English Education in Sri Lanka
Thursday was my first full day of teaching at the school. In two days at the Rohana Special School, I’ve just about learned all there is to know about English education for the deaf in Sri Lanka.
Despite my limited (but not for long!) fluency in Sinhala Sign Language, my inability to read or speak Sinhala, and my inexperience with the teaching profession in general, it’s already been clear that the students aren’t learning English now, and have not been learning English despite sitting through English classes since Grade 3.
If you look at their workbooks, they certainly look proficient in English. They’re writing complex sentences, answering fill-in-the-blank questions, and analyzing long English passages in their textbooks.
But when I reviewed vocabulary lists such as animals (dog, cat, hen, cow, snake, rabbit…) or sports (volleyball, cricket, football, carom, netball…), they had tremendous difficulty spelling out the words. One student tried to spell cricket like this: c-h-l-g-h-e-t.
Students’ levels of English skills varied wildly along the dimensions of reading, spelling, meaning, and usage. There are a few who are quite good at finger-spelling words using the British two-handed alphabet, but cannot decipher the same words when written on a blackboard. Nearly all of them show confusion within the lowercase b/d, t/l/i, e/c, and n/r/h letter groups.
One Grade 9 student insisted that I spelled “GALLE” wrong, and rewrote it as “Galle.” A few others, when fingerspelling the ABCs, could not reach the letter z without my assistance; the same was true for writing it out.
So what’s going on here? Their workbooks reveal an advanced command of English with deftly-composed paragraphs about Sri Lankan life, but classroom instruction shows their English levels to be rudimentary at best.
Sophie, the volunteer from the United Kingdom who worked at Rohana for three months (and went back to university in Scotland just three weeks before I arrived), wrote a wonderfully detailed report on Rohana’s English instruction. She wrote about this very same discrepancy between the workbook contents and the in-class exercises, and explained that the students, through “careful trickery (through looking at what words are in the same in the question as in the text), a skill in being able to copy, and a HUGE amount of guesswork,” are able to reproduce a high level of English use in their workbooks.
And the students have been doing this for years. Grade 11 is devoted mainly to preparing for the Ordinary Level (O/L) examinations, which I think are like a combination of the SATs and high school exit exams, to use American terms. To me, they look like the SAT II English Comprehension exam, covering adverbial clauses of condition, gerunditive terms, and using analytical reasoning to draw inferences from passages.
I remind you that the Grade 11 students at Rohana are still learning the alphabet.
The teachers have been powerless because the English syllabus is decided by the national education department in Colombo. No modifications have been made for instructing English to deaf students or even special-needs students, for that matter. As all teachers in Sri Lanka are government-paid employees, they are bound to the national curriculum; deviation from the norm can result in dismissal (and the salary is good enough to cause a glut of teachers in this country; one nearby school with 50 students has 25 teachers).
The last few days have been somewhat difficult as I try to absorb the magnitude of this problem concerning English education. For years and years, these students have been simply copying English passages from their textbooks into their workbooks. Imagine that…copying and guessing for seven years. Instead of teaching deaf children how to understand even the most basic English, Sri Lanka’s educational bureaucracy has turned them into glorified xerox machines. It makes me want to cry.
And now, what I’ve just said all concerns English. In America, we have enough difficulties teaching deaf students English, and it’s our primary language. In Sri Lanka, it’s a second language (or even a third; they also learn Tamil). What of their Sinhala, math, science, history, agriculture, art, and life skills proficiencies? Has the system also failed deaf students in these aspects? Should the meager resources expended on English education be allocated to other, more useful subjects instead?
Anyone who visits Rohana can see there is dire need for improvement at all levels. The first two changes would be to boost the allocation of money to deaf schools, which currently receive 50 rupees per student per month. That’s $0.50…for Rohana, which has about 100 students, it adds up to $50.00 a month (teacher salaries are paid separately by the government). The second change would be to initiate a nationwide dialogue on deaf education as it stands today and begin collecting change recommendations for educational reform.
Well, all talk for now, but we’ll see. For now, my task is to go back to the basics, build on Sophie’s past successes with the children (alphabet drills and basic vocabulary), and maybe even help them begin constructing basic English sentences.
Despite the sorry state of English education, the children are so, so delightful to be around. I’m already looking forward to Monday…it’s a sheer joy to be around them and to provide them with a radically different teaching approach. I have so much more to say about that…but later!
Adam, you are a hero! : )
Your reports are so articulate about how the Rohana School is… Well done Adam for recognizing and understanding the situation SO quickly… it took me much longer! Keep enjoying it and be in touch soon Loads of love Soph x
Wow, that IS sad…
…and ironically, also utterly fascinating to me at the same time. I’m starting to be drawn to how teaching systems/structures are set up in various countries compared to America.
What I have to wonder is this: what exactly (for lack of a better word…) encouraged/made the student to just copy, being xerox machines as you put it, what they “read” from their textbooks into their workbooks? How did the link between reading and learning exactly disappear? That’s what perplexing me.
If you have an answer, then by all means, fill me in.
adam,
im glad to see sri lanka is treatin you well and that u are enjoying all the rich expierences it and Rohana School for the Deaf has to offer you. Im beyond thrilled. All the little perks and things you have observed amuses me greatly (like the whole ashok leyland on the trucks, the many maids who serve you 3 full meals a day in the beautiful home etc).
maybe you could try to visit one or 2 other deaf schools and see how they are doing with english, and hopefull give u some more insight into the best way to teach them english. more knowledge always help. but you’re right- are they even fluent in their own native language?
its been a great joy reading your blogs.. makes me miss ceylon and india a lot… ill be in there in a few months, eh? keep us updated!
*hugs* lotsa love, sasha
Adam, hopefully someday your students will be able to read your posts.
Does this mean you may be returning to Sri Lanka after January?
Do tell us at some point how you teach ‘em in a language you don’t know and how they understand you. With the mesh of BSL, ASL, and bits of SSL, I’m wondering just how you’ll teach them basic command of English.
Great commentary. I realize Internet there is actually a luxury and you can’t really type away to your heart’s content but I hope at some point, you’ll be able to tell us more about the fascinating learning process of communicating with the students, with the volunteers, and with the locals. It’d be somewhat of a humbling experience. Deprived of direct pure ASL is humbling, I think. Do tell us the name sign they gave you!
Love your insights and your ability to craft close-to-perfect assessment of what’s happening in front of you (or behind you too!).
Keep writing, keep absorbing, and keep learning.
xo
Went to a 100th bday party last nite, and the bday boy gave us 3 things to live by: Courage - Kindness - Love. You’re demonstrating all three.
BTW, try not to storm the Prime Minister’s office in protest during your first month on the job. Wait till the 2nd month. ;-}
Adam,
What is your experience in the education field? Currently I am studying for my masters in Rhetoric and Composition (i graduate in MAY!!). In response to your comments about the situation you are facing I have questions and comments:
1) Have you looked into the connection between reading and writing. It’s quite interesting. There is a current debate about if there is in fact a connection between the two. The issues in connection with this could directly relate to your situation.
2) Do you have ESL experience?
3) It’s apparent that there is a gap between visual (signed) communication and the written word; however I disagree completely with the following observation:
“careful trickery (through looking at what words are in the same in the question as in the text), a skill in being able to copy, and a HUGE amount of guesswork”
It seems apparent the children understand grammar if they are able to compose in the way you are stating they can. It is the “gap” (3) that could use assessing. A good place to start would be to assess whether they can spell (writing) in their own language and spell in SSL. Is the spelling carrying over between the two native languages? The answer to this could potentially set you looking in the right direction….
Small baby steps.
Regards,
N~
Adam -
Thanks for the report! I look forward to seeing further thoughts. It took me about a year before I could fully comment on the state of British education… be open to surprises.
N,
I can’t answer for Adam but I can say that in terms of Deaf education getting students to copy rather than learn has a long and well-documented history. Since the language being read or written is, for Deaf students, often as much of a dead language as Latin, it does happen.
ok im definitely confused. i thought the report I read from the previous volunteer touched upon a certain degree of privitization, not so much by a company, but rather no longer getting government support. about the educational centers that are owned and managed by private organizations with meager assistance from the govt — yet this post makes the gov’t sound quite involved - unless the educational bureaucracy you wrote of was not govt related… or maybe, i misunderstood that part of her report?
Insightful overview. Do you have any idea how deaf some of the students are?
It sounds as though English is being taught as a first language. Are they allowed to learn Sinhal? It’s apparent they don’t know it, but didn’t most of kids come to the school because of the cultural norms? It would make sense that they wouldn’t know Sinhal or Tamil very well. Do most live there? If so, they probably have not been exposed to many good role models for the languages.
Are you sure you know EVERYTHING after just a couple days? HMMM. A great challenge for you! Im sure the kids like you already. How do they adapt to a foreigner? How is the teacher/student ratio at RSS?
Post #8 has some good points.
Also, please answer Adamzsis. I ditto her questions and comments. must run in the family.:)
Keep up the good work!
Adam welcome to the world of education… Ideas like language pragmatics and meaningful writing are replaced with teaching to the test and completing the currriculum. Sometimes it seems like all hell is going to break loose if you don’t get the students to work to page “X” in the curriculum guide, then the work has to be met with a certain profeciency so you can hurrry up, finish and get to the next level. Just like a video game…..Keep thinking about how the system is not always best for the learner and how you can create change when you are in charge. O.K. enough of my band wagon I love to talk about the state of education and I am excited to read more about your experiences and insight. I am so excited for you about your experience in S.L. Ahhhhh to be young again, smart and hardworking!!!!!!! You are so cool. Love, Peggy
wow.
i want to re-ask one of sasha’s queston: are they fluent in their language? it’s like helen keller … it didn’t matter what she can do until she understood “water” and along with it, the concept of language. if they are still learning the alphabets by grade 11, i assume not. and that shocks me. so glad you’re there and especially that you’re going to do something about it.