Publication
of stories in Zambian languages
CAPOLSA’s Early Grade Readers in
Zambian languages
Contents
SPEECH by the Permanent Secretary of MESVTEE
The
first eight Early Grade Readers published by CAPOLSA in partnership with Maiden
Press in 2013
Goals and functions
of the Readers
Needs to which the
Readers respond
Quality assurance
Origins of the texts
The
production process
Further
development of child-friendly reading materials for Early Grade literacy
promotion
- Stories and poems in kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale
- Translation and editing
SPEECH by the
Permanent Secretary of MESVTEE
Mr Chishimba Nkosha, on the occasion of the launching ceremony for CAPOLSA’s Early Grade Readers in Zambian Languages.
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
Literacy
is a key goal of education. Individual literacy (“the ability to read and write
so as to understand and communicate effectively”) has become an essential skill
in the modern world. And every Zambian child should be given the opportunity to
become literate before she or he leaves school. Unlike the ability to
communicate with spoken language, children are not equipped biologically to
acquire literacy without assistance. Literacy is a cultural invention and
children must be introduced to it by the generation that came before them.
The
National Literacy Framework launched by my Ministry in January this year is
based on the principles that
- Reading is a foundation skill for all school learning and
- Learners learn the first stages of literacy more easily through a familiar language
Thus
the curriculum of the Early Grades (Grades 1 to 4) places great emphasis on the
introduction of young children to the writing system of a widely spoken
indigenous language. Depending on the region, this may be ciNyanja, iciBemba,
chiTonga, siLozi, kiKaonde, Lunda or Luvale.
Effective
education begins where the learner is and proceeds from the known to the
unknown. Since most of the children entering Grade 1 in Zambia arrive with a
strong knowledge of how to speak and understand one of those seven languages,
that is where the Grade 1 curriculum begins. In the later Grades, after the
learner has achieved competence in how to read and write in a Zambian language,
the curriculum introduces her or him to the writing system of English, a
language that will become more and more important as she or he progresses to
more advanced levels of education.
Research
in psychology, linguistics and child development has shown that one of the keys
to acquiring initial literacy is mastery of the spelling code that links the
particular sounds of a spoken language to the particular symbols or letters
used by the script used to represent that language in writing. The song we
heard today illustrates that code for the Zambian languages: a-e-i-o-u! If
children learn to sing that song while looking at the letters, they are making
a good start on learning to read in any of the indigenous Bantu languages of
Zambia: ciNyanja, iciBemba, chiTonga, siLozi, kiKaonde, Lunda or Luvale. And if
they play the Graphogame we have been hearing about today, that knowledge will
be strengthened.
After
a child has mastered that code of “one letter, one sound”, she will be ready to
start reading for meaning, and that is where the storybooks that we are
launching today are so valuable. They tell simple, but also interesting stories
that children will enjoy reading aloud:
“SHAKAME NI SEELUFOONI”, a story about how animals came across a
cell-phone lying in the grass and tried to figure out what it was for, composed
in siLozi, and then translated for publication by CAPOLSA in ciNyanja, iciBemba
and chiTonga;
“CHITI AKOSHA UMULILO”
, a story about a girl whose brothers wouldn’t let her light the fire until she
met Kalulu who came up with a clever idea, composed in iciBemba, and then
translated for publication by CAPOLSA in ciNyanja, chiTonga and siLozi;
The
books also contain other stories and poems composed in ciNyanja
or in chiTonga and then translated for publication by CAPOLSA into the other
languages. This will enable Zambian children, no matter which is their first
language, to enjoy these fruits of our African story-telling tradition while
practicing and perfecting their new skills of retrieving the meaning of a text
by reading it.
The
authors who composed these stories are all Zambians, and mother-tongue speakers
of the languages in which they were composed. The stories were selected by a
jury of local experts in Zambian languages, recruited by CAPOLSA from the
linguistics and education staff of UNZA, and from among the language
specialists at the Government’s Curriculum Development Centre to decide on the
award of prizes for the best stories and poems submitted to a nationwide,
public competition in 2011. We are grateful to the Niilo Maki Institute in
Finland for sponsoring that competition.
The
editorial work of simplifying the sentence structures, vocabulary and spelling
of the stories to make them accessible to young minds, and then translating the
texts from one Zambian Language to another was undertaken by Zambian Language
experts drawn from the same pool as the judges who identified the prize-winning
stories. This involved extended, technical work coordinated by CAPOLSA in 2012
and 2013, under the skilful supervision of CAPOLSA’s Projects Cooperation
Officer, to whom I would like to pay special tribute today: Mrs Mwanza Nakawala
Maumbi. I understand that CAPOLSA has already completed the editorial work for
production of a second batch of Early Grade Readers in ki-Kaonde, Lunda and
Luvale, and that they have several other lines of development under way for
innovative reading materials to support the early literacy learning of children
in Zambian languages.
CAPOLSA
joined with one of the few local publishing houses that has continued to
publish in the Zambian languages in recent years: Maiden Publishing House, who
recruited some excellent local artists to illustrate the books. I wish to
acknowledge the efforts in that regard of the General Manager of Maiden
Publishing: Mrs. Christine Kasonde. The Ministry is delighted to see this
positive outcome of a public-private partnership in the publication of quality
educational materials for use in the nation’s schools.
Now
that the books have been printed and are ready for distribution to the schools,
the Ministry’s Curriculum Development Centre has agreed to collaborate with
CAPOLSA on evaluation of the books, by interviewing teachers, parents and
children themselves about their impressions of the books, including how they
are illustrated, and the simplified, child-friendly spelling system adopted by
CAPOLSA on the recommendations of expert language and literacy researchers.
Based on that evaluation, CAPOLSA, CDC and other publishers will be better
informed about the opinions of the most important stakeholders for whom Early
Grade reading materials are produced, so that knowledge can be applied to the
design of future publications.
One
very important stakeholder group comprises Early Grade teachers, who are
entrusted with the important and challenging task of guiding young children’s
initial literacy learning. In order to assist teachers to make the best use of
these Readers, CAPOLSA has embarked on a programme of in-service training to
guide them in ways of integrating the reading of these storybooks into the
overall literacy curriculum, along with other teaching aids such as the
a-e-i-o-u song and the Graphogame. The Zambian scholars who have been
conducting local research on the effectiveness of the Graphogame in Grade 1
classes are contributing their knowledge and skills to this in-service teacher
education programme designed to apply theory and empirical research evidence to
the enhancement of professional practices in our schools. In that regard, I
wish to acknowledge their professionalism and commitment to public service.
They are, in alphabetical order:
Tamara Chansa
Kabali, Jacqueline Jere Folotiya, Jonathan Munachaka, Francis Sampa, and
Christopher Yalukanda. Their work has been supervised in Lusaka by Professor
Robert Serpell, Coordinator of CAPOLSA, in close collaboration with his
counterpart in Finland, the original designer of Graphogame, Professor Heikki
Lyytinen.
The
Government of Finland has been a strong, long-time partner with the Government
of Zambia in promoting development of the Education sector in Zambia. The
establishment of CAPOLSA at UNZA as a coordinating body for the preparation of
these child-friendly reading materials in Zambian languages has been a joint
project between UNZA and the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. The Ministry
of Education (MESTVTEE) is delighted
to witness the launch of these books, which we hope will be just the first of
many such publications of learning resources for the promotion of literacy in
our schools.
By
starting to learn in the Zambian languages, the next generation of young
learners will progress into the upper primary Grades with a stronger foundation
of basic literacy skills. And when they graduate from Grade 7 as youths they
will carry with them greater confidence in the cultural wealth of their African
heritage. The scholars at UNZA who have invested so much effort in the
preparation of these books are to be congratulated on a job well done. We are proud
as a Ministry to be partnering with the nation’s leading public university in
the research and development that goes into quality assurance for the general
public that our school curricula are serving the best needs of the learners
enrolled in them. Zambia still has a long way to go to achieve quality
education for all. But we are committed to working towards that goal with all
the resources at the nation’s disposal. These books and the programme of
stakeholder evaluation and teacher training that comes with them are important
steps in the right direction.
It is therefore my great pleasure to formally
launch CAPOLSA’s first edition of Early Grade Readers, and to commend CAPOLSA
(the Centre
for Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa) for achieving this important
step forward in the fulfillment of the Centre’s goals.
May God bless all of you
The
first eight Early Grade Readers published by CAPOLSA in partnership with Maiden
Press
in 2013 are:
ChiTonga Book 1: SULWE A
SELOFONI
CiNyanja Book 1: KALULU
NA LAMYA YA KUMANJA
IciBemba Book 1: KALULU
NA LAMYA
SiLozi Book
1: SHAKAME NI SELOFONI
ChiTonga Book 2: CHITI
WAKUNKA MULILO
CiNyanja Book 2: CHITI
AYASA MOTO
IciBemba Book 2: CHITI
AKOSHA UMULILO
SiLozi Book
2: CHITI UTUMBULA MULILO
Each book contains 4 texts, 2
stories and 2 poems, illustrated with full colour pictures. All texts and
illustrations were designed by Zambian authors, artists and editors to appeal
to children aged 6-10, and to be easy to read and understand as soon as they
have taken the first steps of literacy in that language. Each text is followed
by a set of three questions for an adult teacher or parent to use for prompting
reflection by a young reader on the meaning of the text.
Goals
and functions of the Readers
CAPOLSA’s
mandate to promote literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa is being implemented through
several strategies. One of these is the production and dissemination of
child-friendly reading materials in the indigenous languages of Zambia.
The
first 32 texts contained in these booklets comprise 4 stories and 4 poems in
each of 4 Zambian languages. They have been edited for use in Primary School
Grades 1 to 4, in Early Childhood Care and Education Centres and in the homes
of children aged between 6 and 12, to provide entertaining opportunities for
initial readers to practice their emerging skills.
Children
familiar with the language in which a given text is written will enjoy
listening to it read aloud by a competent reader. Learners enrolled in Grades 1
to 4 will find these texts easy to read once they have mastered the
letter-sound correspondence rules of the language in which they are written.
The spelling system used is a child-friendly, transparent and acceptable adaptation
of the standard orthography published by the Ministry of Education in 1977.
Needs
to which the Readers respond
Initial literacy instruction has had
a checkered history in Zambia. During the colonial period, mission schools and
government schools favoured use of the indigenous African languages as the
medium of instruction in the early grades. However, shortly after independence
in 1964, the Government introduced the English Medium Scheme under which
children received initial literacy instruction from Grade1 in the medium of
English, a language claimed as a mother tongue by less than one per cent of
adults in the 1969 national population census. Several problems were identified
with this policy during a national Educational Reforms debate (1975-77), giving
rise to a formal proposal to reintroduce seven of the indigenous languages as
the medium of instruction in the Early Grades (1-4). However, the proposal was
rejected by the Ministry in its final policy document, and the English Medium
Scheme remained in place for another twenty years.
In 1996, the Government published a
landmark new policy document, Educating our Future, stating that “all
pupils will be given an opportunity to learn initial basic skills of reading
and writing in a local language”. In order to implement this policy, a new
curriculum was developed, under the title New Breakthrough to Literacy (NBTL).
Pilot testing in several different rural zones showed that first-grade children
who received initial literacy instruction in the dominant local language made
better progress than those immersed in English from the start. In light of
those findings, a new generation of teachers were trained in the new
curriculum, which mandates that initial literacy shall be offered in all
government primary schools in one of seven of Zambia’s indigenous Bantu
languages depending on the regional zone.
Over the following decade
(2003-2013), however, a growing crisis of public confidence has emerged. While
some initial gains in reading skills have been reported in the Zambian
languages, the overall literacy profile of Zambian children in Grades 5 and 6
of government primary schools has remained very poor. Many researchers and
policymakers have attributed this to the inclusion of an early start to
literacy instruction in English, beginning in the second grade before most
children have fully mastered basic literacy in a Zambian language. In 2014, the
Ministry announced that the use of Zambian languages as the principal medium of
instruction will henceforth be maintained throughout Grades 1 to 4.
During the long period of the
English Medium Scheme, publication of schoolbooks and general literature in the
Zambian languages underwent a drastic reduction, so that there are currently
very few suitable texts available for children to apply and exercise their
newly acquired initial literacy skills in any of the Zambian languages. There is
thus a recognised need for production of new Early Grade reading materials in
all the seven indigenous Zambian Bantu languages mandated as media for initial
literacy instruction. Individual multilingualism is very widespread in Zambian
society, and there is a high level of intra-national mobility. CAPOLSA’s
publishing programme is therefore designed to facilitate children’s acquisition
of basic literacy in several of the indigenous Bantu languages.
Quality
assurance
The first draft of the texts for
inclusion in the CAPOLSA Early Grade Readers were original compositions by
first-language speakers of the seven indigenous Bantu languages currently
prescribed as media of initial literacy instruction in various regions of
Zambia. In preparing these texts for publication, CAPOLSA has mobilised the
expertise of UNZA and CDC linguists and Zambian language specialists, supported
by distinguished Zambian scholars working in the diaspora.
Prize-winning stories and poems
submitted to a national competition were selected for their excellence by a
panel of expert judges, comprising Zambian language specialists based at the
University of Zambia (UNZA) or the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum
Development Centre (CDC). The selected stories were then translated from one Zambian
language to another, and edited for child-friendliness and spelling by teams of
Zambian language specialists working in pairs, one of whom was an expert in the
language of original composition, while the other was an expert in the target
language of the translation.
The spelling adopted by CAPOLSA for
this first round of publication of Early Grade Readers was guided by
consultation with a select group of language experts convened in Lusaka by
CAPOLSA in 2011, including senior language scholars at the University of Zambia
(Prof Mubanga Kashoki, Dr Mildred Nkolola-Wakumelo, Mr Chishimba Nkosha),
language specialists at the CDC (Mr Bostor Mwendende, Ms Petronella Hachoona)
and distinguished Zambian language scholars working abroad (Prof Felix Banda, University
of the Western Cape, South Africa - UWC; Prof Lazarus Miti, Centre for the
Advanced Study of African Society, Cape Town - CASAS)
Origins
of the texts
The stories and poems featured in CAPOLSA’s Early grade
Readers originated from the Kalulu Story Writing Competition (see http://info.graphogame.com/blog),
which was an initiative of our partners, the grapholearning team based at the
University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. In order to capture stories from different
parts of the country embedded in different cultures, the competition was
advertised for several weeks in 2011 on national radio, TV and in the national
press, inviting people irrespective of their language and age to contribute.
More than 700 stories were received in the seven languages approved by the
national government (GRZ) as languages of instruction in the early grades
namely chiTonga, ciNyanja, iciBemba, kiKaonde, Lunda, Luvale and siLozi.
IciBemba had the largest number of entries (more than 300) followed by
ciNyanja, chiTonga, siLozi, kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale. All of the entries were
reviewed by an expert panel of adjudicators who recommended to CAPOLSA the best
story and poem in each of the named languages. Thirteen prizes in all were awarded
to the authors of the Best and Most Creative Stories and Poems, and one prize
was awarded to the author of the Best Illustrated Story, at a colourful
ceremony held in the grounds of Kaunda Square Basic School, Lusaka on 19
October 2011.
The
production process
The eight prize-winning stories and
poems in ciNyanja, iciBemba, chiTonga and siLozi (the most widely used Zambian
languages of initial literacy instruction) were selected for inclusion in
CAPOLSA’s first phase of publication of Early Grade Readers. Two texts
originally written in each of those four languages were translated into the
other three languages by language specialists. This was in order to give a
chance to all children whose medium of instruction is one of the four languages
to access stories that were originally written by authors from regions of
Zambia other than their own. Thus each language version contains the same two
stories and poems, with the same illustrations.
As explained elsewhere on this
website, CAPOLSA was prompted to look systematically into the spelling system
(orthography) of the Zambian languages due to the many inconsistencies that
were displayed in several books previously published in those languages. The
orthographic guidelines agreed at CAPOLSA’s Orthographic harmonization workshop
in August 2012 (see item 2 below) were then applied to the texts submitted to
Maiden Publishers for type-setting, illustration and printing. The publishing
house worked closely with CAPOLSA on the distribution of texts across a lower
(Grades 1&2) and higher (Grades 3&4) level as well as on the location,
character and quality of the illustrations, and the selection of fonts. The
first consignment of published booklets were delivered to CAPOLSA in September
2013, and presented to CAPOLSA’s multisectoral Advisory Board at its meeting
that month. A launching ceremony is planned for early in 2014.
Further development of child-friendly reading materials for Early Grade literacy promotion
Stories and poems in kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale
All
the eight titles published in the first set of Early Grade Readers have since
been translated into kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale and those versions have been
compiled into six more booklets (two in each language) that are camera-ready
for publication. In addition, editorial work at CAPOLSA has focused on the
stories and poems composed in kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale that were awarded
prizes in the Kalulu competition. These texts have also been refined and
shortened to make them suitable for young readers, and then translated into the
other two languages by the specialists, and their spelling standardised in
accordance with a simplified and easy to learn orthography. There is thus a
total of 15 of these stories and poems in store awaiting publication.
This
project is designed to support the promotion of children’s cognitive
development in Zambia’s multilingual society, and to reduce the sensitivities
to linguistic differences that may occur in cases of children moving to different
regions. The goal is to generate interesting reading materials originating from
different regions, composed in such a way as to enable children to read text
not only in their principal language or mother tongue, but also in the other
languages without need for translation. A workshop was convened by CAPOLSA in
May 2013 to move the project forward. The main objective was to make a
compilation of reading materials sharing over 70% of vocabulary from some
Zambian languages. The resource persons invited for the workshop came from
different backgrounds and included indigenous speakers of: ciNyanja, iciBemba
and chiTonga. The workshop generated lists of common vowels, consonants,
syllables and core vocabulary words shared across the three languages, as well
as a total of 48 stories. It is anticipated that these outputs will be used for
the further development of instructional materials via GraphoGame and/or
digital tablets to be distributed across most of Zambia’s government schools in
the next few years.
Writers'
Workshops:
Building on CAPOLSA’s experience in
Phase 1 with the Kalulu Story-writing competition, with the translation of
prize-winning entries from one Zambian language to another, and with their
editorial refinement for publication as resources for Early Grade readers, a
series of writers’ workshops has been initiated. The workshops are intended to
enhance the awareness and relevant skills of promising writers by exposing them
to examples of highly rated children’s literature in English and Zambian
languages, and guided discussion of writing principles and techniques that may
be useful to them for further creative writing of child-friendly literature in
the Zambian languages.
Preparation of the Workshops was
guided by Prof Robert Cancel, a distinguished researcher of African traditional
and contemporary narrative practices with long experience in Zambia, who was
attached in 2012-13 to the UNZA Department of Literature and Languages as a
Visiting Fullbright Professor. Ms Mulenga Kapwepwe, Chairman of the Zambia
National Arts Council and Mr Gankhanani Moyo, a Lecturer in the UNZA Department
of Literature and Languages assumed overall coordinating responsibility for the
workshop series and met over a number of weeks with resource persons recruited
to lead each workshop depending on their particular linguistic expertise.
CAPOLSA corresponded with writers awarded prizes or certificates of excellence
in the Kalulu Story-writing competition and some other candidates recommended
by the expert resource persons, and handled the logistical arrangements for the
workshops.
The first workshop on Bemba language
writing was held in the conference room of the School of Veterinary Medicine on
the Great East Road campus of UNZA from 12-14 June 2013, under the leadership
of Ms Eunice Mukonde-Mulenga, Lecturer in the Department of Literature &
Languages. The second on Nyanja writing was held at the same venue from 17-19
July 2013, under the leadership of Ms Naomi Njobvu, also a Lecturer in the
Department of Literature & Languages. The workshops were
generally deemed successful by the 10-15 writers who attended each, and by the
slate of creative writing and child development experts who joined in.
Discussion at each workshop was conducted almost entirely in the medium of the
language for which participants were preparing to compose child-friendly
literature, and a small panel of children enrolled in Early Grades of a local
primary school were invited on the last day of each workshop to attend and read
aloud some of the stories that had been generated.
Translation
and editing
Stories in kiKaonde, Lunda and
Luvale. The 8 stories published by CAPOLSA
in iciBemba, ciNyanja, chiTonga and siLozi have since been translated into
kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale. In addition the 5 prize winning entries in
kiKaonde, Lunda and Luvale to the 2011 Kalulu Storywriting Competition have
been cross-translated among those three languages. These stories have all been
edited for length and content, and study questions have been prepared. What remains
is a final review for spelling in accordance with CAPOLSA orthography, plus
translation of the stories and poems in those languages into the other 4
languages: iciBemba, ciNyanja, chiTonga and siLozi.
Funds permitting, CAPOLSA plans to
conduct additional Writers Workshops in other Zambian languages during 2014.
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