Crossing over to the other side:attitudes held by Sinhala medium Humanities and Social Sciences undergraduates of Sri Lankan universities towards English

Abstract

In Sri Lanka, the necessity of a lingua franca like English is highly felt, specially in view of the country's vision to become a knowledge hub in Asia. Consequently English is taught to the youth at secondary and tertiary levels as a second language. English has been made accessible to undergraduates of Sri Lankan universities by successive governments in view of its significant value. This research analyzes the different attitudes towards English held by Sinhala medium Humanities and Social Sciences undergraduates. It is conducted on the basis that attitude is one of the key variables affecting the language learning process of a student. The research, has taken into consideration the emotional and cognitive aspects of attitude. It further focuses on whether these attitudes were acquired as a result of university education alone or whether there is any correlation between their present attitudes and satisfaction level regarding English education during school years, and also whether there are any gender wise attitudinal differences. The researcher selected a sample of 80 undergraduates (male/female) from the Arts Faculties of 4 national universities whose medium of instruction with regard to their degree subjects is Sinhala. The undergraduates belong to several streams of academic study.. Further, the researcher used questionnaires as her principle data collection tool while conducting face to face interviews of 20 randomly selected undergraduates. The Attitude and Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) designed by Gardner (1985) was taken as a guideline in formulating the questionnaire. Six subscales, namely interest in foreign languages, attitude towards learning English, attitude towards foreign native speakers of English, attitude towards local native speakers of English, integrative orientation, instrumental orientation of English were chosen and adapted from the test battery in order to test the general attitude of undergraduates. Each subscale comprised four to seven variables. The findings appear to be complex in terms of the emotional aspect of undergraduate attitudes. While the undergraduates express a very high interest in foreign languages and a positive attitude towards learning English, they do not harbour a positive attitude towards either foreign or local native speakers of English. This juxtaposes with the results of their integrative orientation towards English which indicates a relatively strong attitude towards knowing English for integrative purposes. At a cognitive level, the undergraduates project a strong instrumental orientation towards English. The overall data analysis leads us to a dichotomy in undergraduate attitude, where the undergraduates while perceiving fluent speakers of English negatively, desire to be fluent in English in their own rights.