Making the General English Paper Compulsory for A/L Students

Making the General English Paper Compulsory for A/L Students (Previously published in The Island/Sri Lanka) The Higher Education Minister’s decision to make the General English Paper compulsory from this year onwards for all A/L students seeking admission to universities should be hailed as a good initial step in the right direction, i.e., towards ensuring that all our university students whose mother tongue is Sinhala or Tamil acquire a good command of English as a second language to enable them to access the ever expanding reservoir of global human knowledge and culture. Yet, the move is bound to be a controversial one because such a decision is most likely to affect the rural students who are at present faced with a severe scarcity of resources for learning English including teachers. But, according to newspaper reports, the Secretary to the Ministry has offered (what should be considered) a temporary solution: candidates who have been deprived of a chance to learn English can mention that fact in the paper (though it is not clear to me how this information is going to be relevant); and, poor performance at the English test will not affect their prospects of admission to the university. Such concessions are meant to initially prevent students from being put at a disadvantage on account of their lack of English. But before long the compulsoriness of general English language proficiency for all university entrants must be asserted in earnest, for that is what is important. (Since a key concept in this essay is what is known as “a second language” it would be appropriate to offer a widely accepted definition of the term: “A language which is not a person’s mother tongue, but which is learned in order to meet a communicative need…” – David Crystal, The Penguin Dictionary of Language, 1998. We have our extremely well developed indigenous languages for all our communicative needs within the country. However, in the highly globalized world of today we need to be able to communicate with the rest of the world in almost all possible scenarios: education, work, business, science and technology, media, culture and entertainment, diplomacy, and what not. Relevance of English for us is foremost in education. In our particular context, with our historical background, we find English to be the easiest and most useful medium available for global communication. Mastery of English as a second language gives us the ability to function in all the above spheres as well, or nearly as well, as we can in our first language. This is what the patriotic pioneers of language reforms envisaged fifty-five years ago.) The ministerial decision to make the General English Paper compulsory for the A/L is a welcome move because it is predicated on the acknowledgement of the vital importance of English for higher education and global communication in the modern world, which provides a meaningful reason for the students to undertake the ‘hassle’ (as at least some of our students seem to view it) of learning English. To present English in a strictly utilitarian role will make it meaningful to the widest proportion of our student population. Although much English is in evidence in the country – in the media, education, business, banking, science and technology, sports, entertainment industry, and every other sphere of national activity – English as a fully fledged medium of communication is still limited to a small proportion of the population. English words may be freely sprinkled in the conversation of even the remotest village dwellers; in fact, this has been the situation for as long as I can remember, that is, for over fifty years at least, such ‘use’ of English cannot be taken as reflecting a widely prevalent general knowledge of English among the public. This means, in the opinion of many, that English is not so widely used as to assume national status; but the recognition of the fact will not detract from its real importance for us: its importance as a second language. The Higher Education Ministry’s move seems to envisage such a role for English, and this will go down well with the students and their parents from both linguistic communities. With the restoration of Sinhala and Tamil to their due level of prominence (to the status of official languages), English which had been usurping that position was rendered less important for them; not that it had been of very great significance to the majority of the population until then as it was something inaccessible. The change of medium of education from English to the national languages greatly benefited them. Among other things it made a good education attainable to many children regardless of their social class, who had been deprived of that opportunity before. Prior to the introduction of free education, the only kind of education which was of any value was English medium education. But under colonial rule this was restricted to a minuscule privileged class for imperial purposes. Through the central school system that the pioneers of free education initiated, a small proportion of talented rural youth were able to enjoy such an education. Still, English continued to privilege a small minority, and disadvantage the majority of the country’s population. Free education through the English medium for all the children of the country was unthinkable for many reasons. Sinhalese and Tamils with several millennia old sophisticated, highly evolved, and still vibrant literary traditions couldn’t be expected to abandon their own linguistic heritage in favour of an utterly alien language like English even in the course of a few centuries. Although the Higher Education Minister’s decision might smack of a degree of arbitrariness, it will prove beneficial in the long run. The success of the move will, however, depend on its acceptance by the principal stakeholders, the students themselves. It is impossible to believe that they don’t know the value of English. Why is it then necessary to force them to appear for an English test as a minimum requirement at the higher education stage? In fact they have had over ten years of instruction in English at school. Even in the remotest rural schools the students don’t totally lack facilities to learn the language. The failure of students to gain at least an elementary knowledge of English is mainly due to lack of motivation among other causes. Making the subject compulsory is a good way to motivate them. Then the teachers’ work will also be easy. The most effective way to teach any subject including English is to make the learners responsible for their own learning. Students must be made aware of the fact that there is much English around them: TV and radio have English language programmes; there are English language newspapers; there are billboards, posters, banners advertising things or announcing events, etc. Teachers and parents should encourage children to use these resources, without depending too much on school teaching. Learners of English need not entirely depend on books these days because the Internet offers rich resources for learning and practicing English. Therefore, a knowledge of English as a second language is, contrary to popular belief, something well within easy reach of all our students from the kindergarten onwards provided an essential attitudinal change is brought about. Unfortunately, this is not generally recognized. Making English compulsory will push the learners towards an appreciation of this fact. It must be made a compulsory subject from Grade 3 upwards. But we cannot forget the fact that, given our colonial history in which English was associated with power and privilege on the one hand, and oppression and deprivation on the other, it is difficult even today to extricate it from politics. The advantages that accrued to the masses when indigenous languages were promoted as the mediums of instruction can again be nullified by the reintroduction of the English medium, and only an already privileged minority will stand to gain from this. The alleged JVP objections to university students learning English may be due to the threat of a return of the English that had privileged a small minority at the expense of the majority. This should not be ignored by the policy makers. If they can convince the students that this time English is being promoted not with a view to bringing back privilege and attendant injustice, but to make it an equaliser. English becomes a means as well as a mark of privilege and rank when it is allowed to be possessed by only a minority. When it becomes common property, the special advantages that it conferred on some disappear. If all students have gained a good knowledge of English as a second language by the time they reach the A/L, it will enable them to continue their higher education in English as the authorities have decided, especially in subject areas such as science, engineering, medicine, etc where English offers better resources for mastering those subjects than the native tongues. But this should never mean a substitution of English for our native languages.