Learn English at SELI!

This year SELI had a beginning, low intermediate, and upper intermediate ESL class. Here the beginners are concentrating on a listening activity. The class members are from Côte d'Ivoire, Niger and Mali.

SELI's director is a U.S.-qualified ESL teacher, and instruction in English for speakers of other languages is an important part of its service.

During the coming term (September to December, 2013) SELI is also offering a beginning intensive course in workplace English for adults who have attained university degrees in another language, if there is sufficient enrollment. 

Young Voices 3.2

The June 2013 issue of Young Voices newsletter is out! You can now read more of our young authors' writing, and learn more of what's going on in the Seli River Writing Project. Great news!

Read all four pages of the newsletter by clicking on this link .

Five Writing Lessons: A New Take

SELI presented for a few hours at TISLL's (The Institute for Sierra Leonean Languages) Literacy Teacher/Facilitator Workshop, held Monday-Friday, May 27-31st in Freetown. The workshop trained people to teach literacy to nonliterate people in their mother tongue. Five different languages were represented.

On Wednesday, SELI introduced the idea that all classes are diverse: even in basic literacy classes there are always advanced learners that need to be challenged, and process writing can do this--a form of differentiated instruction. In this photo I'm presenting concepts, but then we went on to the practical: each participant drafted a personal piece of writing in his or her own language and then shared it in language groups in a content conference. It did not surprise us that many of the participants had never written a personal experience in their own language before. For nearly all Sierra Leoneans, the only road to literacy is through English. But the hardest part of the presentation was stopping the content conferences! Everyone was having such a good time being writers in their own language and having writing to share and discuss, that they didn't want to stop!

Five Writing Lessons (FWL)  Collaborating with TISLL has shown SELI how to make its Five-Writing-Lessons project work. This project been a struggle. After the first two successful units, in Kuranko and Krio, we could not seem to move forward. Even repeated radio announcements did not attract educated Sierra Leoneans to this opportunity of becoming writers (and potentially one day, authors) in their own languages.

By way of contrast, TISLL already operates literacy centers in six languages where adults and young people gain literacy in their mother tongues. TISLL also has literacy materials and the expertise to teach literacy. It is the only organization in the country that works exclusively with indigenous languages. The difference is that unlike the SELI FWL program, TISLL literacy classes teach initial, beginning literacy.  But what a great opportunity this provides us!  Literacy that is not maintained, can be lost.  What better way to empower and motivate TISLL's newly literate students than to include them in a writing workshop?

SELI is excited to be partnering with TISLL, and hope our contributors to the Five Writing Lessons project agree.

Reading Sierra Leone

On May 10th, eight Reading Sierra Leone books were officially launched--hooray! You see here one of the eight.

To quote from the inside back cover, "Reading Sierra Leone is a collaborative initiative of PEN Sierra Leone and CODE, a Canadian NGO supporting development through education. The goal of Reading Sierra Leone is to produce locally written and illustrated books that engage children and invite them, through reading and writing, to think, to learn and to improve their lives."

The books are aimed at lower, middle, and upper primary reading levels and are part of a program providing huge numbers of books, as well as teacher training in reading instruction, to primary schools in Sierra Leone, beginning with schools in the eastern part of the country.

You can look through, and learn how to purchase, all the Reading Sierra Leone as well as the Reading Liberia books in this catalog. 

Sales will help finance a second round of locally-produced books under Reading Sierra Leone. Let's make this happen! (P.S.: We're told Reading Liberia is in its third round!)

Collaborating with Five Writing Lessons

The Sentinel English Language Institute's Five Writing Lesson program has so much in common with The Institute for Sierra Leone Languages (TISSL) that the two organizations are looking into how we might collaborate and maximize our efforts. Today I visited a Limba adult literacy class conducted by TISSL's Limba coordinator, Mr. Gibrilla Kamara. It was held in a Quonset-hut building of a municipal school. Here we show a photo taken of the class (which meets five times a week) at 6 pm, and another photo taken two hours later when the lighting was provided by class members who brought LED flashlights or mobile phones. This class is one of three Limba literacy classes offered by TISSL in the Freetown area. TISSL's aim is to develop readers (who also write), while SELI's aim is to develop writers (who also read).

Can't stop reading!

We gave out issue no. 3.1 of the Young Voices newsletter when we visited Young Writers clubs this week. These photos are from Lady Patricia Kabba Memorial Junior Secondary School in Goderich. We couldn't get anyone to stop reading and get on with their own writing until they'd finished the whole paper! 

Get your own copy here, and let us know how you like it. The Young Writers authors would like your feedback. Appropriate reading materials are SO needed in Sierra Leone! There is no doubt that education is in a dire state in Sierra Leone as you can see in this article, but when reading materials are appropriate and when reading materials are available, students everywhere in the world will do their best to read.

Reading Sierra Leone

Lε Wi Ɔl Lan ("Let's all learn!") aims to improve learning outcomes for girls and boys in Sierra Leone. One of the strategies is to train at least 40 teacher trainers and 160 teachers in teaching reading and writing by the end of the second year. Trained teachers will receive regular professional support. Lε Wi Ɔl Lan hopes to improve the reading and writing performance for students in class one to junior secondary school. A complementary project, Reading Sierra Leone, provides students and teachers access to a variety of high quality reading materials. During the first year, CODE Canada brought in more than 200,000 reading materials for the project while conducting workshops in partnership with PEN SL to train writers and illustrators to tell inspiring local stories. Eight books from these local stories have now been published (pssssst: the SELI director wrote one of them!) The launching will take place soon! Here's where you can get your catalog of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean titles.

Lε Wi Ɔl Lan is coordinated by the International Rescue Committee. CODE Canada leads the teacher-training components of the project, and CODE is also the lead for Reading Sierra Leone.

Young Voices 3.1

The four-page March 2013 issue of Young Voices newsletter is out!  Read here what members of Young Writers clubs in rural schools on the Freetown peninsula and in the Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone have to say about things that have happened to them.

Seli River Writing Project

The photo on the left is from the SELI Young Writers workshop that meets at SELI twice a week. It has turned out to be a mix of junior and senior secondary students. Mr. Allieu Sheriff, a workshop facilitator from Services Junior Secondary, Wilberforce is doing content conferencing with students here. You also see a student doing self editing at Goderich Comprehensive Secondary School in Funima.

Would you like to know more about the aims we are working toward in the Seli River Writing Project? Many of them are brought out in this article in the February 2013 issue of TESOL International's SRIS Newsletter.

Tutors Needed in Sierra Leone Languages

On International Mother Language Day 2013 (February 21st), a meeting was held at SELI of tutors interested in teaching potential mother tongue authors to write in their own mother languages.  Here are the details:

The Sentinel English Language Institute (SELI) is resuming its Five Writing Lessons programme, in which five writing lessons are offered free of charge in each Sierra Leonean language. The students in this programme are educated adults who wish they could write stories or poems in their mother tongues but do not know the correct spelling.

SELI is seeking tutors for the Five Writing Lessons programme in all Sierra Leonean languages. If you feel that you are qualified to teach native speaking adults to write in your language and would like to participate in the Five Writing Lessons programme, please call SELI at 076 547540 or email jackie@seli.co . The students will already speak the language well; they just need to learn how to write it.

Five Writing Lessons supports mother tongue literature, whose importance is celebrated throughout the world every February 21st on International Mother Language Day. As a tutor in the Five Writing Lessons program, you will be doing a great service to your culture by enabling authors to write in your language. An honorarium will be paid to the successful tutors upon completion of the initial student interview and the five lessons.

Again, contact the Five Writing Lessons programme at 076 547540 or jackie@seli.co .