anyone who needs to develop linguistic knowledge and skills this will be helpful. challenges in fostering literacy development among Srilankan English language learners

1. Challenges in fostering
literacy development among
Sri Lankan English language
learners.
U.P.N.S.Gunathunga
ELT/18/B2/43
Applied linguistics- assignment 3

2. Challenges in fostering literacy development among Sri Lankan
English language learners.
Literacy development is a fundamental process in human lives. People communicate using a
language it is identified as the mother language. Literacy development means the ability of
reading and writing. It refers to the ongoing development of skills that need to communicate
through written communication. To foster literacy development there must be a proper way of
encouraging learners to acquit the aforementioned capabilities. There are several judgments
presented by researchers but there is no specific definition of what literacy is. According to
Lawton and Gordon, 1996, p 138, “The attribute of literacy is generally recognized as one of the
key educational objectives of compulsory schooling. It refers to the ability to read and write to an
appropriate level of fluency. There is no however commonly accepted definition of what an
appropriate level, effectively or well means:’ There is no universal standard of literacy.’
The term literacy or being literate has been defined in many ways and these definitions are
changing always. The best example for this fact is the term literacy sometimes refers only to
writing and reading but some believe it is for all for skills. Any human being learns how to speak
automatically contrary to reading and writing it depicts that human brains are trained to acquire
languages automatically, the languages that they are exposed to. If the learners are exposed to the
second language automatically they improve their speaking literacy. On the other hand, though
the learners acquire a language automatically reading and writing must be learned and taught
formally. Literacy development happens formally.
The development of literacy depends on the environment that learners are exposed to. If the
second language learner sees that the family reads books spontaneously child learns to read or is
motivated to read. This can be improved by giving storybooks with colourful pictures to read. On
the other hand if the living background associates with many writing activities the child is
motivated to identify the shapes of the letters and starts to write. As teachers to foster literacy
development in the class, there are formal ways of teaching reading and writing. If the school
takes the second language as the first language then teachers have to develop speaking literacy
too otherwise students will not understand what is being taught. Ex: international schools. In
school teachers teach the correct phonic sounds while introducing letters. Every language
consists of particular phonic sounds to practice reading. Learners should be taught sounds first
ex: ‘PAT’ must be taught as ‘pæt’. Sounds must be taught individually and before learners tend
to read teachers should give a thorough idea on blending sounds. Writing can be developed by
practicing different finger molding activities and then tracing copying etc. writing literacy can be
developed easily when it compares to the reading literacy among second language learners. The
background or the environment that a second language learner is exposed to is influential.
Literacy development always connects with the knowledge of alphabet phonological awareness.
Researchers have found the linguistic perspective of literacy development relies on that linguistic
always known as part of cognitive abilities. According to great linguists like Stephen Krashen,
the human brain is not empty when an infant is born into this world. So that learners are ready to
learn a language. This fact is highly emphasized when a child starts to speak. Speaking literacy
happens if the learner acquires the language. The important fostering literacy in a linguistic
perspective is motivating students to understand and read the formation of letters and sounds,
especially to develop literacy skills among second language learners in ESL classrooms.
Language teaching is skill-based teaching which focused on reading, writing, speaking, and

3. Challenges in fostering literacy development among Sri Lankan
English language learners.
rarely listening. Understanding the scientific connectivity in the language can be identified as a
linguistic perspective of fostering literacy development among second language learners.
Literacy development in Srilanka takes a high percentage in the world list. That was 91% in
2008. This depends on their first language skills. The literacy rate of the English learners, the
ability to write and read English is arguable. Srilanka has a multilingual or bilingual atmosphere.
Learners are exposed to many languages. Since Sri Lanka was invaded by several countries it is
a known fact that here we have a multilingual background. According to the Srilankan context,
the literacy rate differs from urban areas to rural areas. Learners in urban areas are much focused
on English than in rural. According to Kachru’s concentric circle, he has introduced three circles
as the inner circle, outer circle, and expanding circle. The countries under British colonials have
identified in the outer circle it is the place where Sri Lankans are included. This predicts that Sri
Lankans have a good command of English compare it to countries in expanding circle. In
Srilanka the department of statics has presented 34% could speak in English. According to this
rate, it is easy to assume that the ability to write reading and understanding the language might
be lower than this percentage.
Srilanka does not have the uniformity of education it is because second language learners do not
experience the same level of English learning environment. Though English is known as the link
language it shows a huge gap or reluctance in absorbing this language. Although the very
Srilankan know the letters of the alphabet they don’t know the phonological sounds. Second
language learners find it very difficult to read. Therefore to improve reading and writing literacy
among English learners is a little challengeable though it is taught in schools. The above-
mentioned information will not apply to urban areas.
The educational background is highly affected by this factor it is because education in a rural
area is differing from education in the urban area. In some schools, there are no English teachers
and students don’t know the alphabet. They haven’t heard any English words in their school.
Second language learners in rural areas come from a background where the second language is
never used. This pathetic situation is quite different in urban areas. There are many teachers in
the schools and the second language is used there. Some schools have excess teachers to teach
English. Also, urban second language learners can go for tuitions to improve their literacy
whereas rural area learners hardly find something to eat. Those types of English language
learners look at this beautiful language as an enemy. In this context, it is challenging for second
language learners to learn and improve their literacy.
The urban areas have more facilities, more teachers, tuitions, and learners are exposed to the
language more than learners in rural areas. The important fact to consider is the teachers of
English in SriLankan society have different skills of handling the language. Though the
government says equality in education there is a huge gap. To develop a student’s or learner’s
literacy rate teacher has to have a good approach. Most of the teachers who teach English in
Srilanka have no command of handling the language. It is a failure of the education system.
Teachers teach English using the mother tongue. The teacher can use the mother language but it
seems there is a drawback when improves the literacy of learners. There must be uniformity
among teachers. The uniformity leads to practice one way of teaching. Some incidents happened
recently which brings good examples to the aforesaid fact. Srilankan president asked one English

4. Challenges in fostering literacy development among Sri Lankan
English language learners.
teacher to speak in English in public. That particular teacher could not manage the language
fluently. It shows how the language improved in rural areas. Linguistic competency is paramount
to foster literacy development in second language learners.
Furthermore, I have experienced an incident during my training period. It was a rural school in
the eastern province where there was no any English teacher for 11 years and the o/l result was
0%. This is only one incident but there are many schools in Srilanka without English teachers. In
this multilingual context, people who have fostered literacy in many languages. Multilingual
second language learners are active and capable of learning English. The best example is most of
the Srilankan Tamils do write and read both Sinhala and English. They are capable of doing that.
To develop literacy among second language learners only the teacher’s effort will not be enough,
students must have a passion to learn a language.
The challenges teacher faces when improving student’s literacy are various. There can be
language problems, environmental problems, social problems, psychological problems, etc. In a
class, a teacher meets different students who come from different backgrounds. There can be
different levels of students so that teachers should be keen on what to teach and when to teach.
The phonetic sounds, letter blending with sounds must be taught clearly. To teach those areas
teachers should think out of the box and make very interesting lessons. Then the only teacher can
develop student’s reading and writing skills. The challenge of finding innovative teaching
materials is another hard job. Teachers must be given new and effective teacher resources.
Students come to school from different backgrounds and they have different levels of exposure
to this language so time is challengeable. It is because students learn a second language only for
40 minutes the whole day students use or communicate in the first language; this can be quite
different in schools that conduct English medium lessons. Within 40 minutes teacher cannot
uplift student’s writing and reading ability. There should be a process of improving student’s
literacy skills. Teachers can launch some projects in the school like reading camps creative
writing pools etc. in those types of activities the learners automatically learn how to read. The
teacher can teach sound blending and phonemic awareness instead of teaching a
The teacher can teach sound blending and phonemic awareness instead of teaching a syllabus in the
class. Literary associations, debate teams can uplift learners’ literacy skills.
There many ways of developing second language learners and make them well competent in language
including all four skills. These days English is taught as a subject first of all teachers must explain to
students that this is a language and to explore the world learners must be competent enough. Fostering
second language literacy among students is not make students ready to write an o/l exam and forget
everything. Learners must understand English is the global language and nothing can be done in the
world without proper handling. Both students and teachers have a similar responsibility to foster second
language skills of students.

5. Challenges in fostering literacy development among Sri Lankan
English language learners.
References
https://scielo.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0
716-58112007000100014
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335900799_Appli
ed_Linguistics_Perspective_in_Developing_Reading_Material
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231902836_Writi
ng_literacy_and_applied_linguistics
https://www.mextesol.net/journal/index.php?page=journal&
id_article=153
https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/fostering-literacy-
development-english-language-learners

6. Challenges in fostering literacy development among Sri Lankan
English language learners.
Thank you