Introduction

Melanesian Pidgin is the most widely spoken Pacific language, with more than two million speakers in three countries: Papua New Guinea (PNG), where it is known as Tok Pisin; Solomon Islands, where it is known as Pijin; and Vanuatu, where it is called Bislama. As the most common lingua franca in each of these linguistically diverse countries, Melanesian Pidgin would seem to be a natural language of education. Yet it has been given only a minor role mainly because of lingering colonial attitudes, left- over pre-independence policies emphasizing English or French, and fears that using a pidgin language would interfere with the acquisition of these favoured language. In recent years, however, more use is being made in education of all three varieties of Melanesian Pidgin. This special report outlines this use, including some information previously given in earlier issues of the PACE Newsletter. It also describes some research showing that educators’ fears of interference are unfounded.

Papua New Guinea

In 1955 W.C. Groves, then the Director of Education in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, wrote a report entitled: The Problem of Language: Paper no 1: “Pidgin,” recom-mending the use of Melanesian Pidgin in formal instruction as a way of achieving “accelerated development of the Native people”. [Detailed quotations from the report appeared in PACE Newsletter 1 (1990), p.7.] However, Groves’ recommendations were never implemented, even after independence in 1975, and until very recently, Tok Pisin was not used officially in government schools.
On the other hand, Tok Pisin has been used for years as a medium of instruction in many church-run schools, which provide a large proportion of primary education in the country. With regard to adult education, there have been several programs using Tok Pisin. The Kisim Save Tok Pisin Literacy program has been operating since 1970, teaching reading, writing and numeracy. The program has produced the Kisim Save [literally ‘get knowledge’] series of four primers and also a Teachers’ Guide with a training section and 74 lessons. Literacy teachers are trained in 3-4 week sessions and then they go to remote villages to teach [PACE Newsletter 3 (1992), p.2].

Another project using Tok Pisin was the mass adult literacy campaign conducted in the Southern Highlands in the late 1970s and 1980s. It is estimated that over 60,000 students were involved in the project (Apelis 1988), with those taught by the Christian Brethren Church learning literacy in Tok Pisin. (The other two churches involved used different local vernaculars.)

According to Ray (1994), in 1994, there were 330 adult literacy programs with 449 teachers and 7,543 students. Many of these teach literacy in Tok Pisin, but exact figures are not available.

Also in the area of non-formal education, a community-based movement started in PNG to teach initial literacy in the local vernacular (or “Tok Ples”) in preschools, in spite of the government policy of English-only in community schools. The first Vernacular Prep School (VPS) or Tok Ples Preschool (TPPS) began in the North Solomons Province in 1980 and the idea spread to the East New Britain and Milne Bay Provinces in 1983 and to Enga and Oro Province in 1985. Largely because of the success of these programs, one of the recommendations of the Ministerial Committee Report, A Philosophy of Education for Papua New Guinea. (Matane et al 1986:48) was: “That the vernacular language be used as the medium of instruction in the early years of schooling and English be used in later years.”

There have been revolutionary changes in educational policy since the appearance of this report. The national Literacy and Awareness Programme (NLAP) was established in 1988, and the National Department of Education (NDOE) policy followed which outlined the responsibilities and strategies for raising the level of literacy in the country. In 1989 the National Literacy and Awareness Council was established, the English Section of the Curriculum Development Division of NDOE was renamed the Language and Literacy Section, and the Literacy and Awareness Secretariat (LAS) was set up to provide technical assistance and coordination for implementing the NDOE policy. The preamble to this policy is as follows (quoted in Faraclas 1989:4):

In order to improve the quality of education, to strengthen traditional cultures and values, to facilitate participation by citizens in national life, to promote national unity and to raise the level of literacy in Tok Ples, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and English, we recommend the development of educational programmes to ensure that children, out of school youth and adults become literate in Tok Ples, transfer their skills to Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu or English and maintain their literacy skills in these languages.

Following the TPPS model, the policy encouraged communities to set up preparatory classes (or preschools) to teach initial literacy in Tok Ples before children enter Grade 1. It is up to each community to decide what Tok Ples is to be used. “Tok Ples” usually refers to indigenous vernacular languages, but in the policy it is defined to also include lingua francas, such as Tok Pisin.

The training of teachers for these vernacular preschools (and also for adult programs) has been carried out over the years largely by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the Language and Literacy Consul-tancy Group of the University of Papua New Guinea, and the Papua New Guinea Integral Human Development Trust (PNG Trust), established in 1990. Over 2000 trainers, coordinators, supervisors, materials writers and teachers have been trained at over 32 National Literacy and Awareness Training Courses conducted since 1989 by UPNG and the PNG Trust alone (PNG Trust 1994). As part of these courses, relevant literacy materials were produced in a variety of languages, including Tok Pisin. Some of the courses held in PNG have had participants from the Solomons Islands and Vanuatu, and materials were also in the other dialects of Melanesian Pidgin: Pijin and Bislama.

In 1991 PNG had TPPSs operating in at least 91 languages. According to information sent to the Literacy and Awareness Secretariat, Tok Pisin was third in the number of students in classes from a single language, with over 1600 students, and there were probably even more who were not reported [PACE Newsletter 3 (1992), p.3].

One of the largest and most successful TPPS programs is the Tok Pisin Prep-school program in the Ambunti District of the East Sepik Province, run by Papua New Guineans working for Pacific Islands Ministries (PIM). [This program has been described in several issues of the PACE Newsletter.] It is mainly a two year preschool “bridging” or transitional program which teaches initial literacy in Tok Pisin to children six or seven years old before they go on to English-medium community schools. Instruction is entirely in Tok Pisin, and besides basic reading and writing, includes basic mathematics, health and hygiene, cultural activities, religious instruction, social studies, and physical education.

The program was started in the district centre, Ambunti, in 1985 with two schools and 150 students in 4 classes. In 1994 there were 32 schools with 916 students in 39 classes, supported by dozens of different villages throughout the area. [See the report in this issue for the latest figures.]

Like other TPPSs, the Prep-school Pro-gram is a community based one. A village asks for a Prep-school to be set up by forming a committee and sending a represent-ative to PIM who then do a feasibility study. If the village is found suitable, the committee must then get permission from the head teacher of the local community school, provide one or two people with some primary education to be trained as teachers, provide land for the school and build the classroom. PIM trains the teachers and provides basic equipment and teaching materials, usually cyclostyled or screen-printed in Ambunti.

TPPSs like the ones in the Ambunti District have spread like wildfire. According to figures from LAS, in 1993 there were 1,560 classes with 49,691 students using 227 languages. In some areas (such as the East Sepik Province and National Capital District) extensive use of Tok Pisin is noted, but the exact numbers are not available. According to figures given by Ray (1994), there were 2,309 TPPS programs with 79,445 students in 1994.

Despite support from the national government, these programs are still outside the formal education system, and run by local communities and non-government organiza-tions (NGOs) such as various church groups, Women’s Councils, the YWCA and environ-mental groups. However, according to the educational reform recommended by the 1991 Education Sector Review (PNG Department of Education 1991), the system is being restructured to include vernacular education in the first three years of formal schooling: “the reform removes the first two years of schooling out of the current Community Schools and into a new village based Elementary School with a programme that resembles some of the vernacular schools that are currently operating outside of the formal system” (Curriculum Reform Office 1994:4). These two years will be preceded by one preparatory year, modelled on the current TPPSs.

There have been many criticisms of the proposed educational reform, and there will be massive funding and organizational constraints on its implementation. But the biggest obstacle is in trying to convert a successful grass-roots, community owned movement into a top-down, government-controlled system. At any rate, if it is successful, many of the Community Schools will be using Tok Pisin as the language of education, and Groves’ recommendation will be partially implemented after all.

Solomon Islands

The government of the Solomon Islands took over the formal education sector in 1974, and since then, as in PNG, the educational policy has revolved around the attainment of literacy in English – even after independence in 1978. There has been no attempt in the formal sector to use other languages to teach literacy, including Pijin. Jourdan (1990) points out that “despite the fact that Pijin is the most widely spread language of the archipelago, and certainly the main language of the urban centres, it is not recognized as being an asset in the education process” (p.169). However, she describes the widespread use of Pijin among school children and its unofficial use by teachers in the classroom (p.170).

This observation was backed up by a large-scale national survey of literacy and language, conducted in 1991 (Solomon Islands National Literacy Committee 1992). The objectives of the survey were to determine usage of languages throughout the country, attitudes to languages, and literacy levels. [The results were described in the PACE Newsletter 4 (1993), p.8.] With regard to formal education, the survey found that while English is the official language of instruction in the education system, Pijin is the de facto medium of instruction in most schools (p.28). In the communities surveyed: “78% of schools use a mixture of English and Pijin, with or without a vernacular, as the medium of instruction” (p.43). The report makes the following suggestion (p.43):

A less confused learning environment for students could be created by the adoption of a single language as the medium of instruction. In view of the large numbers of people who understand Pijin, the most effective language in this respect should be Pijin on a national basis…English should be taught as a subject using tried methods of TESL teaching.

The report contains three important recommendations with regard to the use of Pijin in education:

• Recommendation No.3 (p.3): “Pijin should be adopted as the national language of the Solomon Islands.”
• Recommendation No.4 (p.4): “Instruction in educational institutions should be in Pijin or a vernacular.”
• Recommendation No.6 (p.5): “All educational establishments should examine the possibility of offering courses in vernaculars and Pijin. The medium of instruction at all levels should be that language which offers maximum understanding, ie Pijin.”

Whether or not these recommendations would be acceptable to the general population is another matter. Another part of the survey (Tables 11 and 12, pp.28-9) shows that while Pijin is used most in schools, people still prefer English. This information is summar-ized in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Reported and preferred language use in Solomon Islands schools:

The only areas in which a clear decision has been made to use Pijin for instruction are non-formal education programs, mostly for adults. The first attempt to use Pijin as a medium for teaching literacy was the Pijin Literacy Project, coordinated by the Solomon Islands Christian Association (SICA) beginning in 1978. The project produced a number of readers and a guide book for reading and writing in Pijin: Hao fo ridim an raetem Pijin. However, the specific project no longer exists, although SICA is still active in Pijin literacy with ongoing translation work. Another pioneering organization in Pijin literacy has been the Nazareth Apostolic Centre (NAC). They have been teaching initial literacy in Pijin to women for a number of years and also have trained students to teach reading and writing skills when they return to their villages. NAC have also produced several books in Pijin.

In 1992, the Literacy Association of Solomon Islands (LASI) was formed and a coordinator appointed. [See the latest report form LASI in this issue.] LASI has since sponsored several non-formal education efforts using Pijin. These include the production of new materials and the reprinting of Buk fo ridim an raetem Pijin (Lee1981). LASI has also sponsored several training courses, including training of 50 new literacy teachers at NAC, done by the PNG Trust and UPNG training team, and 15 one-day workshops to train teachers from the Honiara Preschool Association to use newly developed Pijin materials. LASI-supported literacy projects using Pijin include: the Holy Cross and Valeato Literacy Class, the adult literacy group at Bishop Epalle Primary School, the Malaita Vernacular Literacy Program (along with three Malaita languages) and the Mother’s Union of the Church of Melanesia (Mosley 1992).

The Mother’s Union runs at least 60 schools, including 7 in Honiara with approximately 300 students and about 1000 students outside Honiara. The classes are held three days a week, taught by volunteer teachers. Although the program formerly taught literacy in English, it is now done mostly in Pijin (Dora Ho’ota and Alice Kaua, interview, 1995).

In 1995 LASI embarked on a large-scale adult literacy project, called “Literacy 2000”. Its goal is to improve the literacy rate in the Solomons to 95% of the adult population, and to create a sustainable literacy network with other Melanesian countries that provides training, follow-up support and literacy materials. Literacy will be taught mostly in Pijin. As pointed out by the Chairman of the Management Committee of LASI (Bernie O’Donnell, personal communication, 1994):

There has been no acceptance of Pidgin teaching in schools, but the successes of LASI with adults should provide a demonstration of possibilities. In short, it would be reasonable to say that Pidgin certainly has acceptance for Adult Learning and is most effective…

 

 

Vanuatu

Although Bislama is constitutionally the national language of Vanuatu, it is not officially recognized as a language of education; English and French are given this role. Thomas (1990) outlined developments with regard to the proposed use of Bislama as the language in education. He reported (p.244):

During a debate on the question of Bislama in schools, in April 1982, a majority of members of parliament favoured introduction of Bislama as either a medium of instruction or as a subject. Support for the teaching of Bislama in schools came from government and opposition members alike.

He also reported a similar point of view from participants at the 1981 Vanuatu Language Planning Conference and from the Vanuatu National Council of Chiefs (p.245):

The final resolution which the Language Planning Conference adopted showed strong support for the use of Bislama. It recommended that Bislama should be taught at least as a subject in the first four years of primary school and used as the medium of instruction for classes five and six.

Although nothing came of these recommendations, Bislama does have an unofficial role within the formal education system. According to the 1987 report of the Asian Development Bank/Australia Develop-ment Assistance Bureau Joint Technical Assistance Team on Vocational Training and the Labour Market in Vanuatu, Bislama is used as the language of instruction in the Police Training School, the Trade Training and Testing Scheme, the Marine Training School and 10 different rural training institutions. The report noted (p. xiii):

The Study Team believes that most of the vocational training currently provided in Vanuatu is at a level where Bislama could be used far more extensively with no detriment to efficiency.
[See also PACE Newsletter 1 (1990), p.4.]:

Bislama is most probably used unofficially as a medium of instruction in primary education as well, but as with Pijin in the Solomons, its use is openly recognized only in non-formal education. For example, the 15-20 Rural Development Training Centres, which provide education for school leavers in areas such as health and the environment, are now developing Bislama curricula.

The largest adult literacy project in Vanuatu, run by World Vision, also uses Bislama, and has produced an effective set of literacy materials in the language. (In some cases, Bislama is taught first, and then literacy.) It began in 1989 in northeast Malakula, expanded to Epi, Ambrym and Tanna in 1992, to Santo in 1993 and to Maewo in 1995. The figures in 1993 were as follows (World Vision Vanuatu 1993):

Table 2: The World Vision Adult Literacy Program, 1993

The program is community based, as described below (World Vision Australia 1995:39):

Ni-Vanuatu village literacy teachers are supported for the time of their services to the community, by the community. They receive gifts of food and labour from their classes, and these classes, often with the assistance of the communities from which they come, or from the democratically-run Village Committees, conduct fund-raising activities such as the production and marketing of vegetables. Thus established, village based literacy programs, serving the interests and needs of all in the community, can continue for as long as the communities wish, and are as sustainable as those communities choose…

The reason Bislama was chosen over other vernaculars is given as follows (World Vision Australia 1995:12):

WVV [World Vision Vanuatu] has elected to teach literacy in Bislama because in a country populated by circa 156,000 speaking 105 languages, Bislama is used by the largest group and has something of a unifying function amongst a people only recently encouraged to think of themselves as a nation. More than this, literacy in local language, whist this certainly does help with the retention of the local culture, does not facilitate access to information about the changes in the external world that are impacting on village life, including their health. For this, knowing Bislama is most important in Vanuatu because this is the language of the government departments such as the Ministry of Health, of NGOs and of the radio…

The program has been evaluated in 1992 by Ross McDonald who noted (World Vision Vanuatu 1993): “The program is filling a need in Vanuatu for non-formal education. It gives hope to many older ni-Vanuatu who see the program as offering them a last chance to become literate as well as giving school dropouts another chance at literacy and numeracy.”

World Vision also receives requests for training and materials in adult literacy from a range of church groups and non-government organizations, such as the National Council of Women, and from government departments as well, including Health, Education, Early Childhood Development, and Agriculture. In a 1994 evaluation of the program, involving extensive consultation with these bodies, it was found that “with the exception of SIL, there was broad agreement with its practice of teaching Bislama where necessary and then literacy in Bislama” (World Vision Australia 1995:4).

Another organization that runs adult literacy programs using Bislama is the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’i faith. They began on Tanna in 1977, suspended the program from 1983-9, and started again in 1990. They now have youth volunteers teaching in five areas of Tanna and in a very remote area of Santo (Charlie Pierce, interview, 1995). The Baha’is have also developed attractive reading materials in Bislama. Other groups doing adult literacy work in Bislama on a smaller scale are the Presbyterian and Anglican churches.

Training for all these projects has recently been provided by a national workshop run by visiting trainers from UPNG and the PNG Trust. The National Kommunity Develop-ment Trust (NKDT) in Vanuatu also provides training using the PNG Trust model. They have a mobile team of 7 trainers on the islands of Efate and Nguna. In addition to training teachers for adult literacy, they have trained teachers for preschools following the PNG TPPS model.

Vanuatu has an active preschool program with approximately 570 schools and 800 teachers. Bislama is often the medium of instruction, and it is the language used in Kindabuk (Brown and Crowley 1990), a collection of educational activities for young children, which is an important resource for preschool teachers. The Vanuatu Preschool Association is an NGO, although coordin-ators are employees of the Department of Education. However, the Vanuatu preschools are quite different from those in PNG. Children are introduced to some basic reading and writing, but the goal is socialization rather than acquisition of literacy skills. However in some cases, efforts are being made to combine the two systems. For example, teachers at Lawa Preschool at Southwest Bay (Malakula) have attended the PNG Trust training course held in Port Vila, and are attempting to teach literacy in Bislama to the preschool children. The progress of these students in comparison to others will be monitored when they reach the primary school in 1996.

In 1993, the Literacy Association of Vanuatu (LAV) was established, with members from organizations doing literacy work, including SIL, World Vision, NKDT, the Baha’i Faith, the Preschool Association. With an increasing interest in literacy in Vanuatu languages, the use of Bislama in non-formal education will almost certainly increase as well.

Research

One argument against using Melanesian Pidgin in education is that it will interfere with students’ subsequent acquisition of English. This argument is used by people who may otherwise support the use of vernacular languages in education, but think that Melanesian Pidgin is a special case because of its apparently close relationship to English in terms of vocabulary (or lexicon). For example, Thomas (1990:245) described reactions to proposals made at the 1981 Vanuatu Language Planning Conference that Bislama be used in the formal education system:

One of the most common fears concerning the introduction of Bislama as a language of education is that, owing to lexical similarities, negative transfer occurs when pupils subsequently learn English. This fear was also expressed at the conference, when it was claimed that when children learn Bislama at an early age ‘it tends to interfere with their learning of English.’

Similar reactions occurred at the 1988 Workshop on Vernacular Education and Bilingual Education in Australia and the South Pacific in response to suggestions that Melanesian Pidgin be used in bilingual programs in linguistically heterogeneous urban areas (Siegel 1993:300).

In order to test the legitimacy of these fears, an evaluation of the PIM Tok Pisin Prep-school program in Ambunti PNG (described above) was started in 1989. The program was evaluated according to both socio-cultural and educational criteria, using ethnographic, survey and formal comparative data. The ethnographic research consisted of unstructured interviews with community school teachers, village committee members and parents, in which they were asked to give their general opinions about the program. In light of the predictions of interference made by senior educators and administrators, teachers were also asked a specific question about the effect of having learned initial literacy in Tok Pisin on the English of the former prep-school students. In addition to this ethnographic research, teachers’ opinions and attitudes were also surveyed by question-naires.

The formal comparative research was carried out in the community school at the district centre of Ambunti (St Joseph’s Community School). It involved comparing the educational achievement of students who had gone through the prep-school program and those who had not. Since the evaluation was interested in finding out whether the community judged the program as a success or failure, the decision was made to use locally familiar and accepted criteria: namely community school term test results. These tests are normally held at the end of each of the four terms in the school year. Marks are given in three subject areas: English, Mathematics (“Maths”), and General Subjects (health, social science, etc.). The term test results of “ex prep” students (who had gone through the prep-school program) were compared to those of the “no prep” students (who had not gone through the program). There were three research hypotheses:

H0 there is no difference between the marks of the two groups

H1 the marks of the “no prep” students are significantly higher than those of the “ex prep” students, especially in English (the prediction according to the “interference” argument)

H2 the marks of the “ex prep” students are significantly higher than those of the “no prep” students

Because their one or two years of extra formal education may give ex prep students an initial advantage, the marks were also examined in upper as well as lower grades, with the prediction being that any initial differences between the groups would be neutralized over time.

Results: First of all, interviews and questionnaires showed that community school teachers think that the “ex prep” students are well-adjusted, cooperative, more active in participation in class and have better attendance records than “no prep” students. With regard to English, the teachers reported that there are no special problems of interference, and that the influence of Tok Pisin can be seen only sometimes in spelling and pronunciation. The “ex prep” students learn English more easily than the “no prep” students. The same is true for Mathematics and General Subjects to some extent. Several teachers said that the Prep-school Program makes their job easier. Of the three head teachers interviewed, the two from “bush schools” (small schools outside the district centre) were extremely favourable in their comments. The head teacher from the Ambunti community school, however, was not so impressed. He said that the Prep-school Program helps the students when they first come to school, but after one or two terms, the other students catch up. Interviews with parents, committee members and students reveal only favourable attitudes to the program.

At this stage of the research, figures on drop-out rates and term test results have been analysed for the Ambunti community school only up to the end of 1992. There are many problems with gathering these figures because some results have been lost and some teachers have left the school without leaving their records behind. Sufficient results are available so far for three “streams” of community school students:

Stream 1: those who began Grade 1 in 1988
Stream 2: those who began Grade 1 in 1989
Stream 3: those who began Grade 1 in 1990

For Stream 1, complete records are available only for 1988, 1990 and 1992 (Grades 1, 3 and 5); the 1989 and 1991 records are missing. For Stream 2, complete records are available for 1989, 1991 and 1992 (Grades 1, 3 and 4); the 1990 records are missing for one of the two classes. For Stream 3, complete records are available for 1990, 1991 and 1992 (Grades 1, 2 and 3).

The statistical analysis of the data on academic achievement involved the measurement of three dependent variables and two groups of possibly relevant influencing factors. The dependent measures were final term test scores for English, Maths and General Subjects, all of which were standardized. The first groups of factors were whether the students attended the prep-school program (prep-school) or not (no prep-school). The second group were measure-ment occasions: three different grades for each stream.

The means for the standardized scores are given in the tables below.

Table 3: Stream 1: Means (standardized scores)

Table 4: Stream 2: Means (standardized scores)

Table 5: Stream 3: Means (standardized scores)

The analysis of these results indicates that children who had been involved in the prep-school program scored significantly higher in term tests than those who had not been involved. Importantly, the overall higher achievements were in English, as well as in Maths and General Subjects. Therefore, both the null hypothesis and H1 (the prediction of the interference argument) can be rejected. Furthermore, on the basis of the test scores, the prep-school children showed significantly higher academic achievement across time in all subjects. The differences between the groups over time were consistent for all grades, with the exception of Maths in Grade 4 for Stream 2. There is no explanation for this anomaly, but it does not alter the overall result that the effect of two extra years of schooling was not significantly neutralized over time. This is contrary to the view that students who have not attended prep-school quickly catch up with the ones that have.

Thus, this study clearly refutes arguments that using Melanesian Pidgin in formal primary education will adversely affect students’ subsequent acquisition of English.

Conclusion

Although Melanesian Pidgin is now recognized as an important tool for non-formal education in Papua New Guinea, Solomons Islands and Vanuatu, it is still not seen as appropriate for formal education. Perhaps word of the success of the Tok Pisin Prep-school program will begin to filter through to educational planners in all three countries.

References

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Asian Development Bank/Australia Development Assistance Bureau Joint Technical Assistance Team (1987). Vocational training and the labour market in Vanuatu (Asian Development Bank, T.A. No.810-VAN Vocational Training Project).

Baldauf, Richard & Allan Luke (eds.) (1990). Language planning and education in Australia and the South Pacific. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Brown, Claudia and Terry Crowley (1990). Kindabuk. Port Vila: University of the South Pacific.

Curriculum Reform Office (1994). A Strategy to Implement Elementary Education. Port Moresby: Curriculum Development Division, NDOE.

Faraclas, Nicholas (1989). New directions for literacy in the 1990s: hope for the survival of Tokples in Papua New Guinea. Paper presented at the Linguistics Society of Papua New Guinea Congress, Port Moresby.

Jourdan, Christine (1990). Solomon Pijin: an unrecognized national language. In Baldauf & Luke (eds.), 166-81.

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Papua New Guinea Department of Education. (1991). Education Sector Review. Volume 2: Deliberations and Findings.

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Ray, Chelsey (1994). Nonformal literacy enrolment in 1994. Typescript. Port Moresby: LAS.

Siegel, Jeff (1993). Pidgins and creoles in education in Australia and the southwest Pacific. In Atlantic meet Pacific: a global view of pidginization and creolization, Francis Byrne & John Holm, eds., 299-308. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Solomon Islands National Literacy Committee (1992). A survey of literacy and language, March - November 1991. Honiara: National Literacy Committee and Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development.

Thomas, Andrew (1990). Language planning in Vanuatu. In Baldauf & Luke (eds.), 234-58.

World Vision Australia (1995). Vanuatu Literacy and Health Education Project. (Submission to AusAid).

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