No doubt many academics have earned their Ph.D degrees with volumes of research focused on methodology in teaching English. You may be confused by the abbreviations EFL, TEFL, TESOL ESOL and several more, but they all are to do with English language. Education is one of the big money spinners, with every Tom, Dick, or Harry (or the Sri Lankan equivalents) with a smattering of English conducting tuition classes in Spoken (Broken) English. Publishers delight in selling thousands of text books, work books, and courses titled "English in 20 hours". 25,000 English teachers earn their daily bread (or portion of rice) teaching lessons that are boring, uninteresting, and ineffective. Consultants come and go (the quicker the better), having been paid by generous governments or NGOs, to show how English should be taught. Cocooned in their air-conditioned offices at the Ministry of Education and NIE, dedicated civil servants produce materials, statistics and lengthy information documents for dispersal (disposal) to schools throughout the country. Seminars, workshops, meetings (and tea breaks) are conducted to improve English language skills to teachers in 9000 schools.

The only problem is that with all this frenetic activity, the students have failed to learn to speak "the Presidents English". If only they had tried harder. It’s not the teachers’ fault or the numerous English support staff of every education divisions. Don’t blame the Ministry or NIE as they’ve done their best. So whose fault is it that grade 10 and 11 boys, only recently out of short trousers, cannot answer basic questions in English or participate in a simple conversation. Girls seem to do slightly better, but certainly insufficient to reflect daily English lessons over many years.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is concerned and so much so that he has donated 2009 to be the year of English and ICT. Its to his credit that he has initiated a task force headed by his close advisor, Sunimal Fernando, to produce some action towards making English a Life Skill. India has come to the rescue (once again) and will show Sri Lankan teachers how it is done. End of Story? Not quite because it seems they have put the solutions before analyzing the problems, so the proposed solutions will in time become the new problems as they have with all the other initiatives taken. Never mind because as long as the government is seen to be doing something, everyone is happy.

The current plans are to transplant the Hyderabad English and Foreign University methodology in teaching English as a Life Skill to Sri Lanka. After all, we’re all South Asians, and culturally similar, so this should be no problem. The fact that similar ideas have been tried before has been overlooked. The fact that "experts" from India, UK, and other countries have tried and failed to improve English speaking skills, has been pushed to one side. The best brains in Sri Lanka have given their expertise towards developing English and millions of rupees expended in seeking a solution, but all to no avail.

A prerequisite of problem solving is that there should be a proper understanding of the causes of failure and a practical flexibility in evolving feasible and sustainable solutions. So what are the problems with teaching English? Most of the thousands of children in the flourishing International schools seem to have no problem. There are also some brave teachers in government schools who blatantly ignore the prescribed curriculum, and books, and go their own way but hope to avoid the reprimands of their superiors in their education division. So here are the impediments to teaching English:

a) Many English teachers lack English speaking skills and are poor role models for the students.

b) Numerous English lessons are conducted in open halls or classrooms without proper walls so that the noise from adjacent classrooms makes teaching/learning English very difficult..

c) Despite text books and work books having been changed several times during the past decade, they still have little utility for 75% of students.

d) Lessons are not stimulating especially to students who have no English in their home life. Virtually no attempt has been made to use Audio-visual materials even at the level of the cassette player, let alone CDs and DVDs.

e) The mantra that one size fits all still persists, so middle class students in Colombo in grade 6, 7, etc. have the same materials as the children of estate workers or paddy farmers in remote rural schools.

f) Goals and objectives are ill-defined, and whereas a vocabulary of 500 words allows for simple conversation, students are expected to absorb a vocabulary of several thousand words that have little use in everyday speech.

g) Teachers monopolise lessons, often speak too fast and not understood by most students. No attempt is given for "ownership" of tasks by students. Verbal participation is often confined to repetition of sentences read by teachers, and with younger students, singing some outdated Victorian nursery rhymes.

h) The compulsory tests given at the end of each term, are linked to the text book material, so completing these tests become the objectives in teaching English.

How will this latest initiative in English as a Life Skill overcome these problems? There is little evidence that the 41 master teachers spending three months in Hyderabad will make any serious inroads to these problems. The same people who have advocated and enforced the current way English is taught are unlikely to admit they have been wrong for all these past years. Sunimal Fernando is proposing a revolution in the way English is taught. Revolutions have a nasty habit of causing casualties and encouraging opposition. It is easy to see that English as a Life Skill will be the current flavour in vogue and enforced with evangelical fervour.

The remedies proposed by The Presidential Task Force and given life by the 41 master teachers studying in Hyderabad are not particularly revolutionary. In fact, they are simple and obvious as Sunimal Fernando has outlined in his recent newspaper articles and can be summed up in a few words. Students must be encouraged to speak using a limited and controlled vocabulary and not criticised when making mistakes, and grammar and written English should take second place to speaking. Hardly ground-breaking ideas!

There are key factors that lead to success and these should be obvious:

Enjoyment; confidence; repetition; relevance; reward; risk taking; vocabulary building; regular practice; interesting curriculum and materials; skilled teaching;