Intention of Pursuing English as a Second Language by Undergraduates

Abstract

English opens new avenues in almost all the aspects especially in communication and technology in the modern globalized world. When it comes to Sri Lankan context, English language is commonly known as Kaduwa; the sword which kills those who are not competent in it. Hence, pursuing ESL has become a widely spreading passion in contemporary Sri Lanka as no one likes to be discriminated by others caused by lack of proficiency in English. Thus, most of the students tend to follow English courses in public and private institutions. Consequently, current study intends to investigate the intention of pursuing English as a Second Language (ESL) by tertiary level students. In order to achieve the objective, primary data were collected utilizing a questionnaire survey from 96 undergraduates of Uva Wellassa University using stratified sampling technique. The results ascertained through the analysis revealed that majority of almost all the faculties has the prime intention of obtaining a nice job with attractive salaries and good working conditions through pursuing ESL recording 85%. Further, gaining the ability to read English books and magazines with ease and gaining the ability to communicate freely in English with people from different countries have been reported parallel with the percentage 72 by each as second highest intentions of respondents who follow ESL. However, thirdly most of the respondents (71%) intend to pursue ESL as they want to get a job in which they can use English. Moreover, more than half of the respondents (60%) have the intention of achieving good marks and improve their evaluation in the academic transcript. Conversely, the fewest number of respondents (19%) wants to work either for an international organization (e.g. the EU) or for a global company (e.g., Nokia) by pursuing ESL. Thus, the results are crucial in designing ESL curricular for tertiary level students in order to better facilitate learners and furthermore teachers are benefitted with selecting ESL materials and activities. In conclusion, the prospective researchers will be enlightened to conduct further research pursuing this line of the study.