India aiding English-language teaching in Sri Lanka

[Harold Schiffman]

India aiding English-language teaching in Sri Lanka
Monday April 21 2008 12:32 IST
P.K. Balachandran


COLOMBO: India has begun aiding English-language teaching in Sri Lanka
in a major way to enable young Sri Lankans get jobs in the corporate
sector, especially in the burgeoning services businesses where
English-language skills are a key requirement. The "English as a Life
Skill" programme, started by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, aims to
train at least 50,000 persons between the ages of 18 and 24 in the use
of the language with assistance from the High Commission of India and
the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in Hyderabad.  The
course will be short-term in order to get quick results. Sri Lanka
hopes to be a BPO centre in the near future, and also attract other
foreign investments which it has denied itself for half a century,
thanks to a short-sighted "no-English" language policy since 1956.

Between April 23 and 25, Colombo will host an "English Teaching
Business Mela" in which the EFLU, the Sri Lankan government, and
Indian and Sri Lankan investors would discuss the possibility of joint
ventures to teach job-oriented English-language skills. A key
component of the government programme is to "teach the teacher." It is
estimated that Sri Lanka has about 21,000 largely untrained English
teachers in government-run and private schools. In addition, there are
those who teach in the nation's 1,690 private tutorial colleges. The
EFLU will help set up a Centre for English Language Teaching (CELT) in
Sri Lanka to train these teachers. The Government of India will give
30 scholarships to Sri Lankan teachers to travel to the EFLU in
Hyderabad for a three-month crash course in English for professional
use.

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20080421013951&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0

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