriting and spelling, they enable the translating of language representations into orthographic symbols and thus draw on skills associated with both writing and reading acquisition (Berninger et  al., 1992). Self-regulation executive functions including planning, conscious attention, revising, and reviewing written products thus work in conjunction with transcription skills in the working memory to generate text. Self-regulation has generally been associated to children’s abilities with regard to scholastic and problem-solving competencies (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989; Wood et al., 1976). Thus, the present study focused on highlighting the scaffolding approaches used by literate helpers during Bemba joint writing tasks in Zambian families and investigating how the identified strategies are associated with children’s early literacy development. Below, a description of the key components in this study is further illustrated.

1.2 Early Writing Development and Invented Spelling Early writing activities tend to positively stimulate early learning outcomes, such as letter sound knowledge, which ultimately results in later literacy gains (Aram, 2007; Puranik et  al., 2011; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002;). Studies indicate that children progress through different stages as they develop writing skills (Bryant & Bradley, 1980; Levin et al., 2005; Treiman, 1993). For example, writing is first observed in children’s drawings where they use physical marks to communicate about ideas and objects. Once children form ideas about universal writing features (e.g., how letters represent spoken sounds, and linearity) they move onto the features of writing for a given language, such as directionality (Puranik & Lonigan, 2011; Tolchinsky, 2003).

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The early writing attempts progress through a series of relatively predictable stages, from scribbles, to forming letter-shapes, to using conventional letters, and then to more advances via invented spelling (McBride-Chang, 1998; Puranik & Lonigan, 2011; Sénechal et al., 2012). Invented spelling typically refers to children’s spontaneous or self-directed attempts to represent words in print (Read, 1971). In the initial stages of invented spelling, young children understand that writing conveys a message in the encoded print symbols without realizing that the symbols have any meaningful sound connection. However, with alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness, children begin to partially capture the sounds of words in print (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017; Treiman, 1993). Children begin by representing the initial sound in a word (see Gentry & Gillet, 1993 for a detailed description in English). Children then learn to represent final sounds and gradually medial sounds. Next is the phonetic phase of spelling where children attempt all of what is heard but not necessarily in conventional ways. As children receive reading and spelling instruction, they learn that conventional writing is more than just sounds as spelling has other orthographic requirements [e.g., learning to use double medial vowels in words like ‘icipooma’ (waterfall)]. Longitudinal and intervention studies have continued to show that invented spelling is an excellent predictor of word reading (McBride-Chang, 1998; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008; Sénéchal et al., 2012; Shatil et al., 2000; Treiman, 1993) and conventional spelling (e.g., Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017) in young children.

1.3 The Role of Caregivers/Parents in Children’s Writing Development In literate societies, children normally show interest in the written world and tend to engage in writing activities by attempting to produce their writings even before formal literacy instruction (Puranik & Lonigan, 2011; Tolchinsky, 2003). However, as already pointed out, writing is a complex task; hence, when children write, they often ask questions that enhance construction of knowledge about the written system (Aram & Levin, 2011). Caregivers and other adults (Chansa-Kabali  & Westerholm, 2014; Kalindi et al., 2018) including parents (Aram & Besser-Biron, 2017; Baker et al., 1998; Neumann et al., 2009) may participate in the children’s joy resulting from writing and take an active role in promoting children’s understanding of the written system. In the first years of school, children still need their parents’ or caregivers’ help in completing writing tasks (Korat & Levin, 2001). Therefore, writing interactions between children and parents, caregivers, or other adults provide a useful context for studying features of caregiver and adult scaffolding in general, and the manner in which they support their children’s writing attempts in particular (e.g., Aram & Levin, 2011; Bindman et al., 2014). Research shows that when parents or caregivers provide directive instruction during joint writing tasks with their early learners, these efforts appear to benefit children who then tend to produce more conventional writing output (Burns & Casbergue, 1992). The explicit

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instruction from caregivers/parents during writing activities is also said to enhance children’s alphabet knowledge and letter-sound correspondences (Sénéchal et al., 1998). Studies further show that caregivers/parents vary in relation to how they support children’s writing (Bennet et al., 2002; Lin et al., 2012). For example, while some may provide guidelines about how to form some letters, others may go on to enunciating the sounds in the word (Aram & Besser-Biron, 2017; Bindman et al., 2014; Neumann et al., 2009). It is worth noting the relative increase in studies looking at caregiver/parent-child writing interactions to observe what caregivers actually say and do, to teach children about writing, including how the caregivers may differ from one another in these efforts. The situation in SSA is, however, different, because, to date, studies that have unpacked the writing interactions between caregivers, parents, or other adults and the children to highlight how the caregiver/adult writing support might differ one from another is still very scant. To understand variations in the scaffolding processes as occur in Zambia, the current study employed Aram and Levin’s (2001, 2004) fine grained paradigm that was designed to capture the content and quality of Israeli mother’s writing support. This involves analysing video recordings of parents and children during a joint writing activity by focusing on categories of support such as literate mediation and general socioemotional mediation. Studies that have used Aram and Levin’s paradigm to explore the predictive value of caregivers and parents’ writing mediation on children’s literacy acquisition during the early elementary years have found encouraging results, albeit with substantial differences across parents for most of the coding system (Aram & Levin, 2001; Bindman et al., 2014; Levin et al., 2013). For example, in a study that involved 41 kindergartners, the quality of the mothers’ mediation during joint writing was associated with concurrent word writing and word reading after accounting for overall home literacy environment (Aram & Levin, 2001). A follow-up study 2.5 years later showed that even after controlling for the kindergarten literacy, the quality of maternal mediation still predicted children’s literacy skills (Aram & Levin, 2004). Furthermore, findings from other work that involved similar samples (n ≈ 50) of Israeli kindergarteners suggest that parents tend to be sensitive to the literacy level of the child and mediate the writing process accordingly, especially when engaging different levels of literate mediation. It was, however, noted that the parent-child interaction is a two-way street where both parties shape the interaction mutually and interactively. No association was found between children’s literacy skills and the mutuality aspect of the general socioemotional mediation. However, an association between the general mediation measure involving emotional aspects (warm and positive atmosphere) and word writing was observed. Aram (2007) further indicated that the more general mediation characteristics were less affected by differences between the children’s literacy levels. Other studies that also involved the socio-emotional aspects of mediation apart from the literate mediation also reported similar findings. For example, in a study that involved kindergartners from Hong Kong and Beijing, Lin et al. (2012) analyzed the mothers’ support across the literate and socio-emotional categories of

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writing mediation and found that these categories of writing mediation were associated with word reading across the two cultures. Also, the feedback or reinforcement provided by the mothers during the joint writing task was uniquely related to children’s word reading in both Hong Kong and Beijing kindergarteners (see also Cho et al., 2017, for similar findings). These studies generally underscore the importance of parental scaffolding of children’s writing development across cultures. They give strong evidence that parents’ approaches to support preschool (and early elementary) children’s efforts during writing activities differ. Specifically, parents vary in what they say and do, and the support they provide can have unique effects on children’s emergent literacy development. However, this work has largely focused upon other orthographies including English. As such, there has been a lack of joint writing studies between children and their parents and/or other caregivers in languages of the SSA. Also, very few studies have looked at the general socioemotional category of writing mediation as separate from the cognitive support. While this may be the case on a global scale, the importance of caregiver and parental writing mediation with regard to early literacy development in most of SSA is not well understood. The current study examined what types of writing support Bemba-speaking parents/caregivers and other literate helpers use with their early elementary children and whether the writing measures of writing support are related to children’s invented spelling skills. Note that this study was part of a larger study that looked at caregiver writing support (in English and Bemba) and how the support was related to various early literacy related tasks (for a sample of the findings see Kalindi et al., 2018, Kalindi & McBride, 2016; Kalindi & McBride, 2017). Categories of Caregiver/Adult Writing Mediation The present study investigated two types of writing mediation: Literate Mediation and a General (socioemotional) Mediation. Literate mediation directly looks at parents’ efforts to break the word into its segments and connecting each segment (sound) with its corresponding letter. For this category, we adopted what was established in past work with Zambian children (Kalindi et al., 2018), thus expanding on that work in order to replicate the literate mediation scale. Moreover, whereas the previous study examined the scale in relation to literacy and associated cognitive skills, the present study extended it to invented spelling skills. Considering the high prevalence of zero scores in word reading and writing tasks (Kalindi et al., 2018), we felt an invented spelling measure would correctly reflect the attempts at word writing. In separate analyses, we observed strong correlations between word reading and conventional spelling (r = .86, p