Bilingual education in Sri Lanka - Part IV

The importance of English cannot be limited to University education alone. At the same time, 'English-only education' or 'English medium education' from the primary level upto University level does not facilitate the Sri Lankan learner with required competencies in its optimum or maximum

G H Asoka

Both are available in their extreme modes among people in a society and today such extreme thoughts are always a disadvantage or an ignorance of such people. Those who shout for monolingual education in an L2 from the very beginning of a child's education, needs to correct themselves by addressing their attitudes towards languages and linguistic achievements out of education. Attitude engineering is a strategy used under language planning in education to avoid such type of situations.

Attitude engineering, in its technical term, depicts 'systematic use of socio-linguistic and psycho-linguistic knowledge, principles and techniques to determine Government and the speakers of various languages in a language contact situation and the use of the findings as the input for the design and implementation of a program to effect polarization of attitudes in the direction of a desired policy outcome.' (Chumbow, 2009) Attitudes of users of a language influence that language 'to resist domination pressure and adopt mechanisms to appropriate and consolidate the use of existing domains and penetrate new domains and acquire valorizing functions' and ensure intergenerational transmission of a language maximizing its use among users of it.

Various languages

In Sri Lankan education system, a certain bifurcation of the public sphere as public sector and private sector exists while consequencing a principled stratification of use of the languages and attitudes towards using various languages in education.

Both these sectors can be regularized and systematized in their language planning in education using the previously mentioned Common National Framework of Reference for Language Development through Education in Sri Lanka and the National Language Portfolio in Education.

Even quality and quantity related aspects through language planning in education can be supported using the same mechanism with its possible controlling criteria in terms of using languages in curricula addressing educational standards: therefore it could be a mechanism of maintaining national linguistic and cultural identity in common and a model of language use in education highlighting educationally valuable criteria and nationally important language criteria within linguistic and cultural identity of the Sri Lankan child wherever he/she learns, either public or private sector. Use of such a process will guarantee instrumentalization of principles of functional complementarities and attitude-engineering to be motivated and discussed in linguistic aspects in education as a nation.

Language development

Another highly influential facet in education is cognitive development which is normally expected parallel to language development. Language development is methodical and systematic: for development of any language, the route is the same and the rate is different. L2 development is normally motivated through strong L1 and thus it is not wise to expose learners at once to studies totally in an L2 after learning for a lengthy period in their L1.

It is realistic, as Dhammika strongly mentions, that a speedy progress of performance in an L2 in education is impractical within a short period of time: Employment of native speakers for facilitating our learners in English as the ideal or best teachers (Native speaker fallacy according to Robert Philipson) is a mere fallacy in Sri Lankan context: these are business minded strategies of globalization for selling English on foreign lands under the myth of 'The English'.

Age-appropriate maturity in educational performances needs age-appropriate cognitive demands strengthened by age-appropriate linguistic demands. Learners' social environment also influences this methodical process.

School system

Capability of teaching a language within three months or six months in an acquisition-poor-environment to gain satisfactory fluency even in conversational language (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills: BICS) is also a totally impractical practice.

Bilingual education provides learners ample opportunities to develop their L2 parallel to their L1 through both acquisition and learning in its 4Cs curriculum. Difference between the number of opportunities available for BE learners in the curriculum in Sri Lankan context is indicated below comparing it with the same available for monolingual learners in the Sri Lankan Government school system:

Differences and similarities between learners of BE and their peers in monolingual education in L1 in their access to develop languages through the curriculum in general education, Sri Lanka:

The chart vividly shows that more opportunities are available for the BE learner to be exposed to L2 while strengthening their L1. As English is used as a subject upto the level of General English, as a medium of instruction and the possibility of learning its literature, BE learners are blessed with the opportunity of acquiring that language in addition to learning it whereas the mono-lingual learners in L1 are exposed to L2 only as a subject.

As BE learners commence their learning from Grade Six onwards after learning totally in L1 in the primary classes, in the Sri Lankan context they gain their 100 percent fluency in conversational languages (BICS) in their L2 within three to four years. Consequently by the end of Grade Eight or Nine, mostly BE learners can collect a distinction for their General English. Subsequently they proceed five to seven years in their achievements in CALPS.

When it is discussed under language planning in education, acquisition planning in relation to these aspects is paramount in decisions on facilitation of language use for learning contents of different subjects in the curricula.

Human resources

Research under psycho-linguistics and neuro-linguistics in relation to bilingual education have shown the link between pluri-lingualism and creativity: by analyzing scientific literature (European and international) in the year, 2009, the input produced by thirty-country experts and a core scientific research team on five hypotheses clearly shows this aspect. Usually the monolingual education in an L2 impairs children's brain in thinking, yet BE in its additive aspects does not.

In its positive impact under cognitive advantages, six major benefits have been found out under bilingual education: enhancing learning mind, mental flexibility (with convergent thinking, divergent thinking and creative thinking), problem-solving capability, interpersonal ability, meta-linguistic ability and reduced age-related mental diminishment.

Once the English medium education recommends all the subjects to be learnt in English (an L2) from the very beginning in the Sri Lankan context, it definitely impairs learners' cognitive capacities and therefore again is a mismatch. Because of all these reasons, English medium education, with its demerits and linguistic disadvantages for the child to reach cognitive achievements, is not a necessity in the Sri Lankan education from Grade One onwards.

Private sector

Unlike BE learners, learners who study from the beginning in English (an L2) in the Sri Lankan context are less likely to become critical students and therefore the human resources developed out of the English-only education are, as Philipson says, 'more likely to oil the wheels of the current inequitable economic system, contributing to social injustice and pandemic'.

Hence the need is not English medium education (the type of education available in private sector of education even for general education) from the inception of learners' schooling, but bilingual education (through which learners are provided with instructions using minimum two languages as media of instruction targeting equal competency for using them in four skills) to make our younger generation capable of addressing both local linguistic capital and global linguistic capital with a balance and necessary attitude-engineering through education towards it.

The writer is the Project Leader of Bilingual Education, Language Coordination Unit, Languages, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, National Institute of Education, Maharagama

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