Language learning and people’s aspiration

Following are extracts from submissions made to the LLRC by Sunimal Fernando. Second part of this article was published yesterday

The Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim respondents in the Northern and Eastern Provinces gave equal partiality to the improvement of job opportunities through proficiency in another language as much as their choice for national integration.

This stance could be supported by the fact that the people in the Northern and Eastern Provinces having been somewhat remote due to various factors that restricted interaction with other parts of the country, which had rendered them monolinguals, may strongly feel in an environment of peace and reconciliation the need to learn the other national language in an effort to improve their job opportunities.

Sunimal Fernando

The most interesting line of reasoning from among the responses was the fact that proficiency in the other national language would facilitate the exchange of ideas across the borders of ethnicity and language.

This would clearly substantiate one of the key objectives of a trilingual initiative, which should be to develop the two national languages to be used in discourse, debate and discussion and the development of a culture of knowledge in the local languages.

The responses provide further acceptance of the initiative by recognising the fact that our two national languages can also be developed to a status that would enable them to serve as a vehicle for dialogue, development and dissection of modern thought and knowledge other than in the English language.

Higher education

Proficiency in another national language was considered advantageous for purposes of higher education as well.

It would augur well for the initiative that the respondents did not feel pressured socially to acquire proficiency in the other national language, which allows them the space to learn and acquire competence in their own time and according to their ability.

Over 90 percent of all respondents belonging to different categories and representing different provinces in the country had convincingly supported the need for children to be proficient in English. The major reasons for acquiring proficiency in English was to improve job opportunities and for better higher education.

All school students (100 percent) that had taken part in the survey had expressed the need for proficiency in English for purposes of higher education. Although English has not been highly regarded as contributing towards national integration, it nevertheless still retained its long-standing significance as a language of social status and prestige among Sri Lankans as confirmed by the survey results.

The socio-linguistic survey makes evident that people do want to be proficient in English, but the majority do not fanatically yearn for the proficiency exhibited by a native speaker of the English language.

An eagerness for acquiring a native speaker like proficiency in English is not a majority endorsement as demonstrated in other queries. Over 56 percent of Sinhala respondents in the Western, Southern and Central Provinces want to acquire native speaker-like proficiency in English, although only 37 percent of their Sinhala counterparts in the Northern and Eastern Provinces wished to have the same level of proficiency. The majority of Tamil respondents namely 55 percent and 61 percent in majority Sinhala speaking provinces and in the Northern and Eastern Provinces respectively wanted to acquire the language competence of a native speaker, while the need to acquire the same degree of proficiency among Muslims in all provinces was relatively higher than the other two groups surveyed; accordingly 66 percent and 75 percent of Muslims in the majority Sinhala speaking provinces and in the Northern and Eastern Provinces wished to acquire native speaker like proficiency in the English language.

Language skills

Very few respondents wanted to limit competency in the English language to the spoken form only; majority of respondents expressed the need to become skilled beyond the mere ability to speak the English language.

The ability to understand the English language was on the whole average for the Sinhala respondents in all provinces (58 percent and 54 percent respectively), while only 35 percent and 38 percent from the majority Sinhala speaking provinces and from the Northern and Eastern Provinces respectively claimed to have a good grasp of understanding the English language 60 percent of the Tamils in the Western, Central and Southern Provinces possessed a high degree of familiarity with the language, although the same could not be said of Tamils surveyed in the North and the East, whose majority (56 percent) had only an average understanding of the English language.

University lecturers

The Tamil respondents in the majority Sinhala speaking provinces continue to impress their command in English language skills through their excellent ability to speak, read and write (56 percent, 54 percent and 56 percent).

The Muslims in all provinces had almost an equal number of respondents possessing a good and average familiarity in their ability to understand the language.

Although the ability to speak, read and write the English language had been recorded as average for most categories of respondents in all provinces (except the Tamils in the majority Sinhala speaking Provinces), it nevertheless indicates that English as a second language has been taught across Sri Lanka, because even if the ability to speak, read and write English may be average on the whole, still more than 40 percent of the respondents in all the provinces had an average acquaintance of the spoken, reading and written form of the English language.

Among the respondents who claimed to possess a high degree of familiarity in understanding, speaking, reading and writing the English language were professional service personnel and university lecturers, which provide focus for all future English language initiatives in determining where interventions ought to be directed at.

The English language was viewed as useful for social mobility across the board.

English was also considered important in obtaining employment in business transactions and a high endorsement for the benefits of English to acquire modern knowledge. English has been identified as being useful in getting work done in government offices and for travel within the country and outside the country.

Thus English can continue to play a pivotal role in supporting the process of acquiring modern knowledge developed outside the country, which could be converted into the two national languages of the country to be used by all citizens in their various pursuits and could lead to the development of various schools of thought, discussion and discourse.

Respondents in general have had no objections in using mixed languages for communication and agreed that it made the process easier and although a small number of respondents felt that one's language is likely to be damaged if certain aspects were loaned from other languages, over 50 percent of all respondents in all provinces disagreed with the notion that a language will get distorted owing to borrowing from another language.

It is evident that there is a mixed perspective and perception of the teachers' role in encouraging the children to mix languages.

Although over 50 percent of Tamil and Muslim respondents did not object to teachers encouraging children to mix languages, Sinhala respondents on the whole disapproved of teachers following such a possibility.

The peoples' desire to maintain the purity of any language is evident in the fact that all respondents largely agreed that there was no harm in mixing languages in speech but not when it comes to the written form.

Moreover there was unanimous agreement that languages should not be mixed in formal situations. Concluded