In Malawi, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa a knowledge of English is of crucial educational importance to individuals, since it is the medium of much of primary and all of secondary schooling. Pupils have to move swiftly from a position of learning to read in English, to one of reading English to learn.
Official statistics (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1989) suggest that the Malawi primary school system, the foundation of formal education for the few, and the only formal education for the great majority, is in a less than satisfactory condition. There have been suggestions for some time that levels of literacy in English in Malawi's primary schools are low (Heyneman, 1980; Mwanza, 1988; Mchazime, 1989). This means that the education of many primary school children in Malawi is suffering since reading in English is the very skill which pupils are supposed to deploy from Standard 5 onwards to gain knowledge in other fields.
This project report attempts to document how reading in English is taught in primary schools in Malawi, and how well the pupils read in English. Because of time constraints, it is a descriptive survey based on five schools, and not on a national sample. Its results may serve as a contribution to the information base of those who are developing strategies to provide a better educational foundation for the country's schoolchildren.
