English Medium Education and Bachelor of Education Programmes in the Sri Lankan University: challenges and realities

Abstract

English Medium Education (EME) has been in existence for several decades in many Universities in Sri Lanka. However, there is a scarcity of research on the challenges faced by the lecturers and students in the implementation of EME in the Universities. This study examines the challenges encountered by the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) undergraduates and lecturers involved in the EME in the Faculty of Education (FoE), University of Colombo. It also examines the English Language Proficiency (ELP) needs of the students that hinder successful learning by investigating the perception of the students on EME and the emergent realities. The study was conducted as a survey by utilizing questionnaires, observations, interviews and documentary survey for collecting data and analysis was done using qualitative as well as quantitative methods. The key findings were that lack of ELP skills was the main challenge encountered by the EME students but the students had not perceived their language needs correctly. Lack of response of the students in the EME class was the greatest challenge lecturers encountered in the EME classroom which was due to the lack of ELP skills of the students but the lecturers avoided the language aspects because they were not aware of the EME methodologies of content and language integrated education. Therefore it is important to introduce strategies to develop the teachinglearning process in the EME by promoting collaborative teaching of language lecturers and content lecturers.