Nov 24, 2003
The karaoke way to literacy.
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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