MIGUEL ALFONSO CASTELLANO ONTIVEROS

CAE (ESSAY pag 163)

METHODS SCHOOLS SHOULD USE TO IMPROVE LITERACY
STANDARDS
It has been estimated that 80% those currently leaving secondary
school do not
meet basic literacy standards. All the evidence suggest that this
happens either
because schools dont provide an early detection of their own
students problems
with regard to literacy standards or because the lack of means
suffered by schools.
Therefore, this is a problem that demands urgent action because it
could have
severe effects on the education of the future generations. There are
many practical
steps that schools could take to tackle this issue.
One approach schools could take is to providing e-book readers to
pupils and
promoting e-learning, so the access to education would be better for
young people.
Also, the Internet allows children to access a great range of books.
However, this
project depends on the financial aid schools could get from the
government, and it
would imply to invest a very large part of the budget for education.
An alternative approach would be a timely detection of those students
who have
problems with literacy by setting literacy test at an early age. Also,
schools could
organize regional writing competitions aiming to know in detail the
level of

literacy of the students at every age. It is always important to

diagnose a problem
at the appropiate time.
In conclusion, an improved system to test the literacy standards of
every student
could be the best way to avoid this issue because it warns you about
the problem
in time and it is also cheaper than introducing new technologies in the
schools.
This is the strategy I would recommend schools adopt.
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