Education Forum

Developing English language usage in school education:

Bilingual education:

The way forward

G. H. ASOKA, Chief Project Officer & Head of the Cell of Language Coordination Project Leader of Bilingual Education Faculty of Languages, Humanities & Social Sciences National Institute of Education Maharagama

The need for improving the use of English targeting developmental aspects of Sri Lanka in the 21st Century has been understood and highlighted in various perspectives: 2009 has been identified and declared the year of IT and English by the Presidential Task Force.

The current leadership in the country has introduced an islandwide program on promoting especially the primary skills of English under the concept, ‘English as a Life Skill’.

Independent Television Network on September 3,2009 carried a news that President Mahinda Rajapaksa expressed his idea on the importance of bilingual education in Pirivena education, too.

Education Minister Susil Premajayanth in the Thematic Debate held in Paris on October 7, 2008 on ‘Protecting Indigenous and Endangered Languages and the Role of Languages in Promoting EFA in the Context of Sustainable Development’ said in a rapidly globalizing world multilingualism, a source of richness, diversity and creativity, could only be sustained through a multifaceted, holistic approach which should include promoting multilingualism to enable communities to work effectively and become part of global communities based on the principle of international cooperation fostering multilingualism [at least bilingualism] in the work place.’ The number of languages spoken throughout the world, according to Grimmes, 1992, is estimated to be 6,000.

Of that, only a small number of languages serve as important link languages or languages of wider communication. They are Bengali, English, French, Hindi, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

These languages are often used and recommended under language policies in different countries as second, third, fourth or later-acquired languages. Nearly 200 countries recognize two or more official languages.

Today multiple language proficiency has become unique in almost all parts of the world and therefore more bilinguals and multilinguals are present in the world than monolinguals. Today, according to Emeritus Professor, Carlo Fonseka, capability of using one language is a certain characteristic of primitive nature of human civilization.

Bilingual education, indeed, is a new practice in recent history of general education in the country. Yet it has been in the system of education linking general education with higher and tertiary education.

Educationist and the father of free education Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara has also stressed this and facilitated to implement this under his project of central schools. In the post colonial era, this had been used in schools and some who have gained positive outcomes of this mode are still met in various positions in the country’s development.

In the Kannangara Memorial Lecture held at the National Institute of Education (NIE) on October 13 2009, the guest speaker, Emeritus Professor Carlo Fonseka also highlighted this aspect widely and recommended this as an urgent need of the current society to achieve development through proper integration of language education with other development aspects through curriculum.

Bilingual education would certainly be a master key for the learners in the school system to enter the scientific, technical, economic and professional avenues of the local and global communities and markets by being internationally engaged while remaining locally grounded without domain loss.

Learners of the Government schools, who commence their learning in the bilingual stream from Grade six after completing their primary education totally in Sinhala or Tamil, become competent in their Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS- fluency in listening and speaking) of English within a maximum of three years. Not only Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, gradually within the due period under a proper model, but also bilingual education allows learners to achieve their Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency Skills (CALPS which reflects competence of using Sinhala/ Tamil and English in Sri Lankan context in academic aspects.

The usual experience of teaching English in the school system the country is that the majority of students are unable to use it even after studying it as a second language for nearly 10 years,.

Practice of bilingual education needs much planning and critical thinking because language can make a difference in people’s lives in many ways and subsequently in the community and society. Language serves as a resource for individuals to constitute and transform social and personal identities. It also provides access to important socio-economic and political markets. Language is an instrument in the constitution of realities. Those who have mastered international languages on their own, use their bilingual or multilingual capacities as an economic asset to be cultivated and passed on to successive generations.

It is true that English is encouraged in bilingual and multilingual education as a second or foreign language using it as one out of two media and at the same time, as subjects in the curriculum. English has gained its importance not only as an international language, but also under the titles like lingua economica, lingua academica, lingua cultura, lingua bellica and lingua emotive.

Its dominance, is attacked internationally in the need for celebrating diversity of human beings, their cultures, languages and bio-diversity. Terralingua Society an international organization working in line with cultural diversity, linguistics and bio-diversity has found out the need for maintaining all languages and cultures in the world because they are ‘co-relationally related and causally related’.

The world does not allow dominant languages to be ‘lingua tyrannosaura’ which leads to ‘linguistic genocide’ and ‘linguistic cannibalism’. Today, therefore, various international organizations, especially the UNESCO has influenced the world convincing them the need for at least bilingualism with fluency in one’s country’s native language/ first language and an international language.

For the rich, the easy channel for fulfilling the need of their children’s English is directing them to study in international schools and Government assisted private schools where everything is taught in English which is a foreign language for the majority of Sri Lankans.

It is another monolingual education (education in one language as the medium of instruction) similar to education in Sinhala/Tamil. Unlike learning in Sinhala/ Tamil as the first language of our children, education in English (education totally in English) definitely harm children’s cognitive, affective and social development and consequently they are alienated in their social milieu.

Another negative impact of monolingual education in English in Sri Lanka is it gradually makes Sinhala and Tamil dead languages or domestic languages in Sri Lanka. It, in return, damages national identity and patriotic aspects through which the children are supposed to be local and global.

The research conducted in African and South American countries have proved that the educational outcome of bilingual education is far ahead of monolingual education. On the other hand, it has been realized that monolingual Education in second language, English practised in colonial countries have faced economic failure.

Cultural rootlessness, blind acceptance of dominant world disorder and uncritical endorsement of more English irrespective of other languages’ importance, cultures and inheritance are some negative outcomes of monolingual education in English.

Students studying only in their second language, English are unlikely to generate critical ideas with intercultural, multilingual competence: they merely oil the wheels of the current inequitable economic system, contributing to social injustice and pandemic. Further, it influences monolingual myopia and complicity in linguistic neoimperialism.

Research shows a few myths behind studying only in English in post-colonial education policies: 1. English is best taught monolingually: the monolingual fallacy 2. The ideal teacher of English is a native speaker: the native speaker fallacy. 3. The earlier English is taught, the better the results: the early start fallacy 4. The more English is taught, the better the results: the maximum exposure fallacy 5. If other languages are used, standards of English will drop: the subtractive fallacy. And the other important fact is monolingual education in any language widens the gap between global ‘Haves’ and ‘Never-to Haves’ and monolingualism even in any politically powerful language in any context is inadequate today.

Thus the necessity is the ability of addressing one’s local linguistic capital and global linguistic capital through properly structured bilingual education programs without becoming blotting sheets of the west.

Meanwhile David Graddol mentions in his English Next that there is a growing belief among language professionals that the future will be a bilingual one. Hence the need of bilingual education arises in Sri Lanka, too.

On the other hand, bilingual education introduced to the Government school system opens avenues for the poor, too to make their children balanced bilinguals and biliterate citizens, demonstrating language capabilities in their Sinhala/Tamil and English methodically.

To be continued

Danger of using eclectic method to teach English

Asantha U. Attanayake Lecturer in English Language, ELTU, University of Colombo

Teaching of English as a second language (and as a foreign language) has seen many phases in its history. From the Direct Method through Grammar Translation Method, Structural Approach, and a number of other methods and approaches, it reached the Communicative Approach. Then came the ultimate conclusion; the Eclectic Method, as the name suggests, derived from eclecticism, a combination of all the methods and approaches in the history of teaching English.

The best method

The teacher has to select the best of all the methods suitable to the students in teaching English, as a second language. It is known that almost all the methods and approaches have emerged and evolved from/in the West or Europe. Asians have depended upon their selection in the way to teach English just as we have taken their language which initially came as a colonial legacy.

How successful is the use of this Eclectic Method in the Sri Lankan context where teaching English takes place in both general education and higher education? Needless to say that teacher is entrusted with the sole responsibility of the selection of the best way to approach the students in teaching a particular task/lesson. Herein, what is understood or taken for granted is the ability of the teacher to select the best out of many methods. To select, teachers should be equipped with knowledge of all the methods and approaches in existence. In the case of the general education system in Sri Lanka, that is school education, teachers of English are given a training for two to three years during which they are given a thorough understanding of the evolution of the teaching methods.

Modern trends

With knowledge expansion in almost all the fields including language education, teachers of English who were trained some decades ago may not get an opportunity to get trained in the modern techniques to teach English. It is known that teachers in remote areas do not get opportunities to update their professional knowledge on a regular basis. Even if there are in service teacher training programs, they may not reach all the teachers in the country. Therefore, the problem is with the equal dissemination of training programs to update teachers with most modern trends in the field and the teachers’ ability to select the best.

When such a situation prevails, how fair is it for teachers to being thrust upon the burden to use the Eclectic Method? Such autonomy for teachers would be welcome in the case of the developed countries where teacher training would be more regular and could be carried out without encumbrances we experience here in the Sri Lankan situation. The other side of the coin is more disastrous.

When asked from the teachers the kind of teaching method they use, the inevitable answer would be “the Eclectic Method” which most of them have heard of and may be known to them via some kind of awareness creation program if not through a proper teacher training under the realities that have been discussed above. Teachers would use any method as they feel suitable for their students. But in reality is this wise? How far is this trustworthy? My personal view is that teachers can use any method selected ad hoc and simply justify the action of the selection of that method by stating it as the Eclectic Method.

This is not to demean teachers of English and their knowledge, but simply to show the danger of the freedom given to a profession which has already not shown remarkable results in the eyes of the public owing to the problems that are beyond the teachers’ control.

In the case of the university teachers of English, the danger is not less. University teachers are recruited for teaching English without prior training to teach a second language. Even if there are teacher training programs in universities, they are geared to develop teaching methodology in general and not specifically for second language teaching. Teaching a language is quite different from teaching a subject and needless to say the teaching methods also differ vastly. The picked-up knowledge about the teaching methods from ad hoc or non-specific (general) training programs may not be sufficient enough to device methods and approaches to teach English that are suitable for our students.

Different methods

I interviewed 24 teachers from three universities. When asked about the teaching methods they used in teaching English, they came out with the names of all the methods that have/had been in use. Among them, some stated they used the Communicative Approach, while some others said they used the Eclectic Method with more use of the Communicative Approach.

Some said they taught the rule first and then gave exercises which I derived as the deductive way of teaching grammar and sentence structures. So, there was a plethora of teaching methods. While this may very well account for the most modern method, that is the Eclectic Method advocated by the experts in the field, one cannot overlook the simple fact that to teach in the same program for the same-level (of English language proficiency) students, teachers have been using various methods.

We need to have clear-cut objectives to achieve from each lesson, activity or task with a specific method to go about it which accounts for reaching the main aim of the program. The techniques should be strictly adhered to and critiqued after each program so that amendments are possible.

Teachers should be given opportunities to discuss the pros and cons of the lessons and the techniques used. Accordingly, the teaching methods should be changed, adapted, derived from time to time to suit the Sri Lankan context. In short, the excuse “the Eclectic Method” should not be used at will to teach all kinds of lessons in teaching English.

Avoiding teaching English in communicative classroom

The one and only reason Sri Lankans struggle with Spoken English is due to the fear of making grammar mistakes in public. Even here in USA Americans speak broken or slang English most of the time and African Americans speak intentionally grammatically incorrect English known as Ebonics. Grammar is not the main focus in almost every spoken Language including Sinhalese. Hence, instead of emphasizing on grammar, teachers should work on building confidence in students to speak English in public or in theclassroom without fear.

The main purpose of a language is to transform one’s thoughts to another person and it is about time we stop considering English as the Whiteman’s language. As a motivational speaker over here in US I have taught and helped Americans in public speaking at a culinary school which by the way is the biggest human fear per science research.

-Evan Balasuriya USA