Being proud of Sri Lankan English
by Nilma Dole
 Sri Lankans hardly take pride in
the way we speak or talk English because over the years, our skills in
the language have been hampered due to various reasons. “We should be
proud of speaking our Sri Lankan English because it is we who pronounce
it well,” said Sunimal Fernando, senior advisor to the President and
Coordinator, Presidential Task Force on English and IT.
Today, schoolchildren can write and read English eloquently but they
are not confident or not conversant in English. “There are reasons why
English is not spoken today. It is seen as an elite language where the
so-called high society uses it as a weapon of power when they speak the
‘Queen’s English’. Moreover, elocution teachers make children mimic
English accents whereas in England itself, there are various correct
forms of English in different accents” said Fernando.
A cabinet decision has been taken to incorporate spoken English as a
subject at the OL and AL examinations in the year 2011 so that people
will study it to pass the exams. “Our aim is not only to help
schoolchildren with spoken English skills but we are developing a basic
English course for AL school leavers developed by the English Language
Teaching Unit, University of Kelaniya in order to increase their chances
of securing jobs” said Fernando.
 The Presidential Task Force on English and IT has trained a different
calibre of Sinhala and Tamil teachers who realise the need of English
teaching at the grass root level. “We are happy to say that so far, the
program has been successful. The Royal College of Colombo has taken the
initiative of empowering their English teachers with special techniques
to teach spoken English to their children.
Prof. Julee Sen and Prof. N.K. Nihalani are two qualified trainers
who have been posted in Sri Lanka for two years to train teachers in
English at the India-Sri Lanka Centre for English Language Training (SLICELT).
“In 2008 and 2009, 80 Master Trainers in English have been trained
and they in turn, train teachers in provinces, island wide” said Prof.
Sen.
 The Master Trainers followed the `Communicative English’ scholarship
program at the English and Foreign Language University in Hyderabad. The
goal of the program is to train 22, 000 English teachers by 2011. “The
only thing they need is conversation!” said Prof. Sen. Moreover, she
said that they train the teachers to give them confidence to children to
speak English because they tend to speak in other languages once they
leave the class.
“There is no such thing as pronouncing English the right or wrong
way, we all use it differently as long as we write it correctly” said
Prof. Nihalani. The Deputy Principal of Royal College and the ideologist
of the English department at the school, Lakshmi Attygalle said, “As an
English teacher myself, I have seen what benefits English teachers can
reap with simple techniques such as story-telling to inculcate the joy
of speaking English.”
Concluding, the Principal of Royal College, Upali Gunasekera said,
“We will do our best to accommodate any initiatives done of the
Presidential Secretariat especially in steering the English language
forward in Sri Lanka.”
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