Story link: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Supplement/article/the-karaoke-way-to-literacy

Indians love movies and singing. And many Indians can’t read. Okay, what’s the good news? What’s the connection? Prof. Brij Kothari at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad thinks there is.

He has spent many years propounding a theory by which reading habits could be woven into an activity all Indians love: watching video clips on television. India has a large population of functionally literate people whose reading skills are non-existent or extremely poor. On the other hand this group has the potential to become fully literate and this is what Dr Kothari has set out to do.

His idea is extremely simple and do-able at a low cost. Simply add same language sub-titles (SLS) to every video clip that is aired on television. Subconsciously neo-literates watching these clips follow the text and sing along while enjoying themselves. This reinforces the grapheme-phoneme (picture/sound) associations which are weak in early literate people but which are essential to reading skills.

The SLS (Same Language Subtitling) programme was initiated 6 years ago and has been financed by different agencies: Ministry of HRD (Department of Education), ISRO, IIM and even the World Bank. Film music based Chitrahaar is India’s longest running programme and is extremely popular in villages, Kothari hopes to transform this staple entertainment into ‘edutainment’.

Research has been done through three separate experiments: at the classroom, village (local cable) and state (Gujarat) levels. Findings have been consistent: reading ability has improved and 98% of the viewers preferred the songs with SLS than without. They feel that they ‘hear’ the words better!

SLS works for a very good reason. Dr Kothari cites d’Ydewalle et al., (1991) who used eye-ball tracking technique to show that reading sub-titles becomes inevitable. Television has been maligned as a dumb medium but SLS makes it interactive. SLS has also proven itself in second language learning and training deaf and dumb.

India has about 300 million each of non-literates and neo-literates. SLS offers a very low cost (about Rs.0.03 per year per person) technique of making them enjoy developing their reading skill. Dr Kothari has pioneered the use of SLS in doing something about India’s literacy.

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