The English language has been taken to the whole island under the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Advisor to the President and national coordinator of English as a Life Skill Program Sunimal Fernando said.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the 8th International Sri Lanka English Language Teachers’ Association (SLELTA) conference held recently under the theme ‘Teaching English in the 21st century: Local Identities and Global realities’, Fernando said the country was transformed into a trilingual society under this government.
“The native language being Sinhala or Tamil, English became a skill or instrument through which we access knowledge on external world to qualify ourselves for employment and participation in the global world. Many strategies and policies are implemented to empower the English teachers from rural areas to produce a English speaking community,” he said.
The ceremony organised by the SLELTA was held at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute. This three-day conference is a much awaited biannual event among English Language Teaching (ELT) teachers in Sri Lanka and attracts over 300 participants from Sri Lanka and abroad. SLELTA is the only professional body for English teachers and educationists who espouse ELT in Sri Lanka.
Fernando said that from the younger days, for about 10 years, a child is taught English at school but he leaves school without being able to put together at least three words.
“The English speaking population was estimated to have been about nine percent by 2005. But under the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the English language was taken to all corners of the country by 2007.
The country was transformed into a trilingual society. The native language being Sinhala or Tamil, English became a skill or instrument through which we access knowledge on external world to qualify ourselves for employment and participation in the global world. Many strategies and policies are implemented to empower the English teachers from rural areas to produce a English speaking community,” he said.
“In our society, if you don’t speak English in an imaginative manner, then you are marked as a person with no good pronunciation which I totally disagree. Children get discouraged to speak English and an inferior feeling is created that English is meant for them. Therefore, we have a responsibility to change these kinds of norms within the country,” he added.
“The target norm for language should be local not global. English language used in our country today is not the British English it is almost the Sri Lankan English. For a language teaching to be meaningful, local accountability should be assured,” said Dr. Dushyanthi Mendis of the University of Colombo.
