There have been discussions on the list before about the problems of dealing with students who are illiterate in their first language, though I believe the last one focused on Spanish speakers. Sheryl Dunn takes an interesting case of an Afghan student who is not literate in her first language (Dari) and asks: "Would it be easier to teach her... to read and write English ...or to take an educated Afghan who already knows to
read and write Dari and teach them English?"
I have never taught illiterate students, but fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, so here goes! If you are going to teach according to a relatively traditional concept of teaching, then I would think the literate would have a big advantage, not least because he (I use 'he' to distinguish the literate learner from the illiterate, and to reflect the sad reality that illiteracy in Afghanistan is higher amongst women than
men) has been through an education of some sort, and is familiar with 'book-learning'. Where the illiterate learner will have a disadvantage is if she has to learn literacy and English simultaneously by learning English through the written word. If on the other hand you are prepared to innovate wildly and restructure the whole concept of language learning for the illiterate learner so that she can first learn to speak
and then later to write in English, then the playing field might be a bit more even. Think about how something will be memorised and recalled when you have no access to the written word; think about how many times words and phrases need to be repeated. Learning this way will be radically different from conventional learning, and at the same time very taxing for the teacher.
Actually, an important point is raised by Phillipson, who notes the negative effect on local language and culture in parts of Africa of all education being in English. Because the local language is not the language of literacy, it becomes devalued, resulting in a kind of national schizophrenia where people are out of touch with African selves because by definition seeing themselves as educated means seeing themselves as not speakers of their mother tongue. This also happened in the Soviet Union, where speakers of minority languages such as Sakha lost the connection to the cultural heritage of their mother tongue by
being forced through an education system that only accepted Russian as the language of education. With Phillipson, one might argue that there could severe negative consequences to teaching Afghan women literacy in English when they are illiterate in their first language. In countries like Afghanistan, where the idea of women being literate is already threatening to some (men), the idea of them being literate only in
English could cause even more social problems.