Fifty thousand school leavers would be targeted by a special project launched by the state in collaboration with the BoI and sections of the local corporate community for empowering these young persons with requisite English Language and IT skills in an effort to facilitate their entry into the job market and to ensure that they meet investors’ standards of employability, Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama said last week.

A Presidential Task Force for the dissemination of English Language and IT competence among the targeted segments of youngsters, headed by Presidential Advisor Sunimal Fernando, would be spearheading the project.

Requesting the unstinted and continuous support of newspapers for raising public awareness of the project and its benefits, the minister said that the importance of this collaborative effort has been underscored by the state declaring 2009, the Year of IT and English Language Teaching. Pointing out that investments would come into Sri Lanka if it possesses people with the required skills, he said that 10,000 persons skilled in English and IT are immediately needed although 50,000 is the targeted number. He explained that those Advanced Level students who qualify fully for university entry but who cannot be accommodated in our seats of higher learning on account of space constraints, would be among those targeted by the project.

He said that a highlight of the project was the obtaining of assistance from India for propagating communicative or spoken English skills among our teachers. Pointing out that a ‘Science and Technology-based Society’ is the need of the hour, Amunugama said that India, which has now entered the ranks of highly advanced countries, is ideally suited to provide us the necessary assistance.

Explaining the rationale for obtaining Indian assistance for teaching communicative English, Sunimal Fernando said that India had made considerable advances in this field on account of its vast change in approach to the teaching and learning of English. He explained that a principal drawback in Sri Lanka’s method in teaching English is that we follow the British model and approach the inculcation of English through primarily the learning of grammar.

Most local students speak Sinhala or Tamil at home as a first language and learn their English in school, mainly through grammar or the rules of sentence construction. In English-speaking Western countries, however, a child speaks English at home as a first language and learns his grammar subsequently in school, having initially learnt to speak the language fluently at home.

Therefore, a ‘fear’ for the language grips most local students as they are compelled to adhere to the rules of grammar before acquiring fluency in spoken English. India has overcome this problem by laying emphasis primarily on spoken English. It has also acquired the methodology for this purpose. Today ‘India is foremost in teaching spoken English’. Hence, Sri Lanka’s need to enlist Indian support in this project.

Fernando said that the degree of Sri Lanka’s failure in this respect could be gauged by the fact although the country possesses 22,000 English teachers and 4,600 English tutories, the knowledge of English among our students is highly inadequate. He said that India’s Southern states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, are exemplary because they have not only forged ahead in the field of IT but advanced greatly too in the teaching of ‘Spoken English’.

The University of English and Foreign Languages of Hyderabad, an apex institution in the teaching of communicative English in India, will be helping Sri Lanka in this venture. Right now, it is training 40 English teachers from Sri Lanka in its innovative methodology. These trained teachers in turn would help spread their skills among local teachers after they return.

Plans are afoot to establish a Centre of English Language Training in Penideniya, Peradeniya, for continuing the collaboration with the University of English and Foreign Languages. Transfer of teaching methodology, and the development of currcular and teaching skills would be some of the functions of the Centre in Peradeniya.

Elaborating on the corporate assistance component in the project, Amunugama said that the assistance of one or two big companies in each of Lanka’s districts would be sought to fund the teaching of teachers, provision of computer hardware and meeting some infrastructure requirements of the structures that would be set up to facilitate the programme. He said President Rajapaksa is hoping to obtain the assistance of some 25 big companies to implement this project, which has been entitled ‘English for Employment’.

BoI chairman Dhammika Perera pointed out that Sri Lanka does not at the moment produce the number of trained personnel required by foreign investors. Foreign companies need 2000 student trainees at a Rs 35,000 salary, he said. He, however, unveiled state plans to set up a two million square foot IT park in Malabe, which could have the capacity of producing 6000 computer proficient persons annually.