Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
20 January, 2016
Roger Barnard, PhD
Associate Professor
Applied Linguistics
The University of Waikato
Private Bag 3105
Hamilton, New Zealand
Telephone +64-7-838 4466
ext. 6691
Email [email protected]
To whom it may concern
The Startinz Programme
This programme is intended to redress what is seen as a high degree of illiteracy among the school
population of New Zealand by improving students’ comprehension and composition of written
texts in an easy and comprehensible way, primarily by the systematic use of colour coding.
My experience of education in this country leads me to agree that the problem of illiteracy (in terms
of an explicit knowledge of the grammar of English) prevails in our educational system from
primary schools to university study, and even New Zealand teachers lack such explicit knowledge.
It is also the case that the same is true for many school learners for whom English is an Additional
Language.
The cause of this situation lies in the neglect of an explicit focus on grammar in the teaching of
English as both a first and a second language. It has been argued that ‘native speakers’ of English
do not need to be taught the grammatical features of their language (i.e., the systematic patterns of
morphology, syntax, phonology, etc.) because they can implicitly acquire these through consistent
exposure over many years; it has also been argued that learners of English as a second language
should be taught to communicate before they learn the grammatical foundations of English. The
consequence of such beliefs and theories is that students are unable to analyse the constituents of
sentences they read, and thus find it difficult to accurately compose texts of their own.
I believe that even young children are capable of understanding abstract concepts such as
grammatical terminology if they are presented in a comprehensible manner. Therefore, I can agree
that a programme such as Startinz could well be appropriate to develop children’s explicit
understanding of basic grammatical terms, which in turn could lead into a greater awareness of how
our language works, and in what ways it differs from (and is similar to) other languages. The
fundamental principle of teaching children to identify word classes through colours is intuitively
viable, and initial piloting has tended to confirm its effectiveness. The next step in the programme is to
develop an APP applying the Startinz colour-coding for the Self-paced eLearning Market.
Therefore, I recommend this programme to all who are interested in enhancing the literacy
development of students in New Zealand.
