| Discussion |
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A commonly observed and reported feature of both literacy and education programs in developing nations is a relapse into illiteracy. Some use the term “recidivism” for this phenomenon.
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One of two patterns is widely reported:
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- Children go to school for two or three years and become barely or marginally literate. Within five or six years, those children as teenagers have completely lost whatever literacy skills they had.
- People attend an adult literacy class, often in a language other than their own, and are certified as literate by virtue of having completed the course. Then, within four or five years, they have forgotten everything other than a minimum ability to recognize a few letters and say a few sounds.
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Several generalizations hold:
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- The problem is decidedly worse when the literacy program or the language of the classroom is in a language the learner does not know or does not know very well.
- There is a strong correlation between post-classroom reading and maintenance of skills.
- The less school one attended, the greater the likelihood that that person will relapse back into illiteracy.
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Reported rates of relapse vary greatly. In poorly structured literacy programs where few learners speak the language of literacy, relapse rates can exceed 90 percent. Conversely, well-managed literacy programs which use the language of the learner as the language of instruction can have relapse rates as low as 10-15 percent.
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A somewhat similar pattern holds for formal education. Relapse rates are much higher when
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- the language of the classroom is not the language of the learner, and
- the child stays in school for less than three or four years.
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Informal data show that most children relapse back into illiteracy if they stay in school for less than four years. This is decidedly the case when the language of instruction is not the child's language. In some African countries, relapse rates of 60-80 percent are common for those who leave school before level four.
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| Preventing relapse |
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The most reliable means to prevent relapse is to ensure that new literates continue to practice their literacy skills, even if infrequently. There is some evidence that reading just a few pages a year will prevent a person from losing literacy skills. This is one reason that theorists and researchers put so much emphasis on post-program literature production and reading activity. This is the only reliable means of preventing relapse. |
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| Drawing conclusions from relapse data |
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The problem of relapse has prompted some observers to suggest that adult literacy is a waste of resources and even to question the investment of resources in formal education. |
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Such observations are commonly based on multilingual literacy and education contexts in which |
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- literacy is not in the language of the child, and
- there is little or no subsequent experience with print.
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In such cases, it is argued, nonprint media should be used as a basis for communicating new information. |
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