Partnership with Librarians: A Strategy to Improve Secondary School Students’ English Literacy

Abstract

English literacy education plays a key role in establishing literate societies in the 21^st century. Having teachers and librarians as professional educators and educational personnel working together, with the provision of relevant literacy facilities, helps achieve this goal. This study applies the Partnership with Librarians Strategy (PLS) by using an equivalent time-samples design to promote students’ English literacy skills. Forty-five seventh, eighth, and ninth graders were randomly selected as the population for this study. Their literacy achievements were measured by using listening, reading, writing, and speaking tests before and after the teaching and learning process. The students’ learning was also monitored using formative tests during the intervention. The results showed that the students’ English skills improved significantly. The improvement is hypothesised to be influenced by the use of PLS as it is also statistically proven by the contribution of each literacy skill to students’ English literacy total achievement, i.e., reading (63.6%), writing (22.9%), speaking (9.2%), and listening (4.3%). It is concluded that PLS makes a significant difference in English literacy learning and therefore deserves to be implemented in any English class coupled with an assessment strategy based on further classroom research to determine its potential effect.