Socio-political dimension of English in Sri Lanka

Revisiting the four principles underpinning the Presidential Initiative: English as a Life Skill:

It was in November 2008 that the President requested me to coordinate for him a national initiative to take English language skills across the country. We were faced with a daunting task. The President explained to me that although every child learns English at school continuously for 10 years - Five hours a week, 95 percent of our children - or perhaps even more - leave school without the ability to speak two sentences together in English.

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To all my brothers and sisters in whose arms I reside

I would never have known of a man called Mark Knopfler had it not been for my musically inclined brother, Arjuna. He was so talented and so dedicated to whatever he set his mind to accomplish that he was all about the particular musical instrument that had caught his fancy at the time. He just soaked up everything there was to know. Not everything, for that’s impossible, but quite a bit and certainly volumes more than I could even imagine.

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Channel 4 video, Darusman Report and the world opinion

“The West won the world not by superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non Westerners never do”. Samuel. P. Huntington as quoted by J.B. Miller in his dissertation ‘The Good Old Days’.

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