Reading method

Our neighbors in 1979 in Niangoloko was a burkinabe couple, Paul and Mariana Hema. Every morning, Paul would sit outside his house and read the Bible in Bambara. Paul had gone to primary school for a few years plus a missionary had taught him to read. One morning I found Mariama reading the same Bible. I was syorised as she had no schooling at all. So I asked her how she learned to read.

She said that she used to watch her husband reading the Bible and wanted to do so herself. So she told him to teach her to read. He responded that he was not a teacher and didn’t know how. She insisted. So he had her sit down beside him while he read outloud and followed under the words with his finger. And that’s how she learned to read.

That’s not a recommended method for teaching reading, but most any method will eventually work if the teacher and student have enough motivation. Teaching adults to read is heavily dependent on their desire to learn. Without desire, even the best reading method will fail. With enough desire and time, almost any method will eventually succeed. I’ve been in places where people wanted to read the Bible so much that they would suffer hardship to learn to read.

In some places, adults have learned to read by singing in church and looking at the words printed on a hymnbook or songbook. In fact, printing a hymnbook can be the cheapest literacy method in some places.