Abstract:

This paper is about an experiment that aims at facilitating English language learning in remote, resource-strained environments in India through intimate engagement with books and stories that are written and illustrated by the learners (12-14 years of age) themselves—children with little or no knowledge of English.

There are two primary motivations for this design strategy, one, to encourage the role of learners as content creators rather than mere consumers, and two, to enable learning outside of a structured, classroom-based pedagogy.

This project (LETS, or Learn English Through Stories) also uses digital applications that employ subtitles, voice overs, and voice recording software embedded in animated shorts, which encourage active listening and reading aloud. These stories are read on a tablet or via audio files downloaded on mobile phone devices (now near ubiquitous even in the remotest parts of India), and augment the impact of books and stories brought to imaginative life by the children. Interactive versions of these stories are also in the making for releasing sounds, meanings, pronunciation and prosody into environments that are otherwise bereft of English language sounds and syllables.

This is a deliberate design process, with a focus on what the child can do, rather than what she lacks. Engagement is prized above instruction.

For the kind of environment we are dealing with—one marked by material poverty and scarce pedagogic stimulus—this license to learn through content creation is immensely empowering. Language learning becomes almost incidental to the more profound mandate of the empowerment of young minds, the unleashing of their creativity. Children work with a team of book designers and animators in intensely collaborative modes to meld art, language and literature in ways that turn accepted relationships, viz., teacher and learner, creator and consumer, on their heads.

This paper will chart the journey of this experiment over the past two years, assess and analyze language proficiency shifts during that time, and cast light upon the principles, successes, and failures of the process.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, research projects, co-creators, children's books, animation, empowerment, collaboration, pedagogy.