Promoting English as a life skill:

Making it simple and straight

Rasika Somaratne

The national road map to take communicative English skills across the country - ‘English as a life skill’ was launched last year. Felicitation of the first phase and the launch of the second phase of the initiative will be held today at Temple Trees under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s patronage. Presidential Task Force on English and IT Coordinator Sunimal Fernando outlines the progress and successes of the project.

Q: Are you satisfied with the progress made during the first phase of Presidential initiative - ‘English as a Life Skill’?

A: We have had a phenomenal degree of success during the past 13 months. Vast strides have been made to achieve our primary objectives which are to dispel the fear of English from the Sri Lankan mindset, start taking English skills across the country to our villages, and help realize President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s vision. Symbolically we are transforming the British spoken English popularly known by the Sinhala term ‘Kaduwa’ (a weapon of power and destruction) into our own Manna Pihiya (a utility instrument used during day to day activities) which is our own Sri Lankan English. The concept ‘English as a Life Skill’ was crafted by Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunge.

Q: What role do you play in the whole process?

A: My task is transforming the President’s vision into strategies, policies and practical programs. From there onwards, implementing, evaluating, monitoring and changing is the function of a special unit set up by the Secretary to the President. This unit is the operational arm of the Presidential Task Force on English and IT. It is they who steer and guide the initiative. I interpret the President’s mind and together with Lalith Weeratunge, transform it into practical policy and strategy. The key player is Weeratunge. He is the wind beneath the wings. I am the public face of it. The implementation is done by the special unit of only six people. Though small it is a well-knit team, dedicated and committed to their task. Their productivity is at a very high level. They are like the team that won the World Cup for us.

Q: Could you tell us about its vision and how the initiative came about?

A: President Mahinda Rajapaksa wanted the disempowerment of English as a privilege of the elites to be completed and instead to see the empowerment of a new ideology of English as a life skill, a straight and simple tool of communication stripped of its historical baggage, a skill for employment and a vehicle for reaching the outside world of knowledge. He wanted English transformed into a common property, a resource owned by all.

The President asked me if I would take over this task and drive a national initiative to give expression to a pledge he made in the Mahinda Chinthana to take English language skills across the country.

He started explaining using all his experience and nuances. What has gone wrong, where have we gone wrong? The average child learns English for five hours a week for 12 years. And when he comes out of school, he can’t write three sentences in a row in English. We have spent billions. Why have we failed all this time? We have to identify the reasons behind our failures and rectify them. We should go to the people, know what they want and build a method which suits them. We should not depend on foreign models, he said.

I sought Lalith Weeratunge’s help. Even though I did not realize then what he told me was prophetic. He said, “your biggest advantage is you know nothing. If you had, your mind would be clogged up with various foreign models. Get started, I will be with you to the end. We will develop a homegrown Sri Lankan model which can be taken across the country.” He told me to travel the length and breadth of the country and begin at the grassroots level and understand the mindset of the people, students and teachers. We discussed matters on a periodical basis.

As advised I first went to the people who mattered most, the teachers in villages who taught English to schoolchildren. With the help of some friends I was able to organize friendly informal discussions with teachers, all round the country. After engaging in this exercise from November 2008 to April 2009 we felt that we had sufficient knowledge and material to work out the framework of a homegrown model. On the advice of the President, Weeratunge appointed a Presidential Task Force to spearhead the initiative, ‘English as a Life Skill’ in which I was the coordinator. Later we developed the road map which was launched on June 24, 2009. In the spirit of the President, we learnt from the people. As a result it was grounded on Sri Lankan experience coupled with the contributions from the English teacher community.

Q: What were the main lessons learnt during the past 13 months?

A: Our children have no difficulty in learning Japanese, Russian, and French. But when we try to teach them English, it becomes impossible. This is despite so much English being around us. In some country’s you have to travel miles to see even a hoarding with a few English letters. The first thing we learnt was that there is a fear in the Sri Lankan mind of English. This is mainly due to the education system evolving on strategies based on foreign models. Our education planners had not taken the adverse impact of using Western foreign expertise into account. So our first, second and third priorities when teaching spoken English became ridding this fear psychosis from the Sri Lankan mindset.

Q: What were the steps taken to rectify identified anomalies?

A: We started using various methods to alleviate this fear psychosis. One was a huge national campaign to encourage speaking English our way. Our intention was to promote spoken English, the Sri Lankan way, with its own unique accent and manner of pronunciation. English language was introduced to the world by the English and was the language of the English people. But, today, English is a global language, and it is no longer the language of the English people. Our intention was to promote English speaking in keeping with Sri Lanka’s culture devoid of the old British flavour. Today, we seek to teach English in our schools and institutions in keeping with our culture, traditions and customs indigenous to Sri Lanka. It is taught purely as a life skill, and not as a challenge to our own culture.

Q: However, there are established standards and technical aspects that have to be grasped to communicate in English effectively?

A: There are standards. Today we release a teacher guide on Sri Lankan English Standards giving guidelines in phonology, vocabulary and syntax (including grammar, word order and idiom). What are the standards? What are the vocabulary innovations which are standard and accepted? Eg.

I had milk rice in the morning has been transformed to I ate kiribath. Kiribath however is not found in the Oxford Dictionary. But kiribath would be standard Sri Lankan English.

Likewise we would use Poya as a standard word. On the other hand we don’t use wesikili or kakkussi but we say toilet or bathroom. So they are not standard Sri Lankan English. These standards are codified for the first time. The first codification of the Sri Lankan English would be presented to the President today.

To be continued