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| TV brings quantum leap for literacy with same language subtitling
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| Same-language subtitling on TV can help people improve their reading skills as they watch their favourite programmes on television. The idea is to get neo-literates to read, and deepen their skills by subtitling the lyrics of existing songs-based TV programming in the same language as the audio. While one-third of India’s population is fully literate, one-third is non-literate and one-third are not functionally literate. Thanks to the subtitling, neo-literates watching the songs on television subconsciously follow the text and sing along, so strengthening their reading skills as they enjoy the music. Same-language subtitling has been shown to strengthen grapheme-phoneme associations, which are weak in ‘early literate people’. Although such TV use to improve literacy was first proposed six years ago, it wasn’t until August 2002 that Dr Brij Kothari, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad’s Ravi J Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation and his team decided to go ahead with ‘Independence from Illiteracy through TV’, by putting “an old ICT to new ends”. The project was funded under a grant won in Development Marketplace 2002, the World Bank’s global innovation competition. Research in classroom, village and state levels has since consistently shown that reading ability improves steadily as a result of viewing film and folksong-based content with the addition of SLS. “What is perhaps more relevant to network acceptance of the idea is that surveys have found that over 99 per cent of viewers, semi-literate and literate alike, actually prefer song programming with SLS than without it,” says Kothari. Worth noting in reference to sustainability, it costs very little to implement the SLS scheme. Same-language subtitling integrates everyday reading-writing transactions into the lives of 500 million TV viewers in India at a cost of three paise (US$0.0065) per person per year, Kothari claims. Most excitingly, the possibility of replicating this inexpensive approach in India with different languages and in other countries is enormous. |
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