English as a Life Skill

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Address by Sunimal Fernando, Presidential Advisor and Coordinator (English) of the Special Presidential Task Force on English and IT at the HRD/HRM Conference on ‘Skills for Employability” for the Public Service and Corporate Sector of Sri Lanka, organised by the Business Unit of the Academy of English and Drama, on January 9th 2009 at the Colombo Hilton

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A substantial amount of resources has been spent by the State over the last several decades for enhancing the teaching of English in our schools.

The last two decades have seen several laudable initiatives driven by dedicated officials for disseminating English language skills through the education system.

An Unconscionable Waste of Public Resources

Almost without exception past initiatives have ended in failure. But even though failure has for several decades stared the system in the face, large amounts of public funds have continued to be spent on futile teaching methods and unproductive programmes.

Humility to accept failure is certainly not the trademark of those who drive the English teaching system of our country. Nor has ‘conscience’ ever been an issue for those lotus-eating ‘Gurus of English’ and ‘Curriculum Wallas’ who continue to control the pith and substance of English teaching method and strategy in such a way as to make sure that English remains the exclusive preserve of a privileged class and a powerful instrument of social repression

It was therefore against such a backdrop of abysmal failure of English teaching in Sri Lanka that President Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed a Special Presidential Task Force to try and confront the problem of English teaching and learning in the country.

Thick Delivery Network but Dismal Output

Today we have no less than 21,984 English teachers in our schools, and as many as 3027 private tutoring institutes teaching English among other subjects to those who drop out of the school system. But any employer in our country will surely tell you that when it comes to recruiting young people for employment, those with adequate spoken or communicative English skills are indeed few and far between.

The ground situation therefore is that we have a particularly thick delivery network of English language skills spread across the country on the one side, and an alarmingly dismal output of persons with English language competence on the other.

Thus while the English language is being delivered so widely and so extensively in all parts of the country, the sad experience of the workplace is that it cannot find persons with adequate English language skills for employment.

Technology without Ideology - a Sure Recipe for Failure

Numerous reasons continue to be offered by educationists and others to explain this paradox. Some attribute it to the policies and procedures that are followed in the recruitment of English teachers to our schools.

Others offer as a reason the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the training given to English teachers. Still others have suggested that the fault lies in the design and management of the training infrastructure for English teachers in the education system. We have also heard it proposed that the supposedly poor quality of teacher trainers lies at the root of the problem.

All the reasons that have been suggested for the poor quality output of English competencies in the education system, both government and private, have been strictly of a technical or institutional nature.

The message is that if the education system were only to get its technical and institutional act together, the English language competency output of the country’s education system would rise dramatically in leaps and bounds.

No doubt these are important factors. And, viewing the teaching of English largely if not entirely from a purely technical and institutional perspective, numerous reforms have been implemented and experimented in the last few decades and more.

But there has hardly been a corresponding improvement in the quality of the output, and despite the large deployment of State resources to improve and extend the teaching of English, the problem remains as acute as it was before.

Finding the Key to our Failure

This experience leads us to ask ourselves a question, - have we been barking up the wrong tree? Were we not wrong to perceive English purely in terms of technique and technology?

Were we right to define the English language purely as a communication technology and build our strategies and programmes for its dissemination on such a premise alone? Is this the key to our failure as a country to achieve an output even distantly commensurate in quality with the quantum of State resources invested in English language teaching over the years.

These are the questions that compelled the Presidential Task Force on English and IT, known earlier as the Presidential Task Force on English as a Life Skill, to challenge the basic philosophical premise on which English language teaching has, by and large, been designed and implemented in our country; The premise that since the English language is but another technical mode of communication, its dissemination has to be designed and delivered largely within a technological and institutional framework.

Ideology and Technology Combined

The activities of the presidential Task Force are designed on a different philosophical premise; namely, that while at one level a language is a technology of communication, it is like every technology an ideological system as well.

The communication technology known as the English language is also an ideology. If its enhancement in the country is therefore to achieve a significant degree of success, its dissemination has to be designed and implemented with sensitivity to both its technical and ideological dimensions.

The Ideological Agenda of English in Sri Lanka

By reflecting on the country’s past experiences and contemplating sensitively on the way in which English as a language is etched in the mainstream Sinhala and Tamil mind, we identified the main contours of the ideology of English in mainstream Sinhala and Tamil speaking society.

Every technology has an invisible ideological agenda, and the English language is no exception to this rule. In the case of language, that ideology is so deeply integrated into our personalities and world-view that a special effort and training is required to detect its presence.

Ideology is a set of assumptions of which we are barely conscious but which nonetheless provide us with a set of rules that give shape and coherence to our relationships with others and with the world. The ideology of English in Sri Lanka has evolved in such a way that it guides our ideas about how we stand sociologically in relation to each other.

The Inhibiting Ideology of English - the Major Obstacle to Learning

In the Sri Lankan mind, English is the primary attribute of upper middle class status. In Sri Lankan society, therefore, if one’s other social, cultural and economic attributes do not qualify one for membership of the upper middle class, the ideology of English impacts on one’s mind, - often subconsciously, - in such a way that it inhibits and rejects one’s efforts to acquire English competency which is in our culture the primary hallmark of upper middle class status. Thus the ideology of English in Sri Lanka inhibits, at a barely conscious level, entitlement to its competence for vast sections of Sinhala and Tamil speaking society.

Crafting a Facilitating Ideology of English for Sri Lanka

The Presidential Task Force therefore considered it absolutely imperative to craft and aggressively project a different ideology of English to take the place of the present inhibiting one, with the full political backing of His Excellency the President.

As a Task Force, we recognized the historical process through which the present ideology of English had evolved in our country. We contrasted it with the process through which a very different ideology of English, - a facilitating rather than an inhibiting one, - had evolved in another former British colony, namely India.

We decided to take our cues from India, - a modern success story in the dissemination of job-oriented spoken English skills in recent years, - and the government of India came forward willingly to support the Presidential Initiative with technical and material assistance.

Ideology of English - Sri Lanka and India compared

Sri Lankan urban social elites of the colonial and post colonial periods were highly westernized and severely uprooted from their own cultural bearings, having been subjected, - unlike their Indian counterparts, - to western influence continuously for well over 400 years.

They crafted and delivered an English language product to serve as the hallmark of their exclusive elite status which was defined by them largely if not wholly in terms of westernization. English was crafted by them as an ideology that provided a gateway to the West, a statement of rejection of one’s cultural roots, a language therefore that should be spoken as an Englishman would speak it - with unblemished dictum, perfect grammar and technically perfect pronunciation.

The colonial and post colonial Indian elites in contrast were not westernised in the same way. They remained strongly rooted in their own culture and tradition: And westernisation was not the hallmark of elite status in India as it was in our country. English was taken on by them simply as a tool of communication, as a life skill and neither as a language as such nor a statement of rejection of one’s own heritage or a gateway to elite status.

The ideology of English in India was not an inhibiting one for acquiring language skills in mainstream Indian society. Indians speak English the Indian way. They have no obsession with perfect diction, perfect grammar or perfect pronunciation. Unlike in our country, there was no inhibitive sociological baggage embedded in India’s ideology of English. To them, English is nothing more than a life skill. A new Sri Lankan Ideology of ‘English as a Life-Skill’

It was in recognition of this reality that the Presidential Task Force defined a new ideology of English for our country and designed a strategy for its diffusion. Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga who has guided the Task Force from the very inception embedded the new ideology in the term ‘English as a Life Skill’.

The definition is so designed that it is not only directed towards the acquiring of a communication skill that is needed for employment but is also committed to the packaging and delivery of English as a plain and simple tool of communication and not as an emblem of social power or an instrument of social repression. It is a definition crafted on the historical experience of India, especially of its four States south of the Vindhyas.

The Ideological Roots of Teaching Methodology

In order to successfully disseminate communicative English skills in our country therefore, it is imperative that we systematically dismember the old inhibitive social ideology of English and its attendant teaching methods, and project in its place the new ideological framework and a set of teaching methodologies related to it.

In doing so, it is important we recognize the fact that the relationship between an ideology and a technology is a dialectical one. The governing ideology of English impacts on the structure and use of its teaching methodology. At the same time, the structure of the teaching methodology in turn impacts on the form and substance of the ideology of English in the country.

It has been argued that the English teaching methods and strategies that are still mainstream in our country but no longer so in countries such as India, only serve to consolidate the old inhibitive ideology of English and ensure that English continues to be the exclusive preserve of an urban upper middle class segment of society.

For instance the curricula and teaching methods used in the schools are those that have been largely designed in English speaking countries such as England, Canada, Australia and the USA to deliver the structure and rules of the language to students who have already learnt to communicate in English in their English speaking homes and environments.

The methods instruct students how to ‘construct’ the language, but that is in order because in those countries they learn how to ‘use’ the English language in their English speaking homes and environments.

New Teaching Methods for a New Ideology of English

But our situation is totally different: And hence these are surely not the methods through which English should be delivered as a second language to students from Sinhala and Tamil speaking homes and environments. The appropriate methodology for teaching English to such students should be crafted in such a way that they are first taught how to ‘use’ the language and not how to ‘construct’ it.

It is our contention that when the language is delivered through a structure, grammar and translation approach to students from non-English speaking homes, what grips the mind of the learner is a reverential fear of English in general and a dreadful fear to speak the language: and unintended perhaps or not, respect bordering on reverence for the class of persons who are able to speak it fluently without mistakes.

Teaching Methods must change with Ideological Change

It is significant to note that it is this same methodology that is used worldwide for the teaching of dead languages, - Sanskrit, Pali and Latin, - and the results too are the same: Namely, a reverential fear of the language and of those historical classes associated with its use, a competence to read and write the language usually with the help of a dictionary but never to have the confidence to speak the language at all.

Therefore, while the Presidential Initiative seeks to transform the ideology of English in the country, it seeks in parallel to radically alter the mainstream English teaching methods as well.

With an accompanying development of training capacity, this methodological transformation will hopefully replace the elitist teaching of English through structure, grammar and translation, - in gradual steps no doubt, - with the teaching of English through listening, speaking, reading and writing (the LSRW method) - a teaching methodology developed in India and speedily enhanced in the past 10 years.

Taking the Cue from India

India and particularly her southern States provide the role model of a developing country where the new IT-related service sector employment opportunities of the last 10 years especially in the BPO sector, resulted in the radical transformation of English teaching methods and course content.

Accordingly, India in the last few years has seen the growth of a successful and expanding English teaching enterprise in both the government and private sectors of education.

With the return of 40 English teachers specially trained on Indian government scholarships as master trainers at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad at the end of 2008, the process of training the government English teacher base in the new methodology has commenced.

In the private tutoring sector too, a slow start was made with the induction of the Vivekananda English Training Academy (VETA) from Chennai. VETA is administering the new methodology in 5 centres so far with 6 more centres in the pipeline.

In the distance learning sector too, City and Guilds Institute (London) and Dharmavahini Foundation are in the process of jointly initiating a modular TV programme of 200 twenty six minute episodes focused on the teaching of basic vocational English with a communicative approach to language teaching and learning.

Moving Forward with a New English Ideology and Technique

By facilitating these initiatives and with more to follow, the Presidential Task Force has gently but decisively challenged the old inhibitive ideology of English and introduced in its place a different ideological framework, ‘English as a Life Skill’.

To transform ideology into action on the one hand and to strengthen in turn the new ideological framework on the other, it has introduced from India a new state-of-the-art set of teaching methodologies and course content as well.

It has set in motion a new dialectic of English learning and teaching that stands on a sound philosophical base unlike the many earlier initiatives that were purely techno-institutional in approach and content.

It is hoped that as our country enters its ‘Year of English and IT’ to be officially launched on February 13th 2009, the new ideology of English and its associated teaching methodology and course content will, - unlike in the past, - encourage rather than inhibit the appropriation of English as a tool of communication by mainstream Sinhala and Tamil speaking society in the years ahead.