TEVAUN Taylor has never had difficulty reading Standard English. Speaking it, however, at times has proved a bit challenging. The seven-year-old student of Hope Valley Experimental School in August Town, St Andrew, likes to read and has already mastered the texts prescribed by the school’s curriculum.

Tevaun also has a knack for the written word – at least when it’s in English, Jamaica’s official language.

On the flip side, he is also fluent in the creole, Jamaica’s native tongue which has retentions of English, but is not recognised as an official language.

He stumbles when the latter is put on paper. But, linguists at the University of the West Indies hope to change that under the Bilingual Education Project (BEP), now being run on a pilot basis in four urban schools by the Department of Language Linguistics and Philosophy.

“Jamaica would be at an advantage if the two languages are used and the students’ competence levels would improve when they get formal training in both languages,” says Professor Hubert Devonish, principal researcher for BEP.

The initial phases of the project involved training the teachers of grades one to four from the participating schools in using the writing system for Patois by way of a teacher-training manual that was developed specifically for the programme.

Through the first set of training sessions that began in June 2004, the teachers were taught how to deliver lessons in both languages without having one interfering with the other.

“We taught them through practice sessions, to keep languages apart, that is, they deliver lessons straight in English, then in Jamaican,” Professor Devonish explained.

“They practise to keep the languages apart and we also got them to discuss their own insecurities and uncertainties about using this language for formal purposes,” he added.

A technical word list from the subject areas of mathematics, science and social studies was also developed in Patois while the Linguistic Department translated language arts, social studies, mathematics, science texts and reading books that were distributed by the Ministry of Education to the schools.

“We don’t interfere with the ministry’s curriculum at all,” the professor said. “What we have is parallel material in Jamaican and English.”

Two Thursdays ago, on November 3, Maureen Dunkley, a grade two teacher at Hope Valley and one of the Linguistic Department’s first trainees, gave the Sunday Observer a snapshot of a typical session when she led Tevaun and his 35 peers in what had become routine classroom sessions since the project was implemented last year.

Skipping around the classroom, Dunkley, led the bunch of seven-year-olds through a series of poems – first in Jamaican and then in the official language.

The two languages w?ere indeed taught separately.

“Think about the muscles a tall tree grows, in its leg, in its foot, in its widespread toes.,” the students chanted, reciting Windy Tree.

The children happily raced through the English version that was in large print on a sheet of cartridge paper taped to the walls of the classroom and were able to give answers, in broken English, as Dunkley questioned them about the theme.

But they read at a far slower pace when they were asked to recite the Patois version. On paper, the words appeared foreign, as the language emphasizes only those letters that can be heard in pronunciation.

“Tink bout di mosl dem we wan taal chrii grow, ina di leg, ina di fuut, inna di pred-out tuo,” the children said as they slowly recited the poem in Patois, the title of which had been translated to Briizi Chrii.

For Tevaun, though, the latter session allowed him to interact with his teachers and peers at a level with which he felt most comfortable.

“I like both of them,” he declared following the lessons.

“I like to speak in Jamaican and I like to speak in English too,” he added.

For others like La-Pheil Rave, she understands Jamaican clearly but would prefer if all lessons were delivered in the official language.

Latika Murray, however, says Patois is definitely out.

“I do not like how it sounds and I do not want to speak that way,” she said.

The teachers, too, are happy with the project which, they say, has already delivered some benefits.

“We are moving the children to a zone which is more comfortable to them. They are going back to something they are used to,” said Hope Valley’s Dunkley.

“Why tell them something twice when you can tell them once and they understand,” she added.

At Bridgeport Primary, teachers Nicola Fender and Cumeisha Boothe had similar views.

“The children are more comfortable in expressing their opinions and the language (Jamaican) has led to better performance,” Fender said.

“The majority will definitely benefit from the programme and I have also seen where they are performing better,” added Boothe.

The project is wholly endorsed by Bridgeport’s principal, Pearl Morgan.

“The project has my full support because we need to recognise that we are a bilingual country,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“The spontaneous language is our mother tongue, but because we are ashamed of our language we cannot acknowledge its power,” she added. “We need to use it to help as a language of instruction in schools because children can’t learn what they don’t understand.”

This is the type of feedback Professor Devonish and his team hope to get, on a wider scale, at the end of the project in 2008.

“We have a double standard where Jamaicans are both proud and ashamed of it (the language) at the same time,” said the linguist.

The project, he said, was not designed to fail.

“It cannot fail because the children are learning the same stuff in the normal way . what the project is trying to achieve is how we can do the same things bilingually,” he explained.

“It is not an experiment,” he added. “Children can continue in normal education when the project ends.”