Adult literacy in East Timor Portuguese as a second language Results of a pilot Danielle Boon, Adult

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Adult literacy in East Timor Portuguese as a
second language Results of a pilot Danielle
Boon, Adult Literacy Advisor - Ministry of
Education in East Timor (UNDP)PHD-student at
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
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Adult literacy in East Timor The research plan
Aim investigating historical and
contemporary aspects of literacy acquisition
use in multilingual East Timor
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East Timor history languages

• 16 national languages and various dialects
• Until 1975 Portuguese colony
• Portuguese
• 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation Bahasa
  Indonesia
  
• 1999-2002 interim government UN English as a
  working language

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Language situation 2002 today

• 20 May 2002
• Independence
• 2 official languages Portuguese and Tetum
• 15 other national languages to be developed by
  the state
  
• English and Bahasa Indonesia as working languages

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The 16 national languages

• Austronesian group
• Tetum, Habun, Galoli, Atauran, Kawaimina,
  Welaun, Idalaka, Mambai, Kemak, Tokodede,
  Baikenu, Makuva

• Papuan group
• Bunak
• Makasai
• Makalero
• Fataluku

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Empirical study

• a multi-site sociolinguistic-ethnographic case
  study investigating values and uses of languages
  and literacy, instructional practices and
  learning in the act of becoming and being
  literate in Portuguese and Tetum
• an evaluation study assessing the influence of
  language choices, methodology and transparency on
  the effectiveness of adult literacy programs in
  these two languages

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Perspectives on literacy

• Cognitive-linguistic perspective

• Social-cultural perspective

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Word recognition strategies(J. Kurvers, LESLLA
2006 Proceedings)

• Visual recognition/guessing context cues
• Letter naming
• Decoding letter by letter
• Partial decoding
• Direct word recognition

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Word recognition strategies(J. Kurvers, LESLLA
2006 Proceedings)

• Random letter mentioning
• Visual recognition/guessing context cues
• Letter naming
• Decoding letter by letter
• Partial decoding
• Direct word recognition

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Pilot Portuguese as a second language in 2
adult literacy groups

• April-August 2007

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Portuguese according to

• Seymour (2005)
• Ziegler Goswami (2005)

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Questions

• What stadia of beginning reading do East Timorese
  adults show while learning to read in Portuguese
  as a second/third language?
  
• What strategies do they use?
• What problems do these learners encounter while
  learning to read and write in Portuguese?

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Participants

• 21 literacy students
• all adults
• 15 women and 6 men
• from 2 literacy groups
• mother tongues Tetum, Fataluku, Tokodede,
  Makasai, Mambai, Kemak, Rasua, Raclungu
  
• no previous education

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Instruments

• Reading task
• list of 60 Portuguese words, from 1-5 syllables,
  audio-recorded
  
• Writing task
• form to fill out (name, signature, district,
  etc., and 1 open question)

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What exactly did we look at?

• Reading
• - what did they read? (transcript)
• - how did they decode? (what steps)
• - what strategies did they use for decoding?
• Writing
• - what did they write?
• - how was it written? (fluency, spaces, capitals
  
  
• and small letters, mistakes)

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Results / Findings in general

• Reading
• - Correct/false
• - Strategies
• - Types of mistakes
• Writing
• - Product
• - Quality

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Group statistics
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Some individual strategies and scores
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Learning to read in Portuguese as L2 Conclusions

• Considerable differences between the 2 groups
  related to
  
• strategies stages
• materials used
• teacher qualifications feedback
• Learning to read Port. L2 turns out to be a
  relatively slow process, but there appear to be
  options to influence this process and make it
  more efficient.

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Reading mistakes

• Problems with v (Port.), often pronounced as b
  (Tetum)
  
• vem, uvas
• Problems with j (Port.) often pronounced as z
  (Tetum)
  
• já
• Problems with c (Port), often pronounced as dzj /
  tsj
  
• zinco, escada
• Problems with x (Port) often pronounced as z / s
• peixe, xadrez

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• Problem with rr (Port), often seen/read as n
• arroz
• Problem with consonant clusters (Port.), lead to
  extra syllables
  
• flor felor, folor
• centro centero

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Learning to write in Portuguese as L2

• Ler e escrever e muito importante para mim
• muto
• min, mien
• Quero assinar o meu nome asinar
• Lopes Lpes
• Guterres Gutrres
• da Costa da Cota

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What do these findings/results imply for the
larger research project on literacy in East Timor?

• We tested some of our instruments methods.
• We learned a bit more about phases and strategies
  in beginning reading.
  
• We found some of the problems that East Timorese
  learners encounter when they are learning to read
  and write in Port as L2 (L3, L4).
  
• We saw different traditions of teaching that
  created different results.

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• More knowledge
• about phases and strategies in beginning
  reading,
  
• about these and other problem areas,
• and about more/less successful ways of teaching
• will lead to
• improved literacy course materials,
• improved literacy teacher training,
• improved literacy programs policies
• (Portuguese L2 in East Timor) .

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Obrigada barak

• ba atensaun !!!