3. [1]. The Official Language in Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala.
[2]. Tamil shall also be an Official Language.
[3]. English shall be the Link Language.
13th Amendment of the Constitution (2011) of Democratic Socialist
Republic of Sri Lanka,
4. Date
Event
1796
The British East India Company annexes the Maritime Provin
Treaty of Amiens
ces, and English becomes the only official language.
1948
Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) gains independence from Great Brita
Dominion Status
in. English remains the only official language of independent
Ceylon.
1956
Sinhala becomes the only official language of Sri Lanka.
Official Languages Act
English is dethroned.
July 1987
Sinhala, Tamil and English are declared the official languages
Indo – Sri Lanka Accord
of Sri Lanka.
November 1987
English is the link language, Sinhala and Tamil are the official
13th Amendment to the constitution
languages of Sri Lanka.
5. The variety of English we use in Sri Lanka at present is
identified as the English of colonized but not of colonizer.
SSLE has its own dictionary and literature.
Tamil English
SSLE
Burgher English
“Not Pot” English
6. English as a Foreign language
English as a Second Language
English native speakers
8. 1. English is important to find a good job and for higher education.
2. English is important for successful online communication
3. It is important learn English as an International Language.
4. English is required to communicate with native speakers of English.
5. English is required to communicate with non native speakers of English.
6. It is important to have native like pronunciation.
7. English has to be learned from native speakers of English.
8. Sri Lankan English teachers are capable of teaching not only grammar but
pronunciation effectively.
9. Are you aware of different varieties of English ?
10. Which variety of English do you want to learn and use? Rank them in
order of preference.
9. 1. Sri Lankans accept the importance of learning English for up
ward mobility in the society.
2. The participants acknowledge the importance of English as an
international language and admit that English is used to com
municate with native as non native speakers of English.
3. The participants of the study are aware of different varieties of
English and they do not discriminate native and non native m
odels of English.
4. Despite of positive attitudes towards non native varieties of E
nglish the participants still prefer to learn and use inner circle
varieties of English.
10. •2009 has been declared as the year of IT and
English in Sri Lanka
•on July 19, 2009, the President launched the
National Road Map to promote Spoken/
Communicative English skills in Sri Lanka.
• English as a Life Skill Speak English Our way
11. “..children should be allowed and encouraged to
speak English our way and they should not feel
ashamed or inferior to do so. Many countries in
the world have their own ways of speaking
English and there is no reason for Sri Lanka to
be an exception and children should not be
deterred from speaking English our way….”
Sunimal Fernando
the Coordinator/ Convener of the Presidential
Task Force on English and IT,
12. “The classroom is a powerful site of policy negotiation. The
pedagogies practiced and texts produced in the classroom can
reconstruct policies ground up. In fact, the classroom is
already a policy site; every time teachers insist on a uniform
variety of language or discourse, we are helping reproduce
monolingualist ideologies and linguistic hierarchies.”
(Canagarajah : 2006)
13. 1. English is important to find a good job and for
higher education.
.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral 1
Disagree 0
Strongly Disagree 0
48
16
14. 2. English is important for successful online
communication
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
38
Agree
Neutral
24
2
Disagree 1
Strongly Disagree 0
15. 3. It is important to learn English as an international
language.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral 0
Disagree 0
Strongly Disagree 0
52
13
16. 4. English is required to communicate with native
speakers of English.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
30
Agree
30
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree 0
3
2
17. 5. English is required to communicate with non native
speakers of English.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
6
Agree
36
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree 0
17
6
18. It is important to have a native-like pronunciation.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
2
Agree
13
Neutral
23
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
22
5
19. 7. English should be learned from native speakers of
English.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree 0
Agree
15
Neutral
19
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
29
2
20. 8. Sri
Lankan English teachers are capable of teaching not
only grammar but pronunciation effectively.
Number of Participants
Strongly Agree
16
Agree
26
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
19
1
3
21. Are you aware of different varieties of
English?
Number of Participants
Yes
No
62
3
22. Average Ranking according to the preferred variety to
learn/use
Avarage Ranking
British English
American English
Australian English
Sri Lankan English
Canadian English
New Zealand English
Hongkong English
Indian English
Pakistani English
South African English
Singapore English
Koren English
11.02
10.82
9.74
9.28
8.23
6.02
5.42
4.37
3.91
3.4
3.17
2.65
Editor's Notes
Sri Lanka, officially known as Democratic, Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is a country that belongs to the outer circle proposed by Kachru (). According to the census of 2012, the total population is approximately 20.2 million. Mainly three languages are spoken in Sri Lanka namely Sinhal Tamil an English. Other than these three there are people who speak other languages such as Malay, and indigineous languages.
When looking at the constitution of Sri Lanka it decleares, (read the slide)
story of English in Sri Lanka began with the annexing of the Maritime Provinces by the British East India Company in 1796. Since then until 1956 the language of colonizer has remained as the official language of the island. Few important mile stones of the story of English in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan English flavored with borrowings and influences from Sinhala and Tamil has evolved including the “vocabulary for local religions, kinship systems etc., now considered part of the language. It has been identified as a different variety of English. Many studies have been done on Sri Lankan English and also it has its own dictionary and literature as well. Within the variety of SSLE there are the sub varieties of Tamil, Burger and not pot English.
While English constitutes a second language for the majority of the Sri Lankan speech community, there is also asmall circle of native speakers of SLE as well as a considerable amount of people for whom English is arguablya foreign language. To put it in a nutshell, a usage-based approach to Sri Lankan English yields three Kachruviancircles in miniature. So there is this power struggle between these three circles. Through out the history of Sri Lanka, English remained the language of the privileged. English language is frequentlyreferred to as the kaduva, the Sinhalese word for sword, in Sri Lanka. This sword draws the line and divides the society between privileged and non privileged in terms of language and it acts as the ladder to access to the “upper” society
Ok now to see the attitidues of Sri Lankans towards English I conducted this mini survey. The participants were all Sri Lankans Living in Sri Lankan. 45 of them are Sinhalese and 20 are from Tamil community. However this study is a bit limited. But I believe it’s useful to get a general idea.
The study involve 9 statements. I asked the participants to rate the statements. I have given the choices of Agree, Strongly agree, Neutral and Disagree and strongly disagree. The first two questions aim to investigate the importance of English. According to the results majority all most all agree on the first statement and 62 agree on the second statement.Next three questions aims the communicative aspect of English. the participants feel it is important to learn English as an international language. In other words, they see English not just as another foreign language but as an international language for global communication. When talking about the communication with native and non native speakers of English, majority of the participants (60) think, English is important to communicate with native speakers. Only 2 participants have marked the opposite opinion. Concerning the statement 5, majority of the participants (42) think English is needed to communicate with non native speakers of English. Interestingly 17 of the participants have shown a neutral attitude towards this. From this results it is apparent that participants believe English is used to communicate with native speakers of English as well as the non native speakers.The statements 6,7, and 8 are designed to examine the attitudes of the participants towards native and non native models of English (Kachru:1992, Braine: 1999, Kirkpartick: 2006, Gunesekera: 2006, Matsuda and Friedrich: 2012,). Statements 6 and 7 explore the attitudes towards the native models of English while the statement 8 aims to explore the attitudes towards native models. When looking at the responses of the participants 27 participants have indicated it is not important to have a native like pronunciation, and 15 disagree with them. Interestingly the number of participants who suspended their judgement, on this statement is higher compared to the other statements. However when it comes to teaching, majority of the participants do not believe English should be learned from native teachers. Moreover regards to the statement 8, majority believe that a Sri Lankan teacher can effectively teach not only grammar but spoken English. This attitude again confirms the fact that Sri Lankans acknowledge non native like pronunciations. Moreover majority of the participants have accepted non native (Sri Lankan) teacher as a model. The statement 9 aims to explore the awareness towards different varieties of English. According to gathered data only 3 participants out of 65 say that they are not aware of different varieties of English. However this statement is a bit ambigos. Because through personal communication I learned that some of the participants new only the varieits of British and English. As the last question of the survey the participants were asked to indicate their preferred variety of English to learn and to use. According to the average ratings of the participants, the most preferred variety is British English, while American English closely follows. Australian English stand in the third positions. However, Sri Lankans with positive attitudes towards non native teaching models and aware of varieties of English, contradict themselves and have placed Sri Lankan English in the fourth position. Regardless of their positive attitudes towards non native teaching models, their preference to learn/use inner circle varieties is obvious.
Now to turn back to the context of Sri lankaThis program aims to promote the Sri Lankan variety of English.
Thecodinator of this program decribes it in this way. However there are criticisms about this. The teachers are trained in India. So there is the critisim that what is this Our way. Is it the Indian way.
So now in Sri Lanka this powerful policy negotiation site is at use and bottom up approach regarding implementing EIL. On the other hand as per the results of the study, show positive attitudes towards the perspective of EIL. Therefore I believe that Sri Lanka is already on the way of implementing EIL.