AEIF 2014 Extended Access to Education

Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund 2014

Mauritanian Alumni’s Proposal:

Teaching English to Poor, Young students

Expanded Access to Education

Team Members:

·        Diakoye Sock (Team Leader), M.A. in TESOL, St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT

·        Mohamed Cheikh Beina, M.A. in Linguistics, Easter Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI

·        Salih Eba, Juniata College, B.A. in World Literature, Huntingdon, PA

·        Zekeriya Moussa Konte, Augustana College, B.A. in English (Creative Writing), Sioux Falls, SD

·        Cheikh Elhoussein, B.A. in Political Science, Minnesota State University, Mankota, MN

We, members of Fulbright Alumni Mauritania, are participating in the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund 2014 competition. Winning this grant will help us implement our project, which teaching English to young Mauritanian students coming from needy families in Sebkha and El Mina (areas of the capital city Nouakchott). Our team is composed of five former Fulbrighters.  We came back home after completing our Fulbright programs in American colleges and universities. We chose to come back home to share the knowledge and skills—that we have gained through our US exchange experiences—with young Mauritanians. This will help strengthen bilateral communications between the United States and Mauritania, a 100 Muslim country that cooperates fully in the war against terrorism.

The Project Justification

At the beginning of this new millennium, where there is a race towards monopolizing communication in order to achieve development, progress, and education, the English language has become an essential tool to reach such goals. English as an international language of trade, business, and sciences, has become the world’s first international language. That is why the language is becoming more and more popular in non-English speaking countries around the world, and in a number of African countries including Mauritania. The current approach used in the Mauritanian education system favors largely the use of the English language as a means of communication. In this regard, after being trained in American colleges and universities, we consider winning this grant as a great opportunity to train poor middle and high school Mauritanian students aged between 14 and 18 to acquire knowledge, which we think will greatly contribute to fortifying the relations between our respective countries. Knowing that there is much to be gained with the inclusion of the American culture and educational methodology in language acquisition, we will focus on communicational competence to help our students interact with native English speakers and other English language users both inside and outside Mauritania.

     English, as the international language of communication, trade, business, and sciences, will most likely be in the near future, the basis of the overall development of Mauritania. Mauritania will soon start benefitting from its gold and oil resources. It will become very soon an important oil and gold exporting country in West Africa. We expect that many international business companies will start operations in Mauritania. This will increase the demand for teaching English as a foreign language, as these companies would like to hire people with good English skills. Our main goal is to teach students who come from underserved communities who do not have the means to afford private English classes.

     For the economic reasons mentioned above, a new education reform is needed. This reform is to be adopted because authorities at the level of the Ministry of National Education, teachers, and students’ parents noticed that the level of Mauritanian students is decreasing in general, and in English in particular. This is proven by the high percentage failure of the Mauritanian students in national and international English exams (TOEFL, GRE etc.). The old teaching methods and techniques—for teaching English—that have been used for many years in Mauritania have failed. Talking about this situation, Sene ( 1988 ) said “… the old-fashioned textbooks and traditional methods of language teaching have reigned for more than a decade and a half, and no longer meet the needs of a modern teaching system”  (p. 1).

Authorities at the level of the Ministry of National Education, program designers, and English language teaching specialists are seeking new methods for teaching the language. They came up with a new approach to teaching English to middle and High school students, called “The Competency-Based Approach.” Here, the emphasis is put on what learners can do with the language as well as how they manage learning. The teaching is centered on learners and their respective environment. This approach is based on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).

In the former education system, English was only taught at the high school level. Now, in addition to high school, English is also taught in middle school. What we notice is that, students in middle and high schools are eager to learn English, and are very interested in everything related to English (English books, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, private English classes, American music and movies etc…) that is available to them. Here, the new teaching methods and techniques that our team has acquired from American colleges and universities will certainly contribute to the execution of our project, and thus add to the new Mauritanian education reform, something that will with no doubt bridge the gap between the US and Mauritania.

Description of the Program Details

We are offering English classes to 25 students aged 14 to 18 coming from Sebkha and El Mina, two of the poorest neighborhoods in the capital city, Nouakchott. The purpose of these English classes is to help our students improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, so that they can listen with better comprehension, speak with fluency, read better and write more effectively in English. 

The $25,000 grant will help us cover the project expenses as the program activities will be spread throughout an entire year.

A.    Enhancement Activities          

There are a lot of approaches and methods used in second language teaching. In order that successful language learning occurs, the method or the approach that is based on the learner’s needs, interests, and motivations is the most effective. For this reason, Content-Based Second Language Instruction in general, which responds to this concern, is the one that is more suitable to our students and the context in which we will teach.

 In the past decades, Mauritanian teachers used the Grammar Translation Method. Talking about this method, Brown (2007a) said: “It does virtually nothing to enhance a student’s communicative ability in the language […] It requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers” (16). Teaching was focused on explicit grammar rules, repetition, and memorization. Students were learning without understanding and thinking on what they were learning. Brown (2007a) adds by saying: “Little thought was given at the time to teaching oral use of languages” (16). Widdowson (1978) stressed the need to gear language teaching to the needs and interests of the learners and to move away from a mechanical, decontextualized presentation of grammar and pronunciation rules. So, the traditional methods need to be reviewed to meet the needs of a modern teaching system.

In our curriculum, the units focus on English communicative classroom teaching. The classroom teaching is based on communicative-tasks-based activities. When learning, the students observe or listen first before doing the tasks. The activities include classroom and real life situations. In this context, our teaching would be inclined to the reality of the learner. In this regard, we should not just limit our teaching to in-class grammatical exercises, but we have also to teach our learners how to write cover letters and have interviews in English, hold phone conversations with native English speakers and express themselves and read in English in the same capacity as objectives. Our curriculum is designed following the theme-based instruction model because every unit is based on a daily life topic. We will use the contents of the textbooks to work on grammar, vocabulary, conjugation, and pronunciation skills that learners need in order to engage in real life situations.

As Fulbright alumni, after having lived in the American society for more than two years, our experiences will be a tremendous support to the learners. In addition, the US Embassy and its American officers and employees, the Embassy’s Information Resource Center (IRC), American professors from the University of Nouakchott, the Alumni Resource Center (ARC), American visiting speakers, cultural specialists, and other Mauritanian Fulbright Alumni will be very important sources of knowledge that we will use to teach American studies to help our learners to better understand the American culture and its values. For students to practice their spoken English and enrich their learning experiences and provide variety and interest to the program, we will ask the US Embassy to regularly invite our students to the appropriate Embassy events and activities, such as July 4^th, as special guests. This is very important to us as the Mauritanian youth know only the American society through Rap music and violent action movies (Avatar)—different from the real American society.          

B.     Student Selection Criteria and Process

Students will be selected from the areas of Sebkha and El-Mina. Priority is given to the students who come from poor families aged between 14 and 18 years old. The program targets students of public middle and high schools. Only 25 students will be admitted to the program through a testing process.

We will contact the headmasters of different schools to assist us in identifying the students who fit the age requirement. After checking the IDs and birth certificates of each student, the candidates will be given a test in order to select those who are eligible to take part in the program. In addition, we intend to give equal opportunity to both genders and students coming from all Mauritanian ethnic groups.

The team will write a placement test that focuses on basic English skills (Grammar, vocabulary, listening, etc…). Based on their test grades, students will be placed in the appropriate level, Beginner, Elementary, or intermediate.

C.    Materials Used

We will use Mauritanian textbooks, American textbooks, and others. In the classroom, the learners are taught the content; they use the language learned from the content to practice in the communication task activities.

The activities mentioned above can be supplemented with materials such as journal articles on those themes, authentic contexts on video recordings showing people interacting by using the content language, films, CDs, DVDs and audiotapes, and even sometimes inviting guest speakers to talk about some of the issues raised in the content material. The learners will find the knowledge so useful and meaningful that it will increase their motivation which aids in the acquisition process. Teaching language through content-based instruction is more real. It provides a real-world context for teaching language.

In addition to this, we will use library books, articles from  regular journals and magazines like Time Magazine, New York Times, Newsweek, Discover, Scientific American, among others that the American Embassy supplies us with at “The American Corner” library that it has created for the University of Nouakchott in the English Department to help students.

D.    Number of Teachers

Our team is made up of five Fulbright alumni who have gained tremendous experience from studying at American universities (St. Michael’s College in VT; Augustana College, SD; Minnesota State University, MN; and Juniata College, PA). We also have taught English at various schools and English centers in Nouakchott.

E.     Cost and Expenses of the Program

The total amount needed to cover the program is $25,000:

ü  Classroom Rent: $1,655.16/year

To offer classes in a favorable environment, we will be renting a classroom in a private school at $68.965/month over a period of 12 months. Another room is necessary to house the computers we will be buying for students, which will also cost $68.965/month.

ü  Books and supplies: $1,724.136/year

Textbooks and other school supplies (pens, pencils, notebooks, etc.) will be distributed in two installments over a year. Each student will receive approximately $35 per installment.

ü  Furniture: $762.068/year

To avoid that our students sit uncomfortably on broken benches or squalid, dusty, virus-ridden floors, we will provide them with comfortable seating: 13 benches at a price of approximately $59 per bench.

ü  Food and refreshments: $ 10,344.827/year

Learning in empty stomachs kills motivation. Therefore, to keep our students active and ready for class, we will provide them with food and beverages: $3.45 will be allocated to each student per day for 10 days a month over a period of 12 months.

ü  Transportation: $ 6,240/year

Security is our top priority. So our students travel safely to school and back home, we will rent a bus for approximately $52 a day for 10 days a month over a period of a year.

ü  Technology: $3,702/year

Incorporating technology in the learning environment is indispensable in this day and age. Our students will be initiated to surfing the internet, creating email accounts, and doing research on Google. To attain this objective, we will give them 12 second-hand computers—a computer for every two students—at a price of approximately $173 per computer. The monthly cost of internet will add up to approximately $138/month over a period of 12 months.

The total cost would be $24,428.191. The remaining amount of the $25,000 will be used to help teachers with transportation.

F.     Class Schedule

Classes will take place in the morning hours on Fridays and Saturdays of each week.

September 2014 Intensive Program (every day except Fridays and Saturdays, from 10:00 am to 5:00pm)

October 2014- 28 hours

Fridays: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31

Saturdays: 4, 11, 18, 25

November 2014- 28 hours

Fridays: 7, 14, 21, 28

Saturdays: 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

December 2014- 24 hours

Fridays: 5, 12, 19, 26

Saturdays: 6, 13, 20, 27

January 2015- 30 hours

Fridays: 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Saturdays: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31

February 2015- 24 hours

Fridays: 6, 13, 20, 27

Saturdays: 7, 14, 21, 28

March 2015- 24 hours

Fridays: 6, 13, 20, 27

Saturdays: 7, 14, 21, 28

April 2015- 24 hours

Fridays: 3, 10, 17, 24

Saturdays: 4, 11, 18, 25

May 2015- 30 hours

Fridays: 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

Saturdays: 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

June 2015-24 hours

Fridays: 5, 12, 19, 26

Saturdays: 6, 13, 20, 27
July 2015-27 hours
Fridays: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
Saturdays: 4, 11, 18, 25
August 2015-24 hours
Fridays: 7, 14, 21, 28
Saturdays: 8, 15, 22, 29

G.    Summer Session Activities

We will have two weeks of intensive sessions during the summer, mid-August, where students will the chance to do activities that will allow them to practice their English. The activities will include:

·         Field trips (libraries, restaurant, museums, beach, etc)

·         Scrabble tournaments

·         Spelling Bee competition

·         Bingo Games

·         Basket Ball

·         Watching Movies

·         Soccer

·         Creative Writing

·         Debates

·         Learning English through music

References:

Brown, H. D. (2007a). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Pearson Education, Inc.

Sene, S. (1988). Reading Comprehension in Mauritanian Secondary Schools:

              Problems and Suggested Solutions. Ecole Normale Supérieure de Nouakchott.

Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.