Language of Instruction

This video was created by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in order to disseminate results of the early grade reading assessment (EGRA), raise awareness of the importance of reading, and mobilize communities.

This video was created under a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation by a local Senegalese production company in order to raise awareness of the importance of reading and mobilize communities to take action.

This report describes the results of an early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) conducted in Senegal in two languages: French and Wolof. The research was supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and included teacher interviews and classroom observations that captured the language of instruction being used in the classroom in order to explain the context of the findings.

This document was designed as a practical response to requests from USAID’s Africa Missions, which have increasingly indicated their need for more guidance on the role of language of instruction (LOI) in their efforts to achieve Goal 1 of the 2011 USAID education strategy: Improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades (USAID, 2011). This need reflects a call by USAID in the Technical Notes of its 2011 USAID Education Strategy (the Bureau of Economic Growth Agriculture and Trade, Office of Education [EGAT/ED]), which identified LOI among the seven areas in which Missions were likely to need technical assistance or additional resources for designing or implementing early grade reading programs.

This presentation was presented by Alison Pflepsen and USAID to provide information about a recently developed resource of use to those working to improve reading and learning outcomes. The presentation discusses how to plan for language use in education. It was presented at CIES on March 10, 2015.

Following the study completed in 2013, measuring English, Filipino and Ilokano reading skills, this 2014 EGRA study is serves as a baseline for monitoring the government's Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) program by conducting EGRA assessments in four mother-tongue languages—Cebuano (Sinugbuanong Binisaya), Hiligaynon, Ilokano and Maguindanaoan. The survey also included classroom observations of teaching practice and teacher interviews to gather contextual information about the extent of MTB-MLE implementation.