Sri Lankan University Students’ and English Lecturers’ Acceptance of Selected Sri Lankan English Prepositional Verbs: Pedagogical Implications

Abstract

One of the characteristic features of Sri Lankan English (SLE) is the use of verb-preposition combinations which do no not exist in British Standard English (BSE). Such verb formations, which could be classified as prepositional verbs, are used in abundance in SLE newspapers. This research focuses on the levels of acceptance displayed by Sri Lankan university lecturers of the English Language and Sri Lankan university students currently following English courses at the English Language Teaching Units (ELTUs) of their respective universities. The results obtained through an acceptability test firstly point to high levels of acceptance of these verb formations among university students and English lecturers of Sri Lankan universities. Secondly, the findings show that the acceptance levels displayed by the university students is higher than those displayed by English lecturers. Finally, the results reveal that, out of three SLE prepositional verbs, 'discuss about' is the verb that has received the highest level of acceptance where the university students are concerned. On the contrary, with regard to the English lecturers, 'comprise of' has received the highest level of acceptance. This paper highlights some implications that these acceptance levels displayed by Sri Lankan undergraduates and English lecturers have on the teaching of these verb formations in particular, and the pedagogy, in general, of English as a Second Language (ESL) in Sri Lanka.

Critical Literature Review of Contemporary Research on Attitudes Towards World Englishes

“…These included publications in local journals (Fernando & Sivaji, 2014;Medawattegedera & Devendra, 2004;Samarakkody, 2001), unpublished conference papers (Fernando, 2014), and postgraduate-level dissertations. (Dissanayake, 2019;Fernando, 2007;Hediwattage, 2018), and an international journal article published prior to 2010 (Künstler et al, 2009). 4.…”

“…They have been designed to elicit responses to individual WEs such as SLE, Indian English, British English, and American English (Bernaisch, 2012;Bernaisch & Koch, 2016), to statements about accents (Curren & Chern, 2017;Wang & Gao, 2015), to constructs like "native speakers", e.g. "I think native speakers of English should be the role model for Taiwanese students (Curren & Chern, 2017, p. 141), and to specific grammatical and lexical features (Dissanayake, 2019;Fernando, 2007;Hediwattege, 2018;Wang & Gao, 2015;Wiebesiek et al, 2011).…”

“…This has proven true in studies of attitudes to SLE. Recent surveys of SLE acceptance, awareness and attitudes have generally revealed what early AWE researchers (Medawattegedera & Devendra, 2004;Fernando, 2007) have already confirmed: while teachers of English are aware of SLE and endorse its existence, there is a general reluctance to accept too many SLE features in the ELT classroom (Dissanayake, 2019;Hediwattege, 2018). Thus, in order to progress beyond such saturation and other limitations of large-scale quantitative studies and to gain new insights into the phenomenon of AWEs, a reevaluation of the conceptual assumptions and methodological approaches is perhaps necessary.…”