The use of Mother Tongue and Local culture in Developing English Proficiency of Undergraduates: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that Sri Lankan students' proficiency of English related to communication is very low. Therefore, the effort attempted was to make students use English in contexts created in the classrooms based on local culture with the judicious use of mother tongue. The literacy skills and knowledge of L1 will help the learner to learn the second language and not interfere with the learning process (Cummins & Swain, 1986). The objectives of the study were to see whether the general language proficiency could be promoted using mother tongue and local culture in an activity-based classroom to undergraduates who studied in the mother tongue medium at schools and to explore the possibilitie5 of promoting their personality development through the use of mother tongue and local culture. An ethnographical mode of study was conducted with a group of Third year students twenty in number for three weeks at the Vavuniya Campus. This paper makes an attempt to analyze the performance and show how the students' language development promoted and enriched through the use of local culture and mother tongue. Thus, it was observed that the students' affective filters could be lowered and they would be promoted to communicate without inhibition. At the end of the three-week programme, a lot of language learning has taken place.