Mumbai: Getting quality education is the right of every child. And to make this easier for children, ZEE Entertainment, in association with USAID, PlanetRead and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A) has implemented Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is facilitating it. 


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SLS has been implemented on its leading regional channels, Zee Talkies and Zee Marathi with the aim to improve the basic functional reading competency of children in Maharashtra. The initiative is in line with the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) - ‘Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat’.


Speaking on this initiative, Mr. Punit Goenka, MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) said, “Television, being an effective medium of mass communication, is an excellent platform for children to improve their reading skills. We, at ZEE, had undertaken this pilot project of Same Language Subtitling on our regional channels, Zee Talkies and Zee Marathi with the objective of improving literacy in children in Maharashtra. Over the span of 2 years, SLS has been activated for songs in over 250 frequently aired movies in our library. Seeing the successful results of this study, we plan to extend this project to our other channels, as well.” 


Prof. Brij Kothari, IIM Ahmedabad and co-author of the SLS report stated, “In the pilot project, for nearly two years, from June 2013 to May 2015, Same Language Subtitling (SLS) was added on all the songs of 10 weekly Marathi movies telecast in prime time, on Zee Talkies, the state’s most popular 24 x 7 Marathi movie channel. The song-subtitled movies were further repeat-telecasted in other slots on Zee Talkies and Zee Marathi. Together, this resulted in an unprecedented scale up of SLS in Maharashtra, far more than the project had even planned for or anticipated. The study has shown tremendous impact on school children's reading skills, especially in Classes 1-3, with the results showing 10 to 14% more children becoming good readers in each grade.”


Conceived in 1996, SLS is simply the idea of subtitling mainstream TV content in the “same” language as the audio. What you hear is what you read. Several research studies have found that SLS causes automatic and inescapable reading engagement among viewers. Especially on song-based content, regular SLS exposure is known to contribute to reading skill improvement.