New Year Greetings
Tsunami Disaster Assistance
An English-Language Library in a Malagasy field
by Gyl Mattioli, Junior ELF III (2003-2004), Diego Suarez, Madagascar
New Year Greetings
All of us as ELF "headquarters" here in Vermont wish you - our ELF Alumni - a happy and fulfilling New Year. During the coming New Year we will dedicate ourselves to growing a vibrant and useful ELF alumni community. This e-newsletter is a first step, and we're proud to point out that this issue is the first to feature a submission by an ELF Alumni. Please take the time to read Gyl Mattioli's reflections on her time serving as a Junior Fellow in Madagascar. We are currently putting out a request for submission. If you would like to submit an article or comments or anything you think other alumni might find useful, please do so to Rob Hardin at rob.hardin@sit.edu. Once we have a significant number of submissions we will create a web-page where we post all the alumni submissions.
We are looking forward to building an alumni community that will not only be useful to our alumni, but will further the Program in such a way that is beneficial to all. Here's to a great ELF year and one we want you to be a big part of!!!
Tsunami Disaster Assistance
Let us take a moment to express our sorrow and grief over the Tsunami disaster that has ravaged South East Asia. The tragic loss of lives and massive devastation have affected everyone around the world. Thankfully, all the English Language Fellows in the areas hit by the disaster are safe and accounted for. Some were near the devastated areas, and are currently providing assistance to the disaster relief effort. If you would like to help the relief effort you may do so by using the following information provided by the U.S. State Department.
For information about how you can provide assistance to those in need, please call the Center for Disaster Information (CIDI) at 703-276-1914 (http://www.cidi.org/) or visit http://www.usaid.gov/. Click here to go to the USAID site that has been set up with the most up-to-date information on the tsunami relief efforts: http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/tsunami/
For information on travel warnings related to the effected countries click here: http://travel.state.gov/
The following public announcements have been issued recently by the
State Department:
Indonesia:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/indonesia_announce.html
Thailand:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/thailand_announce.html
Sri Lanka:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/sri_lanka_announce.html
An English-Language Library in a Malagasy field
By Gyl Mattioli, ELF II (2003-2004), Diego Suarez, Madagascar
The idea of opening an English language library at a small engineering university in the middle of green meadows with a brand new English department on the outskirts of a tiny city called Diego Suarez overlooking a brilliantly blue bay on the northernmost tip of the island of Madagascar may seem incongruous at best. Why would these students who have little or no contact with the English-speaking world be at all interested in learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at the university level? What hopes of exercising the kind of internationally-minded profession that uses English can they realistically nourish in a country stuck in the vicious circle of poverty and political corruption that plagues most of the "developing" nations?
And yet, it happened, to the extreme pleasure and satisfaction of all concerned: that precious institution known as the lending library established itself in a cramped room on the second floor of the university library building. Born out of the sponsorship of the US embassy in the capital city of Antananarivo, the devices and desires of the head of the fledgling Départément des Études Anglo-américaine (DEAA) at the Université d'Antsiranana (UNA) and the know-how of the pioneer English Language Fellow to the UNA, Gyl Mattioli, the library, christened the American Corner by embassy personnel, started in 2003 with about 600 books on its stacks, new hardwood furnishings, and a whole series of weekly activities that inspired not only the DEAA students, but the English-studying and -speaking community at large.
Why a library
Brown (2001) in his discussion of the principles English language teaching (ELT) professionals should all recognize as an integral part of sound language instruction speaks of the importance of intrinsic motivation. Brown explains that learners actively engaged in intrinsically motivated language tasks are those who benefit the most, "because the behavior stems from needs, wants, or desire within oneself" (p.59). In a commentary on a language teacher's creation of a classroom library in order to encourage her students to become better readers, Brown (1998) elaborates, "Students became their own rewarders, reading for the sole purpose of learning something on their own, or of having an adventure, or of experiencing something new and different in their lives" (p.389). These purposes, and many more, can be witnessed daily in the American Corner as students trudge through the muddy fields on a regular basis to borrow books, thumb through magazines, or just to use the dictionaries to do their homework exercises. The Fellow and the other part-time teachers in the DEAA did not necessarily require them to use the library, yet some students even waited outside in the burning sun for library staff (a full-time assistant librarian, and Mattioli when she was not teaching) to open up.
Print comes to their lives
Child literacy experts emphasize the presence of print as a crucial part of developing strong first language literacy and solid reading skills. Researchers have found that children in "print-saturated or print oriented" lives (Hudelson, 1999, p. 55) are those who have the quickest and easiest time of learning the skills they need to be fully and ably literate. Children surrounded by environmental print (print in the world around them) soon attempt to decipher the many signs and labels they meet, and make the symbolic connections between words and physical objects automatically.
Conversely, children whose worlds hold little to no environmental print, who come from rural settings with nearly illiterate caretakers, or whose lives are too filled with survival to find place for intellectual games have greater difficulty acquiring the same dexterity with literacy as their print-saturated counterparts. Malagasy children fall into the second category. Most public school classrooms both in rural and urban areas have no textbooks to speak of. Students buy several notebooks and spend their school day copying information from the blackboard where the teacher writes copious rules and examples of everything from language arts to sciences to mathematics - a logical reason for their preference of the British English term copybook instead of notebook when they begin learning English vocabulary. City dwellers have access to photocopies and teachers can sometimes distribute worksheets and pages of textbooks, but this is a costly practice, one that not many instructors can afford to adopt on a regular basis.
And so it is that many students come to the university without ever having read a book from cover to cover. Others have never even owned a book, while still others pursue and obtain degrees after studying and researching almost exclusively from poorly photocopied pages and lecture notes. The American Corner (AC) has radically changed all of this for EFL students at UNA. Now there are course books that students can sign out for the duration, while other textbooks and supplementary study materials are kept on reserve and can be shared by all. Now there are novels and popular magazines to stimulate that intrinsic motivation Brown (1998) spoke of.
Scope
The American Corner library plan was to be open on a daily basis, including Saturday mornings, and offer lending library facilities to DEAA students and other cardholding members. This schedule has not always been possible to maintain, but it remains a goal for the future. Books are catalogued based on a color-coding system Mattioli learnt from a study abroad program library in Italy (Saint Mary's College Rome Program) where she worked as a bilingual secretary and archival assistant some years ago. The program's director came up with an easy alternative to the Dewey Decimal system whereby library books are color-coded in categories such as History (blue dot) and Racial Issues (black triangle).
There are some French books - mostly American authors in translation - and a fair number of brochures on studying in the United States for scholarship hopefuls along with the smattering of classics, paperbacks, language learning books, and news magazines. A large addition to the collection is the 200-odd volumes gleaned from a large donation to the US embassy from the Mormon Church. These books are discarded textbooks and readers from public school libraries and supply closets across the US. There were a number of children's classics in the donation as well.
As the AC is open to anyone studying English in the university, right from the start, students from the French department and the polytechnic were encouraged to become members and practice their English with the DEAA majors, not only by visiting the library during open hours, but also by participating in the weekly conversation club, Speak out; or in the extra help session, English Clinic. These two extra-curricular activities were heavily attended throughout the first year of the AC's life; so much so that participants were often forced to carry chairs and benches out into the wide foyer to be able to meet comfortably. Saturday mornings were spent either in the clubs, or using the AC to study for that upcoming quiz or get extra help for this week's project from the Fellow.
Students would come to drop off homework and end up spending time chatting in English with Danielle, the assistant librarian, an activity that extended the normally limited conversation time EFL learners have in francophone Diego Suarez. Danielle was at the time a recent English Studies graduate from the large university in Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital city. Her father, Alex Totomarovario, is the visionary DEAA department head, and when she expressed her doubts about starting a Masters program immediately after finishing her Bachelors, he convinced her to take a year out and get some hands-on experience in the new AC. An aspiring EFL teacher, Danielle became enthusiastic about moving back to her hometown of Diego Suarez upon graduation in a few years' time to help the university's project grow. She felt that the library was simply a sign of good things to come, and was anxious to remain a part of it all.
Growth
Finding books of any kind in Madagascar is difficult; so therefore finding foreign language books is next to impossible, especially if the language sought is not French. The AC's present collection came either from the American Cultural Center in Antananarivo, the old United States Information Service library that closed down a few years back, or private donors from Britain and the US. Mattioli brought some EFL/ English language teaching (ELT) books with her as well to augment the tiny collection, and the embassy sends periodic donations of magazines, but it is nowhere enough to satisfy the hunger of Diego Suarez's print-starved students. In an attempt to gain donations, Mattioli made some flyers asking for help both in the form of books for the AC and also dictionaries for local EFL programs. She sent the flyers to the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) caucus she belongs to (International Black Professionals and Friends in TESOL) and the organizers of the caucus' booth at the upcoming annual international TESOL conference publicized the AC project by distributing copies of the flyers in order to garner support. In the US, people have so many books that are discarded; if only these books could be sent over to projects like these, young people interested in learning about both English and the world would have more of a chance to do so.
Future vision
Many visitors to the university commented that with its library and related activities, the DEAA was becoming the most happening department around. The AC staff invited all university students and professors to make use of its facilities, and hoped that when the powers that be see the high level of enthusiasm for such a project, the tiny back corner room the AC had initially been allotted would give way to a more spacious location on campus. This dream has been satisfied with the arrival of this year's Fellow, Jennifer Rawlings: a larger space next door to the original small room has been granted to the DEAA, and the smaller room will become a departmental office. As this university suffers from a chronic lack of resources, crumbling prefabricated classroom buildings rotting in the middle of muddy cow pastures, decrepit student housing, and seemingly oblivious administrators, a functioning English language lending library filled with curious young people desirous of the chance to expand their horizons by improving their knowledge of a foreign language can only be a positive place to be.
References
Brown, H.D. 1998. Comments. In Richards, J.C. (Ed.) Teaching in action: Case studies from second language classrooms. p. 389. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc.
Brown, H.D. 2001. Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
Hudelson, S. 1999. Literacy development of second language children. In Orr, J.K. (Ed.) Growing up with English. (pp. 53-58). Washington, DC: Materials Branch, Office of English Language Programs, US Department of State.
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