Ground-Level Realities in Learning in the Medium of English: The Sri Lankan Experience

Sri Lanka has English medium instruction (EMI) for higher education by and large. With mother tongue (MT) dominant backgrounds and bleak English language learning histories added to the lack of resources for EM in universities, the study I conducted with 50 students belonging to not-so-high levels of English language proficiency from 2 regional universities in northern Sri Lanka aimed at examining how undergraduates perceived EMI vis-a-vis the challenges in EMI, remedial measures adopted and their general perception on EMI. Interestingly, the majority of students in the sample seemed to find EMI neither difficult nor easy. The ‘biggest problem’ in EMI appeared to vary from comprehension issues to discussions in EM across the student sample with coping mechanisms such as using recorded lectures repeatedly, informal group discussions, translating EM lectures into their MT and getting someone else to translate them into their MT. With all these pain-staking self-organized strategies, very interestingly, students seemed to have an extremely positive attitude towards EMI as well. Given the not-very-high levels of English language proficiency of the sample, their enthusiasm to study in EM may be explained in terms of the theory of possible selves where they see their successful future selves in a new learner identity.