experimental | political | spiritual learner? | beginner-intermediate
The Cross-Generational Reading Buddy technique is an exchange. An all-round cultural experience, which the Institute believes can have beneficial effects for all parties involved. The Cross-Generational Reading Buddy technique harnesses the innocece and non-judgemental honesty of children as a potentially more effective method of critique for language learners than that provided by adults, who have been tainted by the disparate pedagogical experiences in non-artistic and non-anarchic learning institutions. This critique is often either (a) given in a heavy-handed, disciplinarian manner with little holistic regard for the language learner’s personal and cultural situation or (b) held back by the socio-political baggage of the empathy associated with the contrastic class and cultural situations of, for example a middle-class Western native speaker teacher and a recently arrived asylum seeker.
The Cross-Generational Reading Buddy technique is an exchange between a language learner and a child based on the simple gesture of reading.
HOW: The language learner is paired with a child who can read or is just learning to read.
No rules or agreements are made in advance (if problematic patterns start to evolve, these can be discussed between the language learner and the caregiver of the child after a session)
The language learner simply reads to the child, who might correct them, or might simply listen, perhaps the language learner asks the child for advice on how to pronounce certain words, or what the meaning of those words are.
Each Cross-generation Reading Buddy relationship will be unique.
POLITICAL: although this simple interaction is not necessarily political at face value, the Institue believes in the potential of this exchange for subtle but large social change. At least in the Western context, where there is a large segregation between locals/natives and newcomers, where for children in upper-class areas it is absolutely not to be taken for granted that they will have interactions with people who speak with an accent, and especially not in positions with some degree of authority. This exposure to someone who does not speak the language perfectly and who does not speak with a ‘standard’ accent can have wide-reaching societal effects. This act normalises the ‘abnormal’ accent, through an act of care, in which the language learner, often in a position of powerlessness by default, has autonomy and agency.
BACKGROUND: this technique was unknowingly discovered by Mahy Nambiar, Mirabelle Ratnamohan and Rayuela Ratnamohan in 2021, when Mahy was learning Dutch, while residing with the Ratnamohans.