Gr8 way 2 read

We are now a full decade into the 21st century, an exciting as well as a challenging time. South Africa is on the brink of a new curriculum.

A big focus is on the essentials of education: literacy and numeracy. But what does this mean in our times? Today reading and writing happens more in digital than in print. This is what we found when we surveyed 60 teens in Langa and Gugulethu in Cape Town in 2009. What’s more, the writing is short, for instance sending SMSes or MXit chat messages.

Core to developing literacy skills is reading and writing longer pieces. The respected research organisation JET Education Services, has often highlighted the need for learners to write extended passages, which consists of writing paragraph length or longer, such as descriptions, expressive passages or letters. Through its research in South African schools, JET observed that two-thirds of learners had completed fewer than three such extended passages over the year — hopelessly inadequate.

While we know that reading and writing extended pieces is important, we also know how difficult it is to get young people to do this. Through Yoza Cellphone Stories we have tried to tackle this problem.

Yoza publishes m-novels — short for mobile novels — on cellphones, and invites readers to comment on these stories. Aimed at teens and young adults, our stories make for compelling, entertaining reading. Our philosophy is to publish great content where the kids are at: on MXit.
Has it worked? Yes, for now. Below are statistics and feedback from our readers that show that it has worked. But there is still more to be done.

In the first year of publishing m-novels, the stories were read 60 000 times. If we include one of Yoza’s stories also published on Vodafone Live, then in a little over a year readers have left 40 000 comments on our stories. Many of these comments are short, but many are the type of extended writing that we want to see. We asked Yoza readers how we could improve the service. Here are answers, published as is (please excuse the txtspeak; more on that below):
“ur stories are very interesting and nice, when u start reading them just can’t wait till the next day in order to read the next chapter. Maybe u guys should release 2 chapters a day, and just try and make ur stories longer,” writes Phumelela.

“Today its obvious that mostly teenagers use mxit and read the stories. As an 18 year old girl who went through a lot during high school, i personally think that the stories should be bowt real ‘dramas’ as some people call it. And have logical happy endings which can guide other teenagers and help them thru their difficult times,” by Kirthi.

While the comments above are in txtspeak, which unfortunately sometimes appears in school assignments, they also show that the commenters have read the stories, comprehended them and would like to read more. When we published the next story in our m-novel series, after a few weeks of waiting, Yoza readers said: “I cant w8 4 mre 2 cum. I lv this buk. Let it keep on cum :)” and “The comeback of a great story can’t wait to read more…” Any teacher would be happy to have his or her learners enjoy reading this much!

While Yoza has been a success, with more than 100 000 unique visitors in the past four months, there is still much work to be done. Given that so many young people are on cellphones, there should be a million regular readers. You can help by pointing your learners to Yoza, encouraging them to read and write on it, as well as use it in your classrooms.

In October I was contacted by an English teacher at a very poor high school in the Western Cape. She told me how much her learners had enjoyed reading a Yoza story in class and she had asked them to write reviews of the story.

When told about the prescribed Shakespeare plays that are on Yoza, she said that she was relieved about this because not all of her learners had books of the plays.
Yoza is available on MXit and onwww.yoza.mobi

How to get Yoza: