Socio-political dimension of English in Sri Lanka

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

Keynote address by Presidential Advisor and Coordinator of the Presidential Initiative on English as a Life Skill Sunimal Fernando at the workshop on Innovative Pedagogical Practices in the 21st Century: English in Practice, organized by the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka at Belihul Oya

Continued from yesterday

These principles are the fundamentals that were abstracted from interactions with grass roots communities of rural English learners and teachers at the very inception of our work and form the intellectual framework of the Presidential Initiative, English as a Life Skill. The principles on which the initiative was formed are socio-political in manner, with important linguistic and socio-linguistic implications.

The First Principle: Redefining English: Socio-political phenomenon or technological tool?

To the people of Sri Lanka, English is not a plain and simple tool of communication. It is not a mere communication technology. It is very much more than that to our people. It is a social differentiator.

Sunimal Fernando

In Sri Lanka English is a statement of status. English is an assertion of one’s associations and connections in society. It is a statement of a person’s position along the path of social mobility. The level of one’s English language competence is a testimony of the quality and level of one’s contacts in society, power and ability to get things done. It is also an indicator of a person’s access to knowledge and information and even a subjective hypothetical indicator of one’s intelligence.

What has been described is the sociological reality of English in Sri Lankan society. These realities cannot be wished away. They are here to stay. They have to be taken into account in any planning process for language acquisition. In the past, unfortunately, English was seen purely and simply as a technological tool of communication. The dialectical interaction between language technology and its Sri Lankan social context which only a Sri Lankan can understand was never included in the planning process of English language skill acquisition.

The process was dominated for long years by Euro-American teaching models, teaching tools and foreign experts from the West. To all these English were just a technology and a technology alone. The first point of departure of the Presidential Initiative therefore was the re-definition of English in Sri Lanka as a socio-political phenomenon with a linguistic dimension: No longer as a linguistic phenomenon with a socio-political dimension, as in the past.

Turning the English teaching enterprise on its head

The second principle: Demystifying English

English was delivered in the public school system as a mystified package of cultural garbage wrapped round a linguistic core. To the rural child it was made to look different, almost impenetrable. With the able assistance of the lucrative elocution industry, pronunciation was transformed into a kind of fixation. It turned into an obsession with an imaginary correctness of pronunciation according to a mythical RP or Received Pronunciation. It was accorded an almost religious sanctity. English in short was mystified to the extent that the lower classes of society were made to feel that it was well beyond their reach. It was in effect projected as an alien language. The second point of departure of the Presidential Initiative was the demystification of English. The language was shorn of its cultural baggage. The hitherto useless wrappings had made English in practice accessible only to the upper layers of Sri Lankan society.

The Battle Cry: ‘Speak English Our Way’

‘Let’s Speak English Our Way’ was our battle cry. Speaking English without fear was the slogan. Children were told not to be afraid to make mistakes in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Mistakes are made, they were told, and mistakes are corrected. It is only by making mistakes that an individual can go on improving his/her English.

These were the maxims with which our teachers re-trained by the master trainers and having a new outlook and a new mind-set on English as a life skill, delivered English on a new foundation to the children in schools.

Ridding the mind of the ‘Fear of English’

Recently a bus load of school children from a small village school tucked away in the backwoods of the Galle district was visiting Temple Trees with their teachers. When the President happened to come up to them they started speaking to him fluently in English upon which he asked them “how did you children learn so much English?” And they replied - ‘Excellency we always learnt English. But when you told the country to speak English our way, we lost our fear to speak in English and now we are able to speak without any difficulty’.

Stories such as this are now heard in abundance in our village schools. Demystified and stripped of its cultural wrappings, English is today accessed with much greater ease by rural children as a more or less culturally neutral tool of communication. And Lalith Weeratunga’s adage - ‘English as a Life Skill’ is becoming a living reality in Sri Lanka much faster than even Lalith would ever have expected.

The Third Principle: Liberating the ELT enterprise from the control of elites and foreigners

Decisions were often taken and teaching methods and material were developed to teach English to our rural children by people far removed culturally and emotionally from the rural home, the village or small town school and the rural countryside. The ELT enterprise in our country was largely in the hands of so called urban-based ELT experts.

The power structure of the ELT enterprise in Sri Lanka was such that whenever they needed guidance and advice about how English teaching may succeed in the country’s public school system, they consulted foreign ELT specialists. The guidance of our rural English teachers was never an option.

The foreign consultants knew sweet nothing about the socio-cultural and emotional environment of the village school and home. The results of Sri Lanka’s elitist ELT enterprise had been such a failure that the President had to take matters into his own hands and intervene in the English teaching and learning process through a Presidential Initiative on English as a Life Skill.

Rural master trainers replace the ELT elites

The third point of departure of the Presidential Initiative was to turn the old elitist ELT enterprise of the public school system on its head.

To abandon those elements that till then were calling the shots and registering one colossal failure after the other. The Presidential Initiative handed over the leadership of the English teaching enterprise to a group of 80 English language master trainers and their 320 assistants. The master trainers and their assistants had been drawn from Sinhala and Tamil speaking homes in all nine provinces. The 80 master trainers had been trained at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) Hyderabad, who in turn trained another 320 assistant trainers. This dramatic and decisive power shift was affected with the backing of the President’s office.

Ushering in a radical transformation of method and material

The new leadership steered many important changes in English teaching and learning at school level.

To be continued