Possibilities and Challenges of Implementing EIL in Sri Lanka : Attitudes of Sri Lankans
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Possibilities and Challenges of Implementing EIL in Sri Lanka : Attitudes of Sri Lankans
- 2. Democratic, Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka Sinhala Tamil English
- 3. [1]. The Official Language in Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. [2]. Tamil shall also be an Official Language. [3]. English shall be the Link Language. 13th Amendment of the Constitution (2011) of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,
- 4. Date Event 1796 The British East India Company annexes the Maritime Provin Treaty of Amiens ces, and English becomes the only official language. 1948 Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) gains independence from Great Brita Dominion Status in. English remains the only official language of independent Ceylon. 1956 Sinhala becomes the only official language of Sri Lanka. Official Languages Act English is dethroned. July 1987 Sinhala, Tamil and English are declared the official languages Indo – Sri Lanka Accord of Sri Lanka. November 1987 English is the link language, Sinhala and Tamil are the official 13th Amendment to the constitution languages of Sri Lanka.
- 5. The variety of English we use in Sri Lanka at present is identified as the English of colonized but not of colonizer. SSLE has its own dictionary and literature. Tamil English SSLE Burgher English “Not Pot” English
- 6. English as a Foreign language English as a Second Language English native speakers
- 7. micr o 65 – Participants, Sri Lankans in the age group of 20 - 40
- 8. 1. English is important to find a good job and for higher education. 2. English is important for successful online communication 3. It is important learn English as an International Language. 4. English is required to communicate with native speakers of English. 5. English is required to communicate with non native speakers of English. 6. It is important to have native like pronunciation. 7. English has to be learned from native speakers of English. 8. Sri Lankan English teachers are capable of teaching not only grammar but pronunciation effectively. 9. Are you aware of different varieties of English ? 10. Which variety of English do you want to learn and use? Rank them in order of preference.
- 9. 1. Sri Lankans accept the importance of learning English for up ward mobility in the society. 2. The participants acknowledge the importance of English as an international language and admit that English is used to com municate with native as non native speakers of English. 3. The participants of the study are aware of different varieties of English and they do not discriminate native and non native m odels of English. 4. Despite of positive attitudes towards non native varieties of E nglish the participants still prefer to learn and use inner circle varieties of English.
- 10. •2009 has been declared as the year of IT and English in Sri Lanka •on July 19, 2009, the President launched the National Road Map to promote Spoken/ Communicative English skills in Sri Lanka. • English as a Life Skill Speak English Our way
- 11. “..children should be allowed and encouraged to speak English our way and they should not feel ashamed or inferior to do so. Many countries in the world have their own ways of speaking English and there is no reason for Sri Lanka to be an exception and children should not be deterred from speaking English our way….” Sunimal Fernando the Coordinator/ Convener of the Presidential Task Force on English and IT,
- 12. “The classroom is a powerful site of policy negotiation. The pedagogies practiced and texts produced in the classroom can reconstruct policies ground up. In fact, the classroom is already a policy site; every time teachers insist on a uniform variety of language or discourse, we are helping reproduce monolingualist ideologies and linguistic hierarchies.” (Canagarajah : 2006)
- 13. 1. English is important to find a good job and for higher education. . Number of Participants Strongly Agree Agree Neutral 1 Disagree 0 Strongly Disagree 0 48 16
- 14. 2. English is important for successful online communication Number of Participants Strongly Agree 38 Agree Neutral 24 2 Disagree 1 Strongly Disagree 0
- 15. 3. It is important to learn English as an international language. Number of Participants Strongly Agree Agree Neutral 0 Disagree 0 Strongly Disagree 0 52 13
- 16. 4. English is required to communicate with native speakers of English. Number of Participants Strongly Agree 30 Agree 30 Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 0 3 2
- 17. 5. English is required to communicate with non native speakers of English. Number of Participants Strongly Agree 6 Agree 36 Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 0 17 6
- 18. It is important to have a native-like pronunciation. Number of Participants Strongly Agree 2 Agree 13 Neutral 23 Disagree Strongly Disagree 22 5
- 19. 7. English should be learned from native speakers of English. Number of Participants Strongly Agree 0 Agree 15 Neutral 19 Disagree Strongly Disagree 29 2
- 20. 8. Sri Lankan English teachers are capable of teaching not only grammar but pronunciation effectively. Number of Participants Strongly Agree 16 Agree 26 Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 19 1 3
- 21. Are you aware of different varieties of English? Number of Participants Yes No 62 3
- 22. Average Ranking according to the preferred variety to learn/use Avarage Ranking British English American English Australian English Sri Lankan English Canadian English New Zealand English Hongkong English Indian English Pakistani English South African English Singapore English Koren English 11.02 10.82 9.74 9.28 8.23 6.02 5.42 4.37 3.91 3.4 3.17 2.65
Editor's Notes
- Sri Lanka, officially known as Democratic, Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is a country that belongs to the outer circle proposed by Kachru (). According to the census of 2012, the total population is approximately 20.2 million. Mainly three languages are spoken in Sri Lanka namely Sinhal Tamil an English. Other than these three there are people who speak other languages such as Malay, and indigineous languages.
- When looking at the constitution of Sri Lanka it decleares, (read the slide)
- story of English in Sri Lanka began with the annexing of the Maritime Provinces by the British East India Company in 1796. Since then until 1956 the language of colonizer has remained as the official language of the island. Few important mile stones of the story of English in Sri Lanka.
- Sri Lankan English flavored with borrowings and influences from Sinhala and Tamil has evolved including the “vocabulary for local religions, kinship systems etc., now considered part of the language. It has been identified as a different variety of English. Many studies have been done on Sri Lankan English and also it has its own dictionary and literature as well. Within the variety of SSLE there are the sub varieties of Tamil, Burger and not pot English.
- While English constitutes a second language for the majority of the Sri Lankan speech community, there is also asmall circle of native speakers of SLE as well as a considerable amount of people for whom English is arguablya foreign language. To put it in a nutshell, a usage-based approach to Sri Lankan English yields three Kachruviancircles in miniature. So there is this power struggle between these three circles. Through out the history of Sri Lanka, English remained the language of the privileged. English language is frequentlyreferred to as the kaduva, the Sinhalese word for sword, in Sri Lanka. This sword draws the line and divides the society between privileged and non privileged in terms of language and it acts as the ladder to access to the “upper” society
- Ok now to see the attitidues of Sri Lankans towards English I conducted this mini survey. The participants were all Sri Lankans Living in Sri Lankan. 45 of them are Sinhalese and 20 are from Tamil community. However this study is a bit limited. But I believe it’s useful to get a general idea.
- The study involve 9 statements. I asked the participants to rate the statements. I have given the choices of Agree, Strongly agree, Neutral and Disagree and strongly disagree. The first two questions aim to investigate the importance of English. According to the results majority all most all agree on the first statement and 62 agree on the second statement.Next three questions aims the communicative aspect of English. the participants feel it is important to learn English as an international language. In other words, they see English not just as another foreign language but as an international language for global communication. When talking about the communication with native and non native speakers of English, majority of the participants (60) think, English is important to communicate with native speakers. Only 2 participants have marked the opposite opinion. Concerning the statement 5, majority of the participants (42) think English is needed to communicate with non native speakers of English. Interestingly 17 of the participants have shown a neutral attitude towards this. From this results it is apparent that participants believe English is used to communicate with native speakers of English as well as the non native speakers.The statements 6,7, and 8 are designed to examine the attitudes of the participants towards native and non native models of English (Kachru:1992, Braine: 1999, Kirkpartick: 2006, Gunesekera: 2006, Matsuda and Friedrich: 2012,). Statements 6 and 7 explore the attitudes towards the native models of English while the statement 8 aims to explore the attitudes towards native models. When looking at the responses of the participants 27 participants have indicated it is not important to have a native like pronunciation, and 15 disagree with them. Interestingly the number of participants who suspended their judgement, on this statement is higher compared to the other statements. However when it comes to teaching, majority of the participants do not believe English should be learned from native teachers. Moreover regards to the statement 8, majority believe that a Sri Lankan teacher can effectively teach not only grammar but spoken English. This attitude again confirms the fact that Sri Lankans acknowledge non native like pronunciations. Moreover majority of the participants have accepted non native (Sri Lankan) teacher as a model. The statement 9 aims to explore the awareness towards different varieties of English. According to gathered data only 3 participants out of 65 say that they are not aware of different varieties of English. However this statement is a bit ambigos. Because through personal communication I learned that some of the participants new only the varieits of British and English. As the last question of the survey the participants were asked to indicate their preferred variety of English to learn and to use. According to the average ratings of the participants, the most preferred variety is British English, while American English closely follows. Australian English stand in the third positions. However, Sri Lankans with positive attitudes towards non native teaching models and aware of varieties of English, contradict themselves and have placed Sri Lankan English in the fourth position. Regardless of their positive attitudes towards non native teaching models, their preference to learn/use inner circle varieties is obvious.
- Now to turn back to the context of Sri lankaThis program aims to promote the Sri Lankan variety of English.
- Thecodinator of this program decribes it in this way. However there are criticisms about this. The teachers are trained in India. So there is the critisim that what is this Our way. Is it the Indian way.
- So now in Sri Lanka this powerful policy negotiation site is at use and bottom up approach regarding implementing EIL. On the other hand as per the results of the study, show positive attitudes towards the perspective of EIL. Therefore I believe that Sri Lanka is already on the way of implementing EIL.