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Thursday, September 10, 2015

Learning English is not a big deal to our girls at the Hope House

Radhika – a 12th grader now, was referred to us by the local hospital’s Social Worker because she couldn’t bear to see the plight of her struggles.  She was working to support the family with a sickly mother when she was supposed to be going to school. 

When she was admitted to the Hope House in 9th grade in 2012, she had no clue about the concept of English except for alphabets.  But today, she is a bubbly young lady with fair fluency in English conversations, reading, and typing.  How she managed to pull that off is the signature of Hope House’s initiative called “Leadership Development Program” (LDP).


Click on the image to enlarge to see the details

As soon a child is admitted to the Hope House, we start them on phonics.  Yes, Radhika was given phonics training when she was in 9th grade and encourage them to read whatever they can lay their hands on, be it story books, or titles on the buses or billboards etc.  Once they finish 10th grade successfully, they are enrolled in LDP where learning English is one of the modules they have to complete. 

We set their baselines for measuring future progress by making them to read/ type a particular newspaper clipping by measuring the speed and accuracy.  That same clipping is saved for the future and the test is repeated every year.  During the year, they are made to read the daily English newspapers, write emails, read story books, practice touch screen typing (online) and of course to show them child friendly English movies

In July of this year, when we re-tested Radhika, she showed jaw dropping improvement in all the areas of English. 

Reading – speed has improved by 33% and errors have come down by 40%
Typing – Speed has improved by 82% but errors have gone up by 25%  

Now that we have a group of German volunteers staying with them for the next nine months, we only expect Radhika and many others like her to improve their conversational English significantly.  Want to help girls like Radhika at the Hope House?  Click here to express your generosity.      

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