Enhancing the Usage of English medium Reading materials of the Undergraduates of Bachelor of Labour Education(BLE): Initiatives taken by the Institute of Human Resource Advancement(IHRA) University of Colombo

Abstract

Literacy in English Language is a key to success in life for everybody in Sri Lanka, especially for employed people. The undergraduates of the IHRA, though they are considered as normal full time students, are employed adults who have responsibilities in their working places as well as in the family. These responsibilities become barriers when it comes to both studying and reading materials. Since the people who were exposed to the Education system in Sri Lanka after 1956 are mainly mono-lingual, the employed students also have to put extra effort to learn English. The library of the IHRA has taken several steps to motivate its students to borrow books in English from 1992 to 2010. But the statistics did not show whether there was an improvement of their borrowing books in English. Therefore a study is being carried out through a questionnaire survey and a sub sample will be selected to be interviewed. The main purpose of the survey was to find out new ways to enhance the literacy of English Language of the undergraduates of IHRA. A suggestion that could be made after analysing the data from the questionnaire is to maintain a CD/DVD collection in the library.