#102, Video: African-American Criticism
ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#102 | October 17 | ISSN 0975-3036 Subscribe to ELTWeekly (FREE) In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry examines trends in African-American criticism through the lens of Henry…
#102, Article: ‘Listening: An Important Soft Skill’ by Shoba Rao
ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#102 | October 17 | ISSN 0975-3036
Subscribe to ELTWeekly (FREE)
Listening is an important component of communication and an activity which is much more than mere hearing. It involves more attention and aids in building relationships that can bring success both in one’s personal or professional front. The fact that we have two ears and one mouth shows that listening is a more difficult task than speaking. Therefore, listening needs to be developed and nutured from the primary level itself.
Listening is hampered when the listener does not have the knowledge of the
- sound system of the language
- words order in the sentence and their meaning
- meaning of individual words and the relation between words in the sentence
- meaning and use of language in a particular situations
- information conveyed through non-verbal means such as facial expression, eye contact, and body posture
Just as speaking and writing are given importance as productive skills, reading and listening require special training for their development as they are resceptive skills.There is no doubt that it is an important soft that needs to be honed. (more…)
#102, Research Paper: ‘History of Bilingualism in Sri Lankan Context’ by Thirunavukkarasu Karunakaran
ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#102 | October 17 | ISSN 0975-3036
Subscribe to ELTWeekly (FREE)
Thirunavukkarasu Karunakaran has been an ESL teacher for10 years at University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He has MA and MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. His research interests are in the areas of borrowings, bilingualism and bilingual education.
1.0 Introduction
This paper deals with the key aspects of Bilingual History in Sri Lankan context. The history of bilingualism began in Sri Lanka with arrival of British and English was made as the official language in order to make the administration easy and those who were proficient in English got the privilege of enjoying the prestigious positions in the British regime. Consequently, people were coerced to acquire English in order to find good job and this pave the way to the people to adapt bilingualism in the country. Therefore, this paper captures the broad history of bilingualism and its implications in Sri Lanka.
1.1 English and Bilingualism in Sri Lanka
Before English was introduced to Sri Lanka as official language in 1976, Dutch and vernaculars, Sinhala and Tamil, were in use. The British regime displaced Dutch and vernaculars and declared English as the official language. It is very difficult to assess to what extent the Portuguese was used in Sri Lanka. As per records available now, both Portuguese and Dutch had an entrenched idea of expanding their business and military to a larger extent and that was why their interest in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was in terms of commercial and military aspects (Pieris,1914). To have a strong military hold in Sri Lanka, Portuguese advocated intermarriages with Sinhalese and Tamils, but they could experiment this idea only with the people who were deprived of basic rights. This implies that at least a section of the Ceylon society might have been bilinguals. In the case of Dutch rule, they could not retain their language in Sri Lanka, after they had been defeated by the British forces. Dutch was almost extinct and the descendants of Dutch have converted themselves to Portuguese (Tennent, 1950). By the end of nineteenth century, the use of Portuguese and Dutch disappeared but Tamil, Sinhala and English borrowed many words from these two languages. (more…)