Formulación Lagrangiana

The study was undertaken at one of the universities in Sri Lanka. The university was established in 1995. It has four faculties, namely the Faculty of Arts and Culture, Faculty of Management and Commerce, Faculty of Applied Sciences (FAS) and Faculty of Islamic Studies and Arabic. Of which the Faculty of Applied Sciences (containing the departments of Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematical Science), where this study was undertaken, is located away from the main campus. In the university at the time of the data collection the student population was estimated to be around 1800, while the student number at FAS was only 186.

Subject lecturers

The lecturers are usually recruited to the faculty as probationary lecturers (junior lecturers). The basic qualification required for the post of probationary lecturer is a special degree (four years duration) in the relevant field with a first or second class pass and teaching experience of a minimum of one year. Some of them are appointed

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as senior lecturers when they possess a master’s degree or above. As this is a new university, even a junior lecturer may conduct lectures for second or third year students, whereas in other universities only senior lecturers conduct classes. The junior lecturers, who are kept on probationary period, are allowed to complete postgraduate study with a research component within eight years from their date of appointment. In addition, they are also asked to follow a staff development programme9 as a mandatory requirement. When they fulfil these two requirements, with five years experience, they are promoted to the next grade, senior lecturer (grade II). Failure to secure a senior grade within eight years results in either demotion to temporary lecturer or termination from the post (at least in theory).

In FAS, there were 30 academic staff. Of them two-thirds were senior lecturers, while the remainder were junior lecturers at the time of data collection. In addition, there were around 15 temporary instructors/tutors/ demonstrators (similar to TAs (Teaching Assistants)) who were recruited on an annual contract.

Students at FAS

The major intake for FAS comes from the eastern province where the university is located. The language problem prevails among these students as generally the opportunities for learning English either at school or in society are poor. Moreover, there is an acute shortage of English teachers in this region. The university takes measures to teach these students English during the pre academic programmes and through ongoing English classes, as mentioned in the previous chapter. The profile of the students at FAS is given in table 2.1 below.

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 These programmes are held for junior lectures to improve their teaching capacities, organized by the University Grants Commission.  

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For the last two years the University Grants Commission has admitted students from various districts under special admissions criteria. Therefore, presently there are mixed ethnic students: Muslims, Sinhalese, Tamils and Christians in the present first year and second year, speaking two first languages, Tamil and Sinhala.

Table 2.1: Student population in FAS (as at October 2009; at the time of data collection)

Year Male Female Total

1 38 26 64

2 22 31 53

3 21 20 41

410 1 2 3

Total 82 79 161

2.5.1 Addressing the gap

My involvement with students at FAS for the last 12 years, in addition to formal meetings and informal chats with subject lecturers, indicates that students in the English medium classes at FAS continuously find difficulties in comprehending lectures delivered in English and also in participating in classroom discussions. I have explained the reasons for these problems in the introduction chapter.

There is a greater role for the science graduates to teach in the English medium at the secondary level in order to take forward the policy initiative of the government that introduced English medium instruction at the secondary level. We have also discussed in chapter 1 that presently science graduates from all universities lack the ability to teach in the English medium because of their limited language fluency, although their subject knowledge is good. Therefore, it is against this backdrop that I am curious to try to find alternative ways that could support the language development of the students at FAS.

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It is usually a general degree that lasts for three years, but a few students are given the opportunity to do a special degree each year for four years.

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Though English medium education has been researched by Sri Lankan academics and researchers, their focuses have been divergent. For example, Suresh Canagarajah (1993, 1999, 2005) was interested in the sociolinguistic aspects of his region (Jaffna), Chitra Fernando (1977) focused on bilingualism, Ryhana Raheem on language policies and language learning (e.g. Raheem and Ratwatte, 2004; Raheem and Devendra, 2007), while Manique Gunasekara (2005) was interested in Sri Lankan English (i.e. the variety of English).

Publication of educational journals is also limited in Sri Lanka. Though there are local publications from time to time, none of them are regular. Lack of resources and lack of researchers could be considered as reasons for this irregularity. The journals published in Sri Lankan are: ‘Navasilu’ (light), published by the English Association of Sri Lanka; the Sri Lanka Journal of Educational Research, published by the National Institute of Education, Sri Lanka; the Sri Lanka Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, published by the National Centre for Advanced Studies in

Humanities and Social Sciences; and the Open University of Sri Lanka Journal. However, none of these journals publish regular issues. In addition, there is a peer reviewed quarterly published by SLELTA (Sri Lanka English Language Teachers Association), in collaboration with the British Council, Colombo. Though this quarterly is published regularly, most of its contents are based on classroom practices and teaching hints.

Moreover, there have been no published articles locally, either in journals or newspapers, which explore the teaching style of secondary or tertiary level lecturers, lecture comprehension of students or the lecturer-student interaction in the classroom similar to the present study, except Sally’s (1985) study which I discuss in the next chapter.

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In the absence of any previous studies in the Sri Lankan context on lecturer-student interaction at tertiary level and given that only a few studies have examined the importance of interaction in tertiary-level L2 Science classes outside Sri Lanka, this study is believed to contribute to the knowledge domain by filling a gap in this area of research.