English Teaching Program in Mali

Abstract

Our team’s research responds to the requests of an elementary school in Sanambele, a village in rural Mali. The English instructor of the school has requested tools to help him teach English, especially pronunciation and oral comprehension, which my USP addresses. Our team has done a lot of research on the Malian society in order to create projects that work well for the school and community. For teaching English, I needed to make tools with content that students who have never left their village could still identify with and enjoy. After examining the rich history of oral storytelling and Malian mythology, I decided to use early American myths and recorded them by multiple speakers in order to give oral examples that students in Sanambele can enjoy. The stories were also written and illustrated with many pictures in order to facilitate comprehension and catch their interest. To teach pronunciation, I evaluated several existing phonetics educational programs, and chose sections of these lessons that seem particularly pertinent to French-speakers. Workshops that explain how to use these projects have also been developed in order to give the instructor the ability to use these programs long after the implementers have left.