Project to Improve English in Rural Schools: PIERS / Dr Alice Shanti

PIERS was carried out to plant the seeds of confidence and motivation to acquire English among student s from rural schools by engaging them in group efforts. The program was carried out in four secondary schools in the district of Kuala Pilah over a period five months. The objectives of PIERS were:
i) to build student s’ self-confidence to use English language.
ii) to eradicate the presumption that English is a difficult language to acquire by making acquiring English fun.
More than 400 secondary school students par ticipated in the program. To guide the school students, 40 universit y students from UiTM Cawangan Negeri Sembilan Kampus Kuala Pilah (UiTMCNS KP) were trained as facilitator s. Three activitie s were carried out: Reader s Theatre, Choral Speaking and Stor yboard. During the program the facilitator s got to brush up on their leader ship, communication and facilitating skills. Based on a study that was carried out to check on the student s’ perception on PIERS before and af ter the activities, there was a sharp improvement in the student s’ motivation and conf idence to use English. According to the same study one of the features that gave rise to the marked improvement was the suppor t and encouragement s that they received from the student facilitator s, who encouraged them to use online tools such as dictionaries and google search to enhance the f inal product of their group activities.