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"Kweyol" Training Opens to Saint Lucians
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"Kweyol" Training Opens to Saint Lucians
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Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 12 persons are benefiting from a three-day training seminar through they will be able to teach the Kweyol language to adult learners. The seminar, which opened on Wednesday is being conducted by linguistics expert Michael Walker, in collaboration with the Adult Education Unit of the Ministry of Education, Human Resource Development, Youth and Sports. Walker, is a Kweyol book publication entrepreneur whose company ‘An Tj`e Nou (pronounced An Chair Noo, which is Kweyol for ‘In Our Hearts’) has been producing ‘Kweyol’ books for the past four years. He says, in any country it is essential for the populace to be literate in its own native language even before learning to speak and write another language. Adds Walker, "In fact every study, every single study in the world says that you should be proficient in your own language first and in Saint Lucia they don’t do that. They’ve completely ignored Creole. They’ve tried to kill Creole and I think that’s one of the reasons why the standard of English is so poor. Now my job for the last thirty-five years has been to produce English textbooks for countries all over the world so my aim here is actually to improve English in the long run. I really think that by understanding their own language, by understanding how Creole works they won’t make the same mistakes in English." The Ministry of Education identified the twelve participants for training. Upon completing the training they will serve as facilitators, teaching others to learn to speak and write the Kweyol language in other centers around the island. The training, which is being conducted at the University Centre at Morne Fortune in Castries, will be replicated in Vieux -Fort, Micoud and Soufriere. |
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