USAID Reading for Ethiopia's Achievement Developed Monitoring
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USAID Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Monitoring and Evaluation (READ M&E) Language Transition Study Report September 2019 A partnership with American Institutes for Research Contract No. AID 663-C-15-00001 USAID Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Monitoring and Evaluation (READ M&E) Language Transition Study Report Main Authors: Pooja Nakamura, Juan Bonilla, Belen Mekonnen, Daniel Tefera, Zewdu Gebrekidan, and Kelsye Turner Additional Contributors: Solomon Areaya, Mohammed Elmeski, and Todd Drummond Prepared by: American Institutes for Research 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW Washington, DC 20007 Submitted to: U.S. Agency for International Development/Ethiopia Addis Yigzaw, COR Under Contract No. AID-663-C-15-00001 Disclaimer: This report was made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this report are the sole responsibility of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. Table of Contents Acronyms and Abbreviations iii Executive Summary 1 Overview 1 Methods 1 Findings and Discussions 2 Introduction 4 Problem Statement 5 Background 6 Historical Context of MOI Policy in Ethiopia 7 1908–1941 7 1941–1973 7 1974–1991 8 1991–Present 8 Literature Review 8 Monolingual, Alphabetic Reading 8 Monolingual, Alphasyllabic Reading 9 Multilingual Reading 10 Conceptual Framework 11 Methods 14 Sample 14 Instruments 15 Letter Naming 16 Letter-Sound Correspondence 16 Real Word Decoding 17 Nonsense Word Decoding 17 Reading Comprehension 18 Phonological Awareness—Initial Syllable Deletion 18 Phonological Awareness—Initial Phoneme Deletion 19 Listening Comprehension 19 Data Collection Training 20 Testing Procedure 21 Results 21 Analytic Method 21 Descriptive Results 24 Structural Break Analyses for MT Decoding Threshold 25 Afaan-Oromo Breakdown 25 Amharic Breakdown 27 Berta Breakdown 28 Wolayttatto Breakdown 30 Structural Break Analyses for English Listening Comprehension Threshold 32 Discussion and Recommendations 32 Conclusions and Next Steps 35 References 38 Appendices 44 Appendix 1—Afaan-Oromo Data Collection Tool 44 Appendix 2—Amharic Data Collection Tool 54 Appendix 3—Berta Data Collection Tool 55 Appendix 4—Wolayttatto Data Collection Tool 65 Appendix 5—English Data Collection Tool 72 Appendix 6—Data Collection Training Agenda 81 Figures Figure 1. Conceptual Model of Transfer in Biliteracy Acquisition 13 Figure 2. Reading Comprehension 1—English 18 Figure 3. Reading Comprehension 2—English 18 Figure 4. Listening Comprehension 1—English 20 Figure 5. Listening Comprehension 2—English 20 Figure 6. MT Assessments Decision Tree 21 Figure 7. Graphical Representation of Structural Break 23 Figure 8. Afaan-Oromo–English Pair 25 Figure 9. Afaan-Oromo–English Pair 26 Figure 10. Afaan-Oromo–English Pair 26 Figure 11. Amharic–English Pair 27 Figure 12. Amharic–English Pair 27 Figure 13. Amharic–English Pair 28 Figure 14. Berta–English Pair 29 Figure 15. Berta–English Pair 29 Figure 16. Berta–English Pair 30 Figure 17. Wolayttatto–English Pair 30 Figure 18. Wolayttatto–English Pair 31 Figure 19. Wolayttatto–English Pair 32 Tables Table 1. Students Sampled by Language, Grade, Location, and Gender 15 Table 2. Assessments by Language 16 Table 3. Letter Naming: English 16 Table 4. Letter-Sound Correspondence: English 17 Table 5. Real Word Decoding—English 17 Table 6. Nonsense Word Decoding—English 17 Table 7. Phonological Awareness—Syllable Deletion: English 19 Table 8. Phonological Awareness—Phoneme Deletion: English 19 Table 9. Descriptive Statistics for Linguistic and Cognitive Subskills 24 Table 10. Afaan-Oromo English Pair 26 Table 11. Amharic–English Pair 28 Table 12. Berta–English Pair 30 Table 13. Wolayttatto–English Pair 31 Table 14. L1 Decoding Thresholds for Each Language Group 35 Acronyms and Abbreviations AIR American Institutes for Research EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment LC listening comprehension LSC letter-sound correspondence L1 first language L2 second language MoE Ministry of Education MOI medium of instruction MT mother tongue NEAEA National Educational Assessment and Examinations Agency NWD nonsense word decoding PA phonological awareness RC reading comprehension READ M&E Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Monitoring and Evaluation RWD real word decoding USAID United States Agency for International Development UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Executive Summary Overview The Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Monitoring and Evaluation (READ M&E) Language Transition study, conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), aims to identify transition thresholds for the effective introduction of literacy instruction in English subsequent to the introduction of mother tongue (MT) literacy instruction in four Ethiopian languages: Afaan-Oromo, Amharic, Berta, and Wolayttatto. These languages represent each of the four language families of Ethiopia: Cushitic, Semitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic, respectively. The research component aims to identify “readiness” for English reading and writing instruction as part of English as a subject. The standards development part of the research led to the development of draft standards for medium of instruction transition (MOI) to English for the four language group regions; however, the MOI transition policies were not determined by this research. READ M&E’s mixed-methods study (2017) on language transition found that there was no existing empirical evidence to guide the development of effective standards or thresholds for bilingual/biliteracy education in Ethiopia—nor are MOI policies implemented consistently. This research study aims to address this gap by identifying if—and when—there is a threshold level of MT reading skills that triggers a boost in English reading acquisition. Identifying this threshold level will enable decision makers to set a standard that signifies a child is ready to benefit from instruction in English and become a successful biliterate. This research builds on a similar study conducted in India (Nakamura & de Hoop, 2014), and the findings will inform more effective MOI policy, as well as biliteracy teaching and assessment strategies and methods in Ethiopia. Methods This study tested students’ abilities on a series of language and reading subtasks in their MOI and in English. The tasks in this assessment were letter-sound correspondence (LSC), phonological awareness (PA) at both the syllable level (PA-syllable) and the phoneme level (PA- phoneme), real word decoding (RWD) and nonsense word decoding (NWD), listening comprehension (LC), and reading comprehension (RC). The English assessment also included a letter name subtask. We first analyzed the relationship between MT decoding outcomes and English decoding outcomes by examining the two-dimensional scatterplots between these two variables. The two- dimensional scatter plots indicated whether a threshold value of decoding exists and, if so, how high that threshold value might be. Second, we formally tested for the existence of a threshold value of MT decoding by constructing a test statistic for a structural break without imposing a known break by combining the test statistics computed for each possible break score in MT decoding in the sample. Third, we used linear multivariate regression analysis to determine the linear relationship between MT decoding and English decoding both below and above the break READ M&E: Language Transition Study 1 identified in the second stage. Specifically, we tested whether children who are below and above the break have a different statistical relationship between their MT and English decoding skills. Findings and Discussions The findings from this study provided clear evidence of the existence of structural breaks for first language (L1) to second language (L2) decoding transfer in all four languages that were studied. The thresholds identified for each of the four MTs were as follows on a specifically designed decoding task: • Afaan-Oromo and English = 50.00% • Amharic and English = 81.67% • Berta and English = 45.00% • Wolayttatto and English = 73.00% This is one of the first studies in the Ethiopian context to confirm that the relationship between MT reading scores and English is, in fact, not linear. These percentage numbers indicate the score that a child would need to obtain on a specific decoding (sounding out) test in each MT to achieve the most benefit when introduced to English literacy teaching. We recommend that these numbers be interpreted as estimates, but the results clearly indicate that the relationship linearity is “breaking” or changing, i.e. it is not linear in its nature around these numbers. In other words, the degree to which MT skills support English skills changes significantly at some point of mastery in the MT decoding acquisition process. This change is characterized by a sudden, exponentially higher increase in the English decoding scores for the same increase in MT after the threshold “break.” The main implication of these results is that if you introduce English literacy below the MT decoding threshold levels, a child is unlikely to benefit as much in terms of English reading proficiency as if English literacy instruction is introduced above these MT threshold levels. In other words, when students begin English as a subject in grade 1, they should be introduced only to oral English instruction.