A new door to English

August 13, 2011, 4:19 pm


by Capt Elmo Jayawardena

The non-English speaking young do face a serious problem. They are bright and they are willing and they need jobs but fail to get employed. This applies a lot to those who have completed their tertiary education and walked out of universities having suffered the multiple burdens of poverty to read for their degrees. If they did engineering or medicine, the chances are very good to find work. Architects, lawyers and those who pull teeth or those who learn to teach too are in the ‘OK’ list. But there is a whole lot more of rural students who have completed their management degrees and those who have enrolled in Bachelor of Arts stream specialising in important subjects who are denied a place to work.

English is their problem. Mind you, I am talking of graduates. There is another army of ‘A’ level qualified too who add thousands to this brigade of ‘no English- difficult to get a job’ group who march out to the world looking for work as ‘English Patients.’

It is not intelligence they lack, but confidence to converse in English. One ‘fol toppee and fan cake’ from them and John Keels HR or Digital personnel would cross them off from the interview and so would most of the big guns that call the tune in the employment business in Colombo. Don’t blame the prospective employer; they are not running charities but corporate conglomerates that need the kind of young they could tinker and shape the way they want to represent them in the ever-increasing competitive world they face each day.

The need is English. The Government has recognised this monstrous inadequacy and is addressing it. Why can’t the young speak English? There may be many reasons, but the prime ‘numero uno’ is the ‘FEAR.’ Go to the beach in Unawatuna and you see the bead necklace seller with a smattering of German. He is even capable of giving choices to ‘Von Richthofen,’ or someone who wears beads, all in the language of the Fatherland. The maids who cross oceans to fend for the family learn Arabic, Italian, English or whatever the host family speaks at home. Send a student to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow and he will study in Russian. China, our new God Father and God Mother rolled into one gives scholarships and young Sri Lankans read their degrees in Beijing and Shanghai in Mandarin. In Castro land they become scholarship doctors in Spanish. Then how come the under-graduate in a local university who is bright and knows the score still ends up being in no position to converse in English?

They understand almost every word; they would speak too, if only they could get over the trauma that somebody will laugh at them. And I do not think anybody is laughing; it is just an imaginary deterrent that needs to be eradicated.

On July 24, Mr Bradman Weerakoon drove to Matugama. He was invited to open a library, a different kind of a library in the Madawala Pirivena located in Welipanne, Matugama. It was an ENGLISH BOOKS ONLY library. This is a new approach of CandleAid Lanka where we already have 110 libraries in Sinhala and Tamil, spread all over the island. The coordinator for the Welipanne Library is Batuwangala Rahula Thera, a State Literary Award winner who received the prestigious honour for his book ‘Bora Thel’.

The erudite priest identified the importance of teaching English to his students and joined with CandleAid for this first step in a long journey to teach the Queen’s language to rural children.

This is a beginning, a fight to shed the ‘shame’ of wrong English. The ENGLISH BOOKS ONLY library is open to anyone as it is a change of attitude we seek. Students, school leavers, parents, grandfathers and grandmothers, anyone is welcome in Rahula Thera’s CandleAid English Library. The vision is to make a mass exodus from ‘cuff of tea’ and ‘fineapple’ level to reading Enid Blyton and Harry Potter. Get the fear out and make all the mistakes, but speak English mixing the ‘f’s and the ‘p’s to your heart’s content. Give a ‘pight’ to learn English, nobody should laugh. The need is to improve from murdering the Queen to a lesser evil of pinching the Royal backside.

Don’t tell me I am ridiculing anyone by this ‘fineapple and fan cake’ talk. I certainly am not. I am only facing the truth and measuring the need and doing something about it. I myself never spoke a single word in English till I was eighteen, but I read and I know the path. It can be done and it will be done and it needs to be done, to teach the Sri Lankan young to speak English. They should stand equal to their counterparts from more affluent schools who are better exposed to the English language. These local ‘Village-Hampdens’ do have the capabilities, all they need is a level platform to perform, which will only be a reality the day they achieve some fluency in English.

First we have to admit there is an inadequacy, and then only we can find the medicine and look for a cure

CandleAid has set up a separate section to open ENGLISH BOOKS ONLY libraries. The second will be in the North, in Point Pedro, a hamlet called Allaiyanpathy. Then we will go to other places, find the money, look for corporate sponsorships and open as many English Books Only libraries as we can.

If anyone is interested in helping please contact Mrs Shanika Moraes, Chief Coordinator for CandleAid English Libraries.

Shanika@moraes.co.uk

Maybe you too can be part of this ever-important venture. Maybe you can team up with friends and collect fifty used books (suitable please) and donate to one of our English Libraries. Maybe you are a corporate giant who insists on English when hiring. Then let’s not say the streams are bitter, and write off some rural kid desperate for a job. Let’s find out when and why the fountain got poisoned and try and cleanse it with participation.

There is a whole generation of ‘kadu motta’ young who need to sharpen their language. It’s time we did something.

I became a ‘filot’ and a ‘cafton’ starting very close to where the ‘non English speaking’ young are today. I have no qualms about admitting that. All I say is it can be done. Let’s not make a big deal of wrong pronunciation, after all language is a means to communicate. Let not a ‘frawn’ curry or a ‘pruit’ salad delay the much needed buffet and deter the young from fearlessly speaking English.

What CandleAid started in Matugama is a step in the right direction. It is the way to go to secure a future for the rural young. Give them a chance to read. Come walk with us. Each step counts; then there is no place called far away.