Children learning to read on their own: Preliminary findings from a ‘Stand Alone’ SOLE in

Pune, India

Suneeta KulkarniSOLEs & SOMEs, Pune, India

Sugata Mitra ECLS, Newcastle University, UK

Sumantra RoySERSC Pvt. Ltd., Kolkata, India

Abstract:The paper provides the context of ‘stand alone’ SOLEs that operate with minimal resources outside of formal educational organizations to address the need for development of basic reading fluency and comprehension skills in English. It describes insights emerging from the earliest attempts and froman ongoing study of the process by which children aged 8 to 14,studying in Marathi medium schools from an urban slum in Pune, Maharashtra, India begin to acquire English reading fluency andcomprehension skills in a self organized learning environment with minimal adult intervention over a period of 6 months. Results suggest that children starting out at a near zero starting point, can, over an average of 22 sessions of 90 minutes each, develop adequate familiarity with the computer tobe able to use software, weblinks and specially loaded games todevelop a working vocabulary of over 50 words. Correlation of scores on investigator constructed tests of reading comprehension to number of sessions participated in at the SOLEis significant. Other issues that affect children’s access to these resources and their implications for further development of reading skills in English are discussed.

Key words: self organized learning environments, reading fluency & comprehension, children and acquisition of reading comprehension skills

BACKGROUND

Reading Fluency & Comprehension

Reading fluency and comprehension has been acknowledged as a key foundation stone on which almost all later academic (cognitive and

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language) success depends. The ability to read and comprehend what is read is fundamental to being able to gather information, infer from it, analyze and synthesize it, and use it to arrive at informed decisions as well as share one’s original thoughts and ideas. In the absence of this basic skill, children remain incapable of accessing and understanding information, not only from technological resources such as the internet, but even from their immediate environment. Hence, it is not surprising that a great deal of effort the world overhas been aimed at ensuring that children develop reading fluency related competencies. It is also one of the primary concerns addressedin initiatives based on Mitra’s self organized learning environments. Current data from the Annual Status of Education Report vividly pointsto the growing crisis across India with 58.3 % children, enrolled in government schools in Grade 5, being unable to read and understand text expected as competency level for Grade 2. Some of the other findings reported in ASER 2012 are also directly pertinent to the present study including the data indicating that although over 96% children are enrolled in school, they have difficulties reading even in the medium of instruction and rely heavily on private tuitions to get by.

Second Language Acquisition

Acquiring reading fluency, that too in a second or even third languagebecomes an even more challenging proposition. Many different formal aswell as informal strategies and approaches to help acquire these have been developed, including ‘immersion’ and modeling. Yet, literature related to language acquisition seems to suggest that it would take many years for a new learner, even within contexts where they were being specifically ’taught’ using best practices, to become fluent in that language. (Collier, 1995) (Hahta, Butler & Witt, 2000).

Eaton (2011), Penner-Wilger (2008), Clark, (2000), and Archibald, Roy,Harmel, Jesney, Dewey, Moisik, et al (2006) point out that language learning is a complex process and how quickly a person becomes fluent with it depends on a variety of factors including the age at which it is being learned, the native language of the learner, the medium of instruction, the predominant language of the social environment in which they function, the number of hours actively spent learning that language, availability of teaching to facilitate the learning process,and the need to use that language in their day to day environment.

Reading Fluency in a Second Language in Disadvantaged Settings

Yet the concern is of a different nature in remote settings where facilities and resources do not exist. If children in these disadvantaged settings are to ‘not be left behind’, and, indeed, are to catch up with children who do have access to the best teaching-learning situations that exist, the regular/traditional school system

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is not really viable. Strategies that function outside the box are theneed of the hour (Mitra, Dangwal, & Thadani 2008).

It is in this context that the issue of children’s reading skills has been addressed within the self organized learning environments approach. The early Hole-in-the-Wall experiments (Mitra, Dangwal, Chatterjee, Jha, Bisht and Kapur, 2005) firmly established children’s capacity to learn to use computers on their own with minimal or no adult intervention. However, alongside the resounding success of the Hole-in-the-Wall initiative in different geographical, language, even national regions; there arose the question of applying these ideas to facilitate learning in curricular areas as well. It was with this goalin mind that Mitra undertook the next phase of his work, known as SOLE[Self Organized Learning Environment]. It evolved into the SOLE approach that is now being used by many teachers & schools across the world. (Mitra & Quiroga, 2012)

However, the earliest efforts in this direction were carried out in Hyderabad in private schools for the poor offering education in the English medium [and subsequently in Sindhudurg in a Marathi medium school] to children from, and in, disadvantaged settings. These locations epitomized what Mitra refers to as “places in the world where good teachers do not or cannot go”. Free, open, regular and publicly visible access to the internet in specially designed environments to facilitate group work, were to be the hall marks of the SOLEs. What was belied in the course of the Orient Global Education Fund [OGEF] Newcastle University study in Hyderabad (Kulkarni & Mitra, 2010) was free and open access. The schools exercised a great deal of control and children typically did not get access to the computers. The other unexpected obstacle was the lack ofreading fluency and comprehension skills in English despite the proclaimed medium of instruction.

The conclusions arrived at based on the Hyderabad experiences were that the preconditions for using the SOLE approach were:

Reading comprehension skills in English Adequate & free access to the computer & internet School / Organizational willingness to use such an approach

The experience with the SOLEs in Hyderabad and Shirgaon underlined theimportance of access and indicated that this was often difficult to achieve in the context of schools that typically operated in an authoritarian manner and possibly felt intimidated by this new approach. One of the key findings of the OGEF study was that children were unable to use search engines due to the lack of fluency in English. Nor were adequate amounts of information available on the internet in regional Indian languages. So attempts to have SOLE sessions along the same lines as those that have worked so effectivelyin the UK and other places were largely unsuccessful. It was in this

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context that the development of reading skills in ‘stand alone’ SOLEs was studied.

‘Stand Alone’ SOLEs

These experiments have been conducted on a small scale in disadvantaged settings in both rural and urban slum areas over the past couple of years. There is another critical factor distinguishing them from SOLE related initiatives that have been tried out in other parts of the world. Hence, they are referred to as 'stand alone' SOLEs. A 'stand alone SOLE', implies a SOLE, typically in one tiny room, unconnected to any centre or school. It implies that the children have no specific support or resources other than the 2/3 computers with internet connectivity provided in the SOLE. A coordinator is around to open and close the SOLE and keep track of which children come, and to ensure that there are no 'fights'. However, keeping in mind the reality of the situation most such children function in and what can be made available to them, there is deliberately no specific intervention. The coordinators, themselves, have limited computer and English skills. These SOLEs do not use mediated sessions, i.e. interactions with emediators via the ‘Granny Cloud’ [otherwise known as the SOMEs or Self Organized Mediation Environments], so as to rule out the impact of a ‘trained’ or fluent English mediator.

The first ‘stand alone’ SOLE was set up in 2010 at Talere, a rural area with relatively good connectivity in Sindhudurg, Maharashtra,. The focus was on studying whether the children could teach themselves English. English was part of the school curriculum as the third language. The medium of instruction was Marathi, the regional languageof that area, with Hindi [the national language being taught as the second language]. The scripts of Marathi and English are different. The baseline recorded on video for almost every child studied at Talere indicated that reading and comprehension skills in English were

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almost completely absent. Children recognized the alphabet and the occasional word. Some of the older children appeared to be able to read simple stories. [e.g. Grade 8 children reading Grade 1 books]. However, even these were not comprehended and could not be explained, not even in their mother tongue.

The conclusions of the Talere SOLE experience were: ‘Independent’ organizations that genuinely want to try out the approach do ensure ‘free & adequate’ access.

Games are always popular amongst the children, yet children typically use trial and error as a strategy so there is 'no need' to read or understand instructions even if they are in English, nor is there any other motivation or parental encouragement to learn English since it does not in anyway impact their ongoing life at home or at school.

Access alone is not enough to bring about a change in reading skills.

Present Study

As the next step, yet another experiment in the context of a ‘stand alone semi-structured’ SOLE was devised to study how children might teach themselves to read and understand English. The terms ‘semi-structured’ and ‘self-organized’ might seem contradictory. Building onthe findings of the earlier efforts, this experiment sought to hold onto the principle of self-organization, while introducing a minimal amount of structure into the programme so as to encourage children to explore activities that would require an understanding of English. Thepreliminary findings from this study are being reported in this paper.

Research Questions

The emerging research questions were: Can children in a disadvantaged setting, with near zero prior knowledge of English, 'teach' themselves to read and understand English?

What is the process by which the children gain their understandingof English?

METHODOLOGY

The process involved in attempting to answer the research questions gradually evolved in the fluid nature that is the hallmark of the ‘stand alone’ SOLE settings. A variety of different strategies and techniques had to be used over a 6-month period to gauge what the children had learned and how they had learned it.

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The SOLE Location

As has been established by Mitra (2009) earlier on, remoteness is not determined by geographical location alone, but in substantial measure by access to material as well as non-material resources at home and school. For example, settings can be classified as remote based on theabsence of trained teachers, library or similar facilities in the school, absence of literate parents, and absence of basic infra-structural aspects such as washrooms, drinking water and so on. All these are characteristics that apply to the Gosavi vasti SOLE.

The Gosavi Vasti ALC SOLE is located in a room in the urban slum adjacent to the Vetal Baba Mandir in the Karvenagar area of Pune. It is on the fringe of several small housing societies. Another slum [Chavan vasti] is nearby though there is a fair amount of conflict between the two ‘communities’. These slums house families that are primarily employed as ‘rickshawallas’, domestic help, newspaper & milkvendors, as well as ‘rag-pickers’. The area is generally ‘rough’, withsquabbles and verbal abuse heard frequently as one walks around the area. Playing cards, drinking is also noticeable amongst the residentsjust outside the ‘houses’ that have rough flooring and tin roofs.

The slum room in which the SOLE is housed is small [10 x 12 feet] but can house 2 computers, and has 2 small windows, tin roofing and a rough, uneven floor.

Key Characteristics of the Children accessing the ‘stand alone’ SOME

The children who come to the Gosavi Vasti SOLE live in the neighbouring urban slum. They range in age from 8 to 14 and typically attend the SOLE as a heterogenous, mixed age group.

The children are typically aggressive, and quick to hit out at each other in the face of even mild conflicts. Although the children are street smart and savvy, they do not have even ‘readiness for learning skills’. The opportunity for the children to ‘play’ on the computer isattractive to parents and children alike given the very limited resources at home, and at school.

The challenge posed by their inability to read and comprehend goes beyond English. The families come from a primarily migrant community and speak a dialect that is a mixture of Gujarati, Marathi & Hindi. Most of the children are incapable of reading and comprehending Marathi even though it is the medium of instruction for almost all of them. This is particularly true if it involves reading a ‘long’ passage.

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Earliest observations indicated that some of the children could not recognize the English alphabet easily, and typically were able to identify a few words such as cat, dog, ball; but not much more. Hence, forall practical purposes, the children could be classified as illiterateas far as the English language is concerned.

It is a fluid group, dependant on the children choosing [or being allowed by parents] to come, given that there is a nominal cost involved in availing of this facility. The children go to municipal schools that are equipped with computers. Although children had seen computers in the school laboratory and a few had occasionally used a computer under supervision; they had not handled these independently. The prior familiarity with computers is, therefore, nominal.

Despite being in the midst of an urban setting with vast amounts of high tech and academic resources [Pune is considered the educational and cultural capital of India catering to students from India and other foreign counties through institutions offering programs from varied disciplines], the Gosvi Vasti SOLE remains essentially uninfluenced and away from these facilities. This bears out Mitra’s (2009) position that there will always be places in the world where good teachers/schools will not or cannot go. The latest ASER 2012 report highlights the decreasing levels of reading skills in many areas across India. The situation in the Gosavi vasti area is similar to that portrayed in the report.

SOLE approach and modifications

Given the experiences in Hyderabad, and Sindhudurg, the challenge in the Gosavi vasti SOLE was to hold on to the basic principles of self organization with free access, and minimal intervention, yet create tasks andopportunities for activities that would involve the children having to‘use’ English. The persuasion to explore a variety of selected sites and activities was in keeping with the idea that while children may demonstrate an initial reluctance to try out new things they often begin to like it after a bit. This formed the basis for the minimally structured part of the intervention

Sessions were typically of 90 minutes duration, 3times a week. In the absence of readiness to learn skills, a minimal amount of structure was introduced into the programme. Children were encouraged to exploreanything they wished from a number of recommended sites during the first 30 minutes. This ‘structured’ part involved using online resources, previously downloaded material including games, stories or songs, from ‘half a dozen’ recommended sites, [viz. British Council Learn English – Kids / Genki English / Starfall / BBC - Cebeebies / Dream English / SEBRAN / Clifford]. These were opened up in separate tabs ahead of the children’s arrival in the SOLE to encourage their choosing from these sites. A special folder containing downloaded

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songs from youtube and stories from PRATHAM, and other sites were alsosaved on the desktop to facilitate access. In the remaining one-hour, they could access whatever they wished to on the computer & internet.

The selection of the recommended sites and downloaded ‘playable offline’ games was determined by their requirement of pre-reading skills such as pattern recognition, brevity of instructions, simplicity of tasks and the variety of activities available on the site.

The placement of the ‘semi-structured’ time was a critical aspect of the intervention. Initial observations showed that placing it at the end of the session did not work, since children found it difficult to switch from the 2-3 games they had become familiar with [e.g. Around the world in 80 days - a ‘match 3’ type game and jigsaw puzzles] to try anything else out.

Material and resources such as selected songs and stories from youtube, PRATHAM, as well as vocabulary related games of the ‘Hidden object’ variety continued to be downloaded for their use, if they so chose, during the remaining one-hour. These were deliberately saved onthe desktop to facilitate access. Occasionally a question was set to expose them to idea of searching for information. These were often simple, factual information based questions. Children were sporadically given worksheets to take home and complete, with or without help. ‘Smiley stickers’ were used partly to note attendance and partly to reinforce non-aggressive behavior. A one point rule - ‘no hitting’ was implemented.

However, it was not always the same group of children. Children joinedand left the SOLE as they chose. Some children dropped out completely,others returned after a gap. At any given session, the group was heterogenous not only in terms of age, but also of background, school experiences, and the amount of time and specific activities they have engaged in the SOLE. Not all the children joined the SOLE at the same time, nor did they all have similar starting points, creating yet other challenges in comparing their achievements. The assimilation of new children at different points in time added another dimension to the interaction that took place in the SOLE.

Assessment Of Reading Comprehension

While an attempt was made to use some formal testing to assess changesin children’s reading skills, much of the data gathered involved fieldobservations including video documentation.

This decision was made in the face of available and existing standardized tests of reading fluency and comprehension such as DIBELS(Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), EGRA (Early Grade

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Reading Assessment), and PAST (Phonological Awareness Skills Test). Tests such as these assess English reading fluency skills that are expected to be in place for children as young as kindergarten age. Each of these tests have a slightly varied emphasis. DIBELS (https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures/orf.php) classifies reading fluency and comprehension skills under word use fluency, initial soundfluency, nonsense word fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, letter naming fluency, while PAST (http://msjocelynspeech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/individual-PAST-assessment-form.pdf) (http://www.esu11.k12.ne.us/Docs/fallconf2009/Jodi_Nelson_PAST.pdf) and PAT 2 (http://www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?Itemid=10489) attempt to reach even more basic pre-reading skills to assess a child’s understanding of the spoken word, beginning and end sounds, rhyming words and so on.

Yet even PAST is unusable in the context of the stand alone soles. Among the reasons for this unsuitability are the common challenges that are and will continue to exist in these remote settings for a long time to come. These standardized tests have been developed for children coming from English speaking environments at least in their school settings. These would typically be children who have English astheir native language and / or their medium of instruction, and quite possibly a substantial part of their social environment.

As with other standardized tests, irrespective of whether they are administered individually or in groups, there is the logical assumption that the test can be administered in relatively undisturbed, quiet surroundings. On all these counts, these standardized tests become unsuitable for use in the remote setting stand alone soles.

Hence, it became necessary to work out alternate strategies, adequately sensitive to assess the reading skills being acquired. Reading fluency and comprehension was assessed in different ways at different times, depending on what was feasible. The lack of structured testing at uniform & specific intervals is as much due to the fluidity of the group [affecting which children were available at what point], as it is to the setting in which the assessment has to becarried out. Qualitative data was gathered to supplement and enhance the understanding of the children’s efforts to read.

Observations of Spontaneous ‘reading’: These were made as children played games, listened to songs and stories during the course of routine activities at the centre.

Observations of Responses to Individual reading tasks: Children were asked toread from specific printed out passages and explain what they had read. They were given time to read ‘silently’ by themselves, before

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attempting to read out the passage. Where possible, these attempts at reading were videotaped.

Observations of Group reading tasks: Groups of children were requested to read selected passages from sites such as Super Teacher Worksheets (www.superteacherworksheets.com) directly from the computer screen. The passages were the same as used for individual reading activities.

Observations of Responses to other specific tasks: Additional appraisals of changes in their reading comprehensiony were also done through varied tasks. Worksheets: The sites used for worksheets were included: www.superteacherworksheets.com, http://www.funenglishgames.com, http://www.anglomaniacy.pl, etc.Free lists: This involved writing down English words recalled spontaneously Search Activity: This usually involved setting factual, specific information based questions for which the children were asked to find the answer.

‘Formal’ testing: This involved the administration of specially constructed tests to assess the degree of comprehension & recall of English words.

Development of Tool:

3 'tests' were constructed each with 2 forms of similar levels of difficulty. The pool for the words used in the tests was the same for both forms. The words that had come up in the ‘free’ lists made by 5-6of the children who were ‘regulars’ [i.e. They had been coming to the SOLE for 3-4 months] and, after 1 month of playing ‘hidden object games’.

RFC Test 1: Picture to English Word & Meaning - Basic - Form A & B. This involved recall of both English & regional language words.The images used in RFC Test 1 were of objects that would be familiar to them from the sites they had been accessing

2. RFC Test 2: Word in English to meaning [in Marathi or other regional language] [Read & Recognize]

RFC Test 3: Word in Marathi to English word [Recall]

Test Administration: Two forms were constructed for each of these tests to take care of the 'cheating' factor. The setting does not allow for formal seating where children can work individually, undisturbed and quietly. There is, quite naturally, a tendency to lookat each other’s work while writing their own responses. While this does not matter during regular activities, and is indeed, actively encouraged, since it facilitates learning; the tests had been designedto assess the extent to which each individual child had progressed.

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With 2 forms it was possible to give children alternate forms to answer even as they sat next to each other.

Additionally, even regular children are not always available. Hence the test was administered individually over a one-month period to children who were regular ‘old-timers’ [those who had been coming to the SOLE from the beginning], as well as to those who were new registrations. 2 of the children who had dropped out for family reasons after 4-5 months were specifically invited to take the test tohelp understand what impact the sessions at the SOLE might have had ontheir reading fluency. At time of testing on the specially designed RFC tests the children had been playing the hidden object games for around 2 months.

The analysis, therefore, attempted to correlate the number of times the children had come to the SOLE’ with their ‘test scores’. The observations were used to help understand the process by which these gains in reading comprehension were being made.

RESULTS

The changes in the children’s understanding of English are clearly observable. While it may not be as fast as one might hope, and it may still be quite a while before any of them are able to engage in conversation or follow long texts using English; access to the internet and specific sites that ‘require’ some understanding of the language has begun to make an impact. The gradual increase in their understanding was visible even in what activities they chose at different stages. SEBRAN, primarily involving alphabet recognition & simple vocabulary games was most used in the first few weeks and then again when new children joined the SOLE. This was followed by recognition and imitation of words that come up frequently in popular songs, stories and games on the recommended sites [British Council Learn English Kids and the song ‘Chocolate Cake’ being the most outstanding example]. They showed off their comprehension of words in ‘free recall’ along with meanings. Free recall also demonstrated theirgrasp of pronunciation, while responses on tests indicated the gradually increasing ability to ‘spell’ [or attempt to write] the wordin English rather than using the devanagiri script to write the English word as had been observed at the beginning, and during the ‘Free lists’ activities.

Summary of the children’s capacities at starting point

The children faced literacy related challenges even as far as their medium of instruction went.

Readiness-to-learn skills were also at a minimum. Unused to such facilities and resources, they initially showed enthusiasm coupled

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with aggression manifested in hitting, yelling and abusive language to ensure retaining control of the mouse and / or keyboard.

They had seen, and a couple of the older ones had touched, under ateacher’s supervision, the computers in school. This involved taking turns with the other children in their school class and following specific instructions to press specific keys. Most of the younger children had only seen the computer being used by the teacher. Other than 2 exceptions, none of them had independently handled a computer before.

Most were familiar with the alphabet, although they had to search hard to find the letters on the keyboard.

They recognized a few words typically associated with the first few letters of the alphabet [e.g. Ball, cat, dog]

They were unable to read a full sentence in english even at grade 1 level they were not able to write their own names in english.

Strategies used in the process of developing reading fluency skills

The children engaged in ‘semi-structured’ activity which involved playing games / listening to songs / stories from the recommended sites. Over a period of 2-3 months, British Council Learn English Kidsemerged as the most popular site with some songs and games being particularly popular, [e.g. Songs - Chocolate Cake / Brush Bus / From the Sun to the Stars and from the Games - Haunted House / The Princess& the Dragon / Run Santa Run] even to the extent that these were used by the ‘old timers’ to initiate ‘newcomers into the activities at the centre. Children were observed drawing connections between these and what they experienced in their daily lives at home or at school. Choice was definitely exercised by the children, as a lot of specific downloaded material, as well as recommended sites went unused or perfunctorily explored and then dismissed.

The children found the worksheets attractive and fun and asked for these spontaneously. Yet the need to be ‘right’ was strongly experienced and if possible these were done with each other’s help or even outside help, resulting in near accurate answers to every item. On the few occasions that the worksheets were completed individually, the story was completely different, with most children not having evena clue about what they were expected to do. But the eagerness to try was clearly evident despite it being an ‘academic’ task.

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Example of initial independent work Example of initial work with grouphelp

5-6 months into the setting up of the SOLE several strategies were observable depending on the child or familiarity with the activity being engaged in.

Trial and error with typically limited exploration Staying with a game/activity found by one of the children till they tire of it

Repetition [practice] by returning to an ‘attractive’ activity/ task / song/ story / game and gaining familiarity with key words that facilitated playing that game or accessing that activity. [e.g. Click, next, start, loading, continue]

Collaboration & cooperation manifested in helping another child accomplish an activity they are engaged in, even when it was not of interest to them. This was not always due to altruism, since ‘helping’ would speed up completion of the task and bring on theirturn faster. However, collaboration was also observed at other times, even when they themselves had access to the controls on theother computer. Help offered was often in response to requests from another child Even though conflict and fights continue to remain in evidence, collaboration was visible once the realizationset in that it was easier to figure out a game or other activity together. Children could be seen, instructing other children on what to do and frequently pulling the controls out of their hands,and on occasion actively helping by pointing out a ‘hidden object’or telling each other the meaning so that the search was facilitated. Similar cooperation was also observable in playing other games whether it was to key in the player’s name or to help figure out what needed to be done to get to another level.

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Vicarious learning based on observations of other children playing. This enabled them to move ahead with the activity at a much faster pace.

Risk taking and exploration by a few of the more adventuresome children.

Initiating newcomers, albeit impatiently, by starting up SEBRAN oraccessing songs they were fond of and showing the newcomers how touse these programmes.

Participation in simple search activities occasionally led to accidental discoveries and a beginning idea of the concept of a ‘key word’.

‘Free time – Free choice’ was typically manifested in games being played on sites like My Play City that pop up even when no specific search has been engaged in. In combination with specifically set search activities, the children attempted to access youtube for songs of Marathi or Hindi films. This has extended to searching for clips and games based on their favouriteTV characters like ‘Chhota Bheem’.

A lot of this process was tempered by their previous school experiences and how they are expected to approach school-work and demonstrate ‘achievement’. They showed anxiety about the possibility of being ‘wrong’ and relied on rote and imitation to get by wherever possible.

Observed Progress

The first signs of improvement in reading comprehension skills were visible within a few days of the children accessing SOLE resources. From learning to use the keyboard [and finding the alphabet and other keys they needed], they moved to being able to access the specific songs, stories and games they liked. The popularity of certain songs and games was quite clearly observable. For example, to begin with it was Chocolate Cake, I Spy, and Paint. Subsequently they moved on to ‘Hidden Object’ games with Gardenscapes Mansion Makeover, and Big CityAdventure - London emerging as favourites. As weeks and months went by, they became more confident and open to trying out specifically settasks, such as searching for specific information, sharing words they had learned and eagerly taking a ‘test’.

The milestones in this journey are summarized ahead.

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Playing downloaded games on SEBRAN: This was a difficult task to beginwith and most children played with the game that involved searchingfor alphabets. This was as far as it went during the first few days inMay 2012. Indications that the children had begun to pick up someEnglish vocabulary was when they moved to playing games involving wordand picture matching.

Exploration of online recommended sites: The very first indicatorsthat the children had picked up some English vocabulary was when theymoved from SEBRAN games and began singing along with songs. Thesinging was enthusiastic and spontaneous and an anticipation of ‘whatcomes next’ was observed. [June 2012]

Among the first words to be picked up through the earliest activities and games on SEBRAN and other sites were words related to accessing games. This was then used to access other games, stories and songs on other sites.

Reading as a group: This involved reading from a given passage, afterwhich they were to give the answers to the questions that followed thepassage/short story. Even with the one and only English medium childin the group, they were unable to answer all the questions. The otherchildren attempted some imitation of this child who tookresponsibility for both reading and answering. When asked to identifywords they recognized, the other children were able to identify 3-4words [dog / ball / red] [June 2012].

Worksheets were also used from the beginning. These were downloadedfrom sites such as ‘Super Teacher’ Anglomaniacy’, Learn English etc.However, this was not particularly effective. While some of thechildren could handle activities like ‘mazes’ or identifying the ‘oddone out’, even the single child, who went to an English medium schoolwas unable to understand and act on simple instruction on theworksheet [e.g. Identifying and writing down the ‘verb’]. Most of thechildren were able to ‘fill in the blank’ where a picture accompaniedthe options and they could help each other. However, the worksheetswere popular and children asked for these on their own and helped eachother fill them out as best they could. [June – July 2012].

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Developing Vocabulary - Nouns: There was substantial initialreluctance to try and read game instructions. It is likely that thetask seemed insurmountable and they tended to skip this part or giveup on playing games like ‘Home Sweet Home’ which could not be playedwithout reading and understanding the instructions. [July 2012]However, they took to Hidden Object games enthusiastically since itinvolved taking on one word, typically the name of an object, at atime. [August 2012]. However, the transfer of this vocabulary to othergames and activities is observable with even the youngest and‘slowest’ being able to name 30-35 words in a colouring book broughtin by children [January 2013]. The hesitation related to readingcomplete sentences or an entire passage even if it is short,continues. However, they attempt to do so if specifically requested.

Making ‘Free’ Word Lists: By August 2012, six of the children who hadbeen coming to the ALC SOLE from May/June 2012 were willing to trymaking a list of words they now knew. The others said they didn't knowany. What that actually meant was that there was no spontaneous recallthough observations suggested that they recognized and understood themeaning of several words from within the games. This was manifested intheir ability to tell the meaning of the word if asked, as well asobserved in terms of their ability to act upon it appropriately (e.g.Click / Loading / Next / Start]. Additionally specific words fromspecific songs /stories / games were recognized and repeated,particularly from songs like Chocolate Cake [e.g. Tummy/black currant/juice /], Incy Wincy Spider [e.g. up/down/ hot/cold / rain], TwinkleTwinkle [e.g. Star] or games/stories like weather maze [e.g.Windy/rainy/snowy], Paint [basic colours] [July - end August 2012]

Individual reading from given passages: An attempt was made to haveReading Fluency and Comprehension scores for ‘new’ children as theytook admission to the ALC SOLE. These new children were essentially atthe same starting point where the old timers had been in May 2012 andwere not able to recognize more than a word or two from the passagesgiven to them. The passages were the same as had been given to theearliest group of children when they first started coming to the SOLE.[Beginning Sept 2012]

‘Formal’ tests: 15 children took all 3 of the specially constructedRFC tests, and it is their scores that have been analysed. Only 1 ofthese 15 children [Dhiraj] attended an English medium school.

The range of scores on Test 1 [Picture to word in English] was quite large with the lowest score being 2 and the highest score being 38 [maximum score 40]. The highest score was, understandably, achieved bythe lone child who attended an English medium school. M = 13.83, SD = 9.92.

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However, the correlation between the number of times a child has accessed the ALC SOLE and their scores on RFC Test 1 is clearly visible in Graph 1.

Basvaraj

Darshana

Dhiraj

Divya

Manasi

Mayuri Neha

Nikita

Priyanka

Shivkumar

Supriya

Sweety

Vaishnavi J

Vaishnavi

Vighnesh

0

2040

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Correspondence of Sessions to Test1 Scores

Series1Series2

Children

Sessions & Scores

Graph 1: Correspondence between number of sessions attended to scores Test 1: Picture to Word in English

Mean scores on Test 2 [English to Marathi] and Test 3 [Marathi to English] were 4.46 [Max Score 10] and 3.56 [Max Score 10] respectively. The sample size is small and hence the scores are only suggestive.

Although scores seem low overall, observations indicate that these probably do not reflect the real comprehension capacity of the children since it involved ‘writing’, that too in English. Children were observed saying the words aloud as they tried to answer the test (e.g. Basu saying ‘palette’ with the correct pronunciation in responseto the picture of a colour ‘palette’, but writing it as ‘platy’). Similarly, scores of some children like Supriya are relatively low because of her attempt to respond in English alone. A distinct ‘improvement is that for the first time she wrote her name, that too accurately, as well as the names for the words in the tests in Roman script rather than Devanagiri.

The kind of ‘errors’ made by the children were interesting and providegreater insight into what the children have picked up. Not only did most of the children attempt to answer using Roman script, but despitenot knowing the spellings, attempted to figure these out. So ‘roses’ became ‘rogs’, the pronunciation for some words were still a challengeand ‘tree’ got written as ‘trre’, ‘bucket’ became ‘bakt’. But the very fact that the there was a conscious attempt to not just identify the words in English, but write them out in English is indicative of big progress. The confirmation for this comes from the fact that several of the children also wrote out the pronunciation of the English word using the devanagiri script and these were accurate.

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Changes in behavior: The time taken to settle in and be able to usethe facilities in a more or less effective manner appears to beseveral months. Most of the children who have been coming to the GVALC SOLE from the beginning have settled down and are in a position to‘initiate’ new ones into what is being done, what has to be done, aswell as how to do it. Some of them almost seem to have a proprietaryinterest in the whole centre as they can be observed telling the newchildren what the set up is like and its possibilities. Yet thechildren continue to be relatively aggressive, even though, physicalhitting has reduced. Verbal fighting, complaining, and occasionaljostling each other is still present. Skills related to readiness forlearning are gradually increasing. Most of the earliest ones have becomequite comfortable with handling the computer.

Making choices: the minimal structure introduced by way of recommendedsites still had a lot of scope for ‘choosing’ and children excercisedtheir right to do so. This was manifested in specific sites emergingas the most popular. Even within that, specific songs [people at work,brush bush, chocolate cake, activities [paint], and games [i spy, roadsafety run, run santa, run were preferred and accessed morefrequently. Choice was also visible as far as the ‘hidden object’games. Although there were over 10 of this category downloaded for thechildren, the favourites were and continue to be gardenscapes –mansion makeover, wizard’s pen, and big city adventure – london. Inthe entirely free time, a ‘match 3’ game [around the world in 80 days]continues to be very popular.

Songs seem to be the most popular during the semi-structured activity with indications that other activities start being explored once initial comfort is experienced. The self-organized approach continues to be observable in the way choices are implemented.

CONCLUSION

The data, considered in totality, indicates that the children are making progress in terms of learning English on their own, even thoughthis change may not be large/substantial enough to be visible on currently available tests of reading fluency and comprehension. The time they might take to develop adequate fluency, sufficient to allow for conversation, understanding and acting on instructions is quite likely to take several years.Some might therefore question whether this effort is worthwhile. But are we looking for just ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ type results, particularly this early in the learning phase? If we are aiming at understanding, there is real progress occurring here. It may take a while to show up in grades and examination marks. One might also question whether thereis a need to place such emphasis on these children being able to read and understand English, specially given the realities of their life.

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Yet it is precisely this reality that makes it imperative that they beprovided this opportunity.

A structured, intensive programme with an enlightened and trained, competent teacher would likely be more effective in such a short amount of time. Similarly using techniques like ‘immersion’ might bring about greater improvement in the same duration. Yet this what the children are not ever going to get in their present circumstances.Yet, as Mitra’s (2008 ) paper highlights, the solution to this situation is not in teacher training per se. Nor are infra-structural changes or other available resource likely to change anytime soon.

However, there is no point in denying that English reading competencies will open up many more doors than are currently availableto these children. This includes the entire range of possibilities from passing school tests based on genuine understanding rather than rote, to being able to search for information they or their family need to accomplish tasks as far ranging as completing home-work on their own, to applying for gas connections, ADHAR cards, opening bank accounts and so on. If one were to project into the future, this wouldopen the doors to higher education, and vocational training making it easier for them to bring about a significant change in their socio-economic status and environment with a potential corresponding impact on their health status as well. Enabling them to deal with a future wecan only imagine at this point may well be the real gain of the children’s participation in the SOLE.

And let’s consider the alternative. As the ASER 2012 report points outemphatically, there has been increasing enrollment in schools, but there has not been a corresponding increase in reading fluency levels.The ‘stand alone’ soles are aimed at children who fit this description– ‘in school but can’t read’.

Figuring out how to make this low cost, easy to access resource more effective and easily available to large numbers of school and non-school going children could likely be an effective strategy to combat growing concerns related to literacy.

If for no other reason, and despite the fact that there is only suggestive evidence available at the moment, we think it is worthwhilecontinuing such studies with a view to evolving a flexible pattern that can then be made available on a large scale to other children in other remote settings. If political will and effort were to be directed towards ensuring that adequate internet connectivity [bandwidth and speed] were made available for these children, we couldhope to see substantial change, over relatively short durations of times, at a far more modest financial cost than if we continue to try and tackle the problem with age old initiatives that have, thus far, not borne any fruit. At the bare minimum, making these facilities

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available in these kinds of remote settings will at least move towardsleveling the playing field for the children.

REFERENCES

Archibald, J., Roy, S., Harmel, S., Jesney, K., Dewey, E., Moisik, S., et al. (2006). A review of the literature on second language learning. Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/media/349348/litreview.pdf. [viewed 1 March 2013]

ASER (2013). Annual Status of Education (Rural) 2012. PRATHAM

Clark, B. A.. (2000). First- and Second-Language Acquisition in Early Childhood. Issues in Early Childhood Education: Curriculum, Teacher Education, & Dissemination of Information. Proceedings of the Lilian Katz Symposium Champaign, IL, November 5-7

Collier, V. P. (1995). Acquiring a second language for school : Directions in Language & Education. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Vol. 1, No. 4, Fall

Eaton, S.E. (2010). Global Trends in Language Learning in the Twenty-first Century. Calgary: Onate Press

Mitra, S., Dangwal, R., Chatterjee, S., Jha, S., Bisht, R. S. and Kapur, P. Acquisition of computing literacy on shared public computers: Children and the "hole in the wall" Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2005, 21(3), 407-426.

Mitra, S., Dangwal, R., Thadani, L. Effects of remoteness on the quality of education: A case study from North Indian schools Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2008, 24(2), 168-180

Mitra, S. (2009) Remote Presence: Technologies for ‘Beaming’ Teachers Where They Cannot Go Journal Of Emerging Technologies In Web Intelligence, Vol. 1, no. 1, August 2009, pp55-58

Kulkarni, S. & Mitra, S (2010). The use of self organizing systems of learning for improving the quality of schooling for children in remote areas. Unpublished Research Report, Education Fund of Orient Global, Newcastle University, UK.

Mitra, S., & Quiroga, M.. (2012). Children and the Internet – A Preliminary Study in Uruguay International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 15; August 2012

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Penner-Wilger, M. (2008). Reading Fluency: A Bridge from Decoding to Comprehension. Research Brief. AutoSkill International Inc

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