Communication in progress
D.C.R.A.
Goonetilleke and Mona Gooneratne, Learning English Book II (Vijitha Yapa
Publications, 2009), Rs. 250/=
The year 2009 has been designated by HE President Mahinda Rajapakse
of Sri Lanka as 'The Year of English and IT'. By this, the Government of
Sri Lanka has set a goal of updating and upgrading the human resources
of this nation.
When the Government of Sri Lanka has thus established its concern
about a major national requirement, the most effective way in which the
intellectual community can respond to it, is to develop learning
strategies in the respective disciplines that would help to create an
up-to-date mechanism for realizing its objective.
Tremendous significance
In that respect what Emeritus Professor D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, former
Head of the Department of English at the University of Kelaniya, and Ms
Mona Gooneratne, former Senior Instructor in English at the University
of Kelaniya, have carried out in the field of English by publishing
Learning English Book 2, is of tremendous significance. In November
2006, I introduced part one of this book Learning English Book 1 as a
sensible approach to communication, and I would like to introduce this
as a rightly defined extension of it.
Learning English Book 2 is clearly a progressive departure from its
predecessor Learning English Book 1, which had taken into consideration
the psychological, social, economic, environmental, and ethnographic
challenges the average learner of English in Sri Lanka is faced with,
and avoids most of the shortcomings that most textbooks in this category
suffer in terms of corpus and design.
Mainly, it is precise about its function as an intermediate-level
core textbook focused on supporting the learner with a wide spectrum of
learning strategies identified in second language pedagogy in an
advanced modern setting in any part of the world.
Effective guide
The book in that respect is on a par with an effective guide to the
study of English published in any part of the world.
But what is special about it in a Sri Lankan context is that it has
concentrated on the needs of the average Sri Lankan learner struggling
to master the language amidst numerous unfavourable circumstances and it
has provided a set of new realistic strategies for developing
communication with a higher degree of complexity than that was
represented in its predecessor.
The design features of the 38 lesson units in Learning English Book 2
imply that they are supposed to build further the language ability of
the learner based on the strong foundation laid through the 46 lesson
units in Learning English Book 1.
The corpus of staple materials composed of 11 dialogues, 3 poems, 7
narrations, 10 scientific descriptions, 4 letters, and 3 biographical
sketches, covers a considerable area of real life language use. The
authors have exploited these materials designed with a touch of
authenticity, to present a reasonable number of grammatical, functional,
and lexical items that any mature learner of the language should have
internalised in order to communicate efficiently.
Lesson Units
This can be understood well while analysing the materials from a
pedagogical point of view. For example, the talkative lady's character
in Lesson Unit 1 uses language verbosely to suit the epithet given to
her. In fact the authors achieve humour through the conversational
strategies she applies in her attempt to escape from the police
constable who expresses himself precisely. "You know... yesterday I had
to attend a wedding and I took my expensive English leather bag." The
presence of this type of irrelevances in her speech at a police check
point can draw the learner's attention to the requirement of observing
the principles of politeness in discourse introduced by Grice (1975) and
the element of humour in the phrasing can help to satisfy the conditions
of the affective filter hypothesis introduced by Krashan (1985). The
language sounds authentic as it is featured by contract forms, discourse
markers, fragmented structures, functional devices, incomplete
sentences, interruptions, etc., which differentiate the spoken from the
written. Interaction with this dialogue alone is boosted by a variety of
exercises that demand the learner to answer scanning and skimming
questions, to judge statements on the text as right or wrong, to hunt
for synonyms, to practise sentence patterns, to quote from the text
expressions that correspond with various functional descriptions, to
create new dialogues, to transform the dialogue into a narrative prose
passage, and to fill in the blanks in report form accounts.
Variety of tasks
All these activities which differ from each other urge the learner to
act more creatively in comprehending the given language and produce new
language to carry out a variety of tasks.
There are 11 dialogues composed with similar conversational
strategies and the dramatisation of such dialogue would definitely
assist the learner in practising conversational skills, while the
language development activities help him or her to develop a good
command of the language. Here the authors have left sufficient margin
for both fluency and competence and accuracy and appropriateness in the
design of the book.
Production exercises
To match with this scheme of work, the other texts too present
language within a precise pedagogical frame. The letters concerned with
functions such as invitation, application for employment, and apology
provide good models for similar activities and help to develop a knack
in writing letters through a process involving partial production
exercises leading to full production exercises, while the short texts,
be they dialogues, poems, narrations, or scientific descriptions,
present language in a pleasant style so that the learner can respond to
them with a sense of motivation.
They are all followed by a sufficient number of language exercises to
enhance the learner's reading, listening, comprehension, reflection,
internalisation, retention, and application of the new language
elements. Like the texts, the exercises also maintain variety. Among the
activities there are exercises on transfer of information, crossword
puzzles, dialogue construction, matching words and phrases, riddles,
word games, question building, short composition writing, interpretation
of statistical charts and diagrams, development of diagrams, exploration
of various facts from prose and digital texts, etc.
The sense of variety the learner is made to experience while dealing
with the texts and the accompanying exercises is the chief strategy
contrived by the authors to ensure that the learner will really achieve
success in mastering English with this book. As a further stage of a
learning process, the book works successfully at an intermediate
language level by means of these texts and exercises.
As in Book 1, here too, new vocabulary, grammatical and lexical items
are presented separately as linguistic elements needing special
attention.
This helps to highlight the new learning items in the texts and to
refer to them easily whenever it is necessary.
Also the explanations given to them are short and learners can retain
these in their memory quite easily. While grammatical consciousness is
raised in this way, the cognitive skills are developed through the texts
and exercises as described above.
Ludic spirit
The book as a whole does not have any loose ends, and presents
language in a ludic spirit, which is crucial for a society like Sri
Lanka. Moreover, the book presents an internationally acceptable
standard variety of English, and may cater to not only Sri Lankan
learners but also learners in other nations who are destined to learn
English amidst difficult circumstances.
- Dr. E.A. Gamini Fonseka Head / ELTU, University
of Ruhuna |
