Courtesy: http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/04/22/fea01.asp
‘English as a Life Skill’: Landmark job-oriented Presidential Initiative
Geoff WIJESINGHE

President Mahinda Rajapaksa with great foresight and deep understanding of the problems faced by Sri Lanka due to lopsided, archaic methods in the teaching of English has embarked on a highly laudable and pragmatic initiative in keeping with its current global use as a principal means of communication, and in so doing will pay the way for providing highly-productive employment in both the public and private sectors throughout the country.
The President-inspired project will get off the ground on April 23 when a three-day ‘Business Mela’ on the teaching of job-oriented English language skills commences at Hotel Galadari, Colombo, organized by the Board of Investment (BOI) in collaboration with the Public Survey and Research Unit (PSRU) of the Presidential Secretariat.
Eleven highly successful institutes in teaching job-oriented spoken English from India, a country fast qualifying to be the lead country in this field, are listed to participate in the Mela.

They are: W.O.R.L.D. Trust, Zeal: Speak Easy: Centre for Better English, Green Book Learning Solutions, Genuine Education Learning Systems (Pvt) Ltd, VETA: VetaCorp-Amoha Education (Pvt) Ltd, E Square English Academy (Pvt) Ltd, Aspire Human Capital Management (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Sanskar School of Etiquette & Career Development (Pvt) Ltd School of Language & Communication, Gateway2uk Education (India Office) and Rayat & Bahra Institute of Leadership Training.

Indian help
Around 200 Sri Lankan teaching institutes are expected to attend this Mela, which is designed to encourage the forging of partnerships with the Indian educational institutes.
One such partnership has already been forged, between the E Square English Academy of Chennai, one of the leading English language training academies in India with 30 centres, and Easy English (Pvt.) Ltd. of Colombo.
Easy English Chief Kishan Karunaratne said that today the ability to communicate in English is the key to employability. The service sector including industries such as tourism, banking, telecom, business process outsourcing, information technology and insurance, is creating the most employment opportunities in the world today. In this scenario, formal education and technical knowledge are not sufficient and a working knowledge of English is essential.
A strategic framework and fast track activity plan for the initiative has been prepared by Presidential Advisor Sunimal Fernando, Coordinator/Convener of the Special Presidential Task Force on English as a Life Skill on the directions of the President.
Fernando has had the strong support of Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, who is dedicated to the field of education and has been fired with enthusiasm for the Presidential Initiative on job-oriented English life skills, a new concept that will help solve a burning problem in this country. “Lalith is very much the wind beneath the wings,” says Sunimal.
I asked Sunimal Fernando why Sri Lanka has sought Indian assistance in uplifting the standard of English in keeping with global trends.

“Geoff, you were a well-known cricketer in your day. Cricket was introduced to the world by England. In those days cricket was an English game. But, today it takes the form of an essentially South Asian game, which also happens to be played in England. Likewise, the English language was introduced to the world by the English and was the language of the English people.
But, today, English takes the form of a global language which also happens to be spoken in England.
So the contours of the English speaking world have been radically changed and India has emerged as the country which now has perhaps the most successful methods for teaching job-oriented spoken / communicative English: For teaching ‘English as a Life Skill’ - English without the social and cultural baggage with which it was delivered to us in colonial times and after”.
The Presidential Initiative on the enhancement of job-oriented English language skills in the country will encourage English to be taught to learners not only as it should be spoken, but in keeping with the cultures of Sri Lanka devoid of the old British colonial Pukka Sahib mentality and flavour, with England as the focal point. This is very important. We should not pollute the English taught in our country with the stuff and nonsense of that old colonial ‘ruling class’ outlook which is now in the limbo of things gone by.

Diversity, innovation
“Today, we seek to teach English in our schools and institutions without incurring damage to our national cultures, traditions and customs - not the Queen’s English as in the past but English as a Life Skill, as it is in India.” Fernando adds that the Presidential Initiative will welcome technical cooperation towards this end from other countries too, such as the UK, USA, Australia and Canada among others.
“We will encourage the stakeholders of the Initiative to learn from any source and to look at a range of teaching systems and materials. Our focus will be to ‘keep doors open’, to encourage diversity and innovation and to enable ‘a thousand flowers to bloom’ in the fields of teaching methods, course content, learning modes and supportive publications that will help take ‘English as a Life Skill’ to our people”.
Many scholars are of the view that the standard of English in Sri Lanka during the British period was substantially higher than what it was in the neighbouring South Asian countries. This reality, though true, was the exclusive preserve of a small urban elite that controlled, together with the British Raj, the political, economic and administrative institutions of the country.
The decision to make the national languages the medium of instruction in Sri Lanka was indeed a progressive and a modern decision, as indicated by the economic success of countries like Japan, Korea, Germany and France.
But the post internet period of development demands much more curricular space and infrastructure for English in view of its unquestioned emergence as the global medium of communication and the key to the treasure house of global knowledge and employment.
The ‘English as a Life Skill’ initiative will be officially launched shortly by President Rajapaksa at a point in time when several of the activities listed in the Fast Track Activity Plan are about to be made operational.
The President will formally launch the initiative in the presence of the founding father of India’s IT/BPO industry Shri N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder and chief mentor of INFOSYS who together with the President will announce and explain the employment and investment boom that could follow the successful implementation of the Presidential initiative.
Job market
While a launch of this nature will provide the potential learners a perspective of a job market that could well be available to them, it will also set in motion a dialogue between the potential supply of skills by the country’s education sector and the potential demand for skills by the service sector.
The goal of the initiative in the short term is the enhancement within three years of 50,000 persons with job-oriented spoken/communicative English skills for employment in services such as the IT related BPO service industry among other service industries that presently do not source investment opportunities in Sri Lanka largely because of the absence of adequate and appropriate spoken/communicative English language skills, or in already existing businesses that are desperately searching for persons with such language skills for employment.
In the long term, the strategic framework and fast track activity plan of the Presidential initiative will generate the appropriate momentum for the widespread enhancement of spoken/communicative English language skills in the country.
The Fundamental shift in employment opportunity has resulted in the State no longer being the main employer. The private sector employer in his efforts to survive in the global environment is insisting on English as a basic skill for employment in an increasingly globalised environment.
Task Force
Recognising the responsibility of the government to respond with urgency to these rapidly changing market dynamics, the President recently appointed this Task Force to strategise, plan and facilitate programmes and activities to enhance English language skills in the country.
President Rajapaksa’s directive was also that the benefit should accrue not only to the relatively more developed Colombo and Gampaha districts, but should be made accessible to all districts of the country in an equitable way.
A special appeal has been made to the electronic and print media of the country and to the private business sector to become powerful stakeholders of this critically important national development initiative, which the President has launched with a sense of commitment and national responsibility.
At present, except in a small number of fee levying private and international schools, accessed by the children of affluent families, and in an exceptionally few government schools, the quality of English teaching in the mainstream is extremely low.
According to the plan, there are about 1,623 private tutoring institutes teaching English among other subjects spread throughout the country. A database of these institutes has been prepared by the Public Survey and Research Unit of the Presidential Secretariat.
English classes are very popular in these totally unregulated private institutions. But the quality of English teaching in this sector is no better than what prevails in the schools.
Therefore, there is an immediate need for radically upgrading the English teacher base in the country, both in the government and the unregulated teaching sectors.
Today’s English teaching methods in the government and private educational mainstream in the country are outdated, and state-of-the-art spoken/communicative English teaching methodologies are few and far between.
The current methods and course content are inappropriate for teaching English to those from Sinhala and Tamil speaking homes and environments. Sunimal’s experience is that in our country English is still taught through grammar, structure and translation.
“These are the methods through which we were taught dead languages like Sanskrit, Pali, Latin and Greek in our days. Through the application of these teaching methods one acquires some ability to read and write the language with a dictionary by one’s side; and at the same time a huge big fear of speaking the language.
In the last 10 years or so, India’s English teaching methods have undergone a radical transformation. Students are first taught to listen and talk in English and only after that to read and write the language”.
The Presidential initiative has sought the assistance of India with whom we have so much social and cultural affinities to transfer these radically transformed job-oriented spoken / communicative English teaching techniques and course content to Sri Lanka.
The booming Indian BPO industry is looking for investment opportunities in other developing countries. For Sri Lanka to be an investment destination for Indian BPOs, spoken English skills of the required standard will have to be available here in abundance.
By transferring to Sri Lanka, the English teaching skills and course content developed in India itself for its IT related service industries, the Presidential Initiative seeks to create the required talent pool for Indian BPOs in particular and other IT related service industries in general to invest in our country.
The Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India has declared that all required assistance for this ‘educational technology transfer’ will be provided. Similar technical cooperation from Britain, Australia, USA and Canada will be much appreciated by the Presidential Initiative.
A vast majority of private tutories have expressed a desire to upgrade the quality of their teachers, teaching methods and course content and shift their focus towards the delivery of job-oriented spoken/communicative English skills to their students.
Following the Business Mela, joint educational enterprises are expected to develop their business plans and harness this large market.
Distance learning
Emphasis is also being placed on distance learning. In a developing country like Sri Lanka, where 80 per cent of households have television, TV offers itself as a very viable and powerful tool of distance learning.
At the request of the Task Force, technical collaboration has already been offered by a number of Indian institutions to Sri Lankan TV networks that require technical input to produce and telecast modular type job-oriented spoken/communicative English courses.
The Government of India has agreed to support the Presidential initiative to take the new English teaching methods and course content to the government schools where the vast majority of the nearly 21,000 English teachers cannot speak English.
The English and Foreign Languages University of Hyderabad popularly known as EFLU, India’s Center of Excellence for the teaching of English, will set up a Centre for English Language Training (CELT) in Sri Lanka, similar to what they have done in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Again with Indian Government support, 30 of our best English teachers from the Government sector will be selected and trained as Master Trainers at EFLU over a three month period to assist the CELT re-train the government English teachers in our schools.
Immediately after the Business Mela is concluded, Prof. Abhai Maurya, Vice Chancellor of EFLU will be arriving in Sri Lanka on April 29 to arrange these activities with the Education Ministry and the Presidential Secretariat.
With the implementation of this dynamic initiative by President Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka will take a giant stride forward in not only keeping in step with the rest of the world, but also ensuring that the country forges ahead in economic and educational development.

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