GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLES’ REPUBLIC OF BANGLADESH DIRECTORATE OF NON-FORMAL EDUATION PRIMARY AND MASS EDUCATION DIVISION NAME OF THE PROJECT: DEVELOPING LEARNING METHOD AND MATERIALS BASED ON BENGALI PHONEMES

Directorate of Non-formal Education of Bangladesh under its ADB/SDC NFE TA project took up a research project to develop a learning method and reading materials based on sounds of word i.e. phoneme. 2 Senior Core Trainer of the project Dr Jesmin Ara Sultana, who is a Bengali linguist, conducted the research and developed a method, primarily proved to be very effective and easy for the nonreaders. Dr Jesmin was basically inspired by the Phono-Graphix method developed by Carmen McGuiness and Geoff McGuniness of America, who developed similar learning method for English spoken people. Dr Jesmin first prepared reading materials using Bengali phonemes and then these materials were taught at a school of 30 nonreaders to test the acceptability and effectiveness of the materials. Details of the project are as follows: Background: Learning to read is one of the most difficult tasks the human being faces in his/her life.