'Speak English our way', its pros and cons

There has been a huge hullabaloo about the program 'Speak English our way', its pros and cons, whether it is just another policy that will be reduced to a bundle of paperwork, but a few are aware of what 'Speak English our way' is really about. July 19, 2010 marks the end of phase I of the initiative and the launch of the second. The Sunday Observer spoke to Sunimal Fernando, Advisor to the President, Coordinator and Convener of the Presidential Task Force on English and IT, its agenda, the current state of the initiative and its achievements.

Presidential Advisor Sunimal Fernando

"My greatest advantage was that I knew nothing about English teaching," said Sunimal Fernando. "The President specifically asked me not to clutter my mind with various theories and models, when I was first entrusted with the task of 'nationalising' the English language. Consequently he was forced to develop his own model.

Excerpts

Q: What were the achievements made in phase I of the project?

A: The Ministry of Education for so many years has failed to develop an English language training cadre to train English teachers. We trained a national cadre of 80 master trainers in spoken English - selected from all provinces -at the English and Foreign Language University (EFLU), Hyderabad with the assistance of the Indian government.

An additional 320 assistants have also been trained. Sixty percent of the 22,500 teachers in the country were trained to teach spoken English through an accelerated course that will be completed by the end of the year. This part of the project is funded by the Education for Knowledge Society Project (EKSP) of the Ministry of Education, which in turn is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The country's first teachers' guide for spoken English was not developed by specialists with the help of British or American expertise but by rural and small town master trainers and teachers from Sinhala and Tamil speaking homes from all provinces and later used and revised by the master trainers.

A Sri Lanka-India Centre for English Language Training (SLICELT) with modern technology and local and Indian resource persons was established at Peradeniya with the assistance of the Indian government. The assistance of the Indian government to establish nine Provincial Sri Lanka-India Centres for English Language Training (PSLICELT) had been negotiated.

Testing tools for listening and teaching skills, to be implemented from O Level examination 2012, has been developed by NIE Sri Lanka (National Institute of Education) and the SLICELT in collaboration with the Commissioner General of Examinations.

A hundred hour curriculum with teaching aids for a certificate course in Basic English for the general public was produced by a team of Sri Lankan ELT trainers and its examination designed. School English syllabi are currently being scrutinised for and alterations are being made to suit the capability of Sri Lankan students."

Why has system failed?

Q: In spite of various reforms, revisions of syllabi and millions of rupees spent, why has the education system failed to produce expected results in English education?

We observed three critical fundamentals through our discussions within November 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 of the first phase, which the whole initiative was based on. We met a few English teachers in village schools, acquaintances I made through the political process and my sociological research activities, reaching the most distant parts of the country. Groups of Sinhala or Tamil speaking English teachers met informally to discuss why they were failing at their task. These discussions proved that it was not the fault of the teachers; it was the policies, teaching methodology and tools imposed on them.

The first fundamental we observed was that the curriculum did not focus on spoken English. In Britain and other countries where English is the national language children learn it first through interaction with the parents, then learn the syntax of the language and spelling at school.

We adopted the same system for our schools without alteration. This curriculum only suited the children from the upper middle class urban families, who perfected their listening and speaking skills early on.

The English speaking upper classes had a lot to gain through imposing such a system, which prevented 9/10 of the population from gaining access to information through mastering the language. As a result of this system children from rural settings only learned to read and write. This is the method in which dead languages are taught and due to this most students developed a respect mixed with fear for the English language creating a psychological barrier that prevents most from learning English.

The second fundamental we observed was that the English speaking enterprise of Sri Lanka at national level and very significantly at the Ministry of Education level has been controlled by a group of two kinds of people - the urban elite, who do not have a clue about the capacity of a village child and had contempt for rural English teachers and people from rural background who have gained entry into the English speaking middle class, who are worse than people of the upper class.

The third fundamental we observed was the focus on British English in the school curriculum. The anti national ideology of spoken English, like that of British nationals, with its unblemished diction, perfect grammar and technically perfect pronunciation was crafted by the Anglo-centric urban elites.

Our pronunciation, word order and vocabulary are largely Sri Lankan. Phrases like 'You are going back isn't it' or adding 'no' at the end of a question statement although grammatically incorrect according to standard British English, have become a Sri Lankan standard.

The Education Ministry, unlike that of other countries, has failed to codify the Sri Lankan standard of English - standard vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar - for the benefit of the teacher. They have always maintained that only the standard British variety should be taught in schools. Education promotes the pronunciation of words the 'elocution way'. In fact elocution has done immense damage to the spread of English skills in the country.

Correct it

Q: How does the initiative 'Speak English our way' hope to correct it?

Our solution to the first fundamental was teaching children to listen and speak prior to reading and writing. The average child, having studied the English language five hours a week for 12 years can't put two sentences together.

It was pointless to seek the help of the so-called experts in English Language Teaching. The English teaching enterprise of Sri Lanka, the existing institutions, strategies and their programs have been a miserable failure.

The solution to our second fundamental was to replace the monopoly of the English teaching enterprise with erudite Sinhala or Tamil speaking English teachers from all provinces, whose names may mean nothing because they are practically unknown, to decide policy, develop strategy and craft teaching tools and programs.

The government of India showed tremendous support in training these personnel.

The solution for the third fundamental was to promote Sri Lankan English. We decided to give legitimacy to Sri Lankan English where spoken English is concerned. On June 24, 2009, the road map to promote spoken/communicative English skills in Sri Lanka was launched.

Q: Why Sri Lankan English?

First of all we must relieve the fear psychosis attached to learning English, through teaching Sri Lankan English.

Process of evolution

Q: If a 'Standard' is a process of evolution, what would stop the Sri Lankan standard from evolving into a substandard variety completely unrecognisable from its original?

Quite the opposite. Taking Sinhala into consideration with the development of transportation, TV and radio consequently the improvement of interaction of Southern, Western and Kandyan dialects borrowed from each other to make a mixed standard of spoken Sinhala. The same goes for spoken English. Today there is only a slight difference between the dialects that they have almost merged into one.

With the development of internet and specially telephone communication the tendency of English would be towards one form of English.

Q: Is a full scale change in the education system with the collaboration of the Ministry of Education to be expected any time soon, with regard to English education?

This process will ultimately amount to that. We are currently revisiting the school syllabi. We plan to change the syllabus according to the capability of Sri Lankan students.

The current school syllabi have been developed by university academics who are quite out of touch with rural reality. The current O Level syllabus is too much for the children to handle. In fact English has the lowest pass rate at O Levels on record, which is 30 per cent. They have imposed enormously high standards so that children can't learn.

Q: Does that mean that the standard of English at exam level will be lowered?

No. But there are certain elements of the course which are beyond the students. Besides, the current syllabi are too extensive to be covered within the given time frame.

We hope to cut down on the syllabus so it would be easier on the students. We are prepared to persuade the Ministry of Education to cut down on the syllabus.

Q: What is in store for phase two?

The staff of the Special Initiatives Unit (SIU) of the Presidential Secretariat is the operational arm of the Presidential Task Force headed by Shanthi Fernando, with four other assistants played a crucial role in running the project throughout the country. These assistants will man a special presidential program unit, within the Ministry of Education, that will be established, soon to take charge of the initiative of improving English as a life skill and will be coordinated by Shanthi Fernando at the SIU.

Taking of English language skills to the schoolchild will be our next step. We will also be looking at the community at large. The 100-hour course of basic spoken English is a result of this objective. This will be distributed free and will help to standardise teaching of spoken English in the private sector.

Q: What are the challenges?

The major challenge we face today is the lack of teachers in rural schools. There is a shortage of 3500 English teachers. Although there are 22,500 teachers, often through political string pulling, most of them have been seconded to other urban schools. On one side we have a shortage and the other a surplus. Politically speaking redeploying the teachers from urban schools back to rural schools is out of the question. We plan to persuade the government to recruit new teachers where there is a shortage. Their letters of appointment should be such that they cannot be released and seconded to any other school. There is also a proposition to train and employ retired personnel competent in the English language as teachers.

- SP