The Status of Psychological and Physical Concerns on Utility of English Medium Undergraduates

Abstract

English being recognized as one of foremost communicational tool in various countries and it is most acceptable and popular language other than any other languages. According to Alfitri (2012) 375 million people use English as their first language and 750 million people use English as their second language. English play a major roll within individual lives and as a result of that, utility of English became a major part in each individuals. In academic field English language became prominent language in both staff and undergraduates and leading language of instruction in most of higher education institutions i.e. universities. The main objective of the research was to identify what are the major psychological and physical obstacles face by English medium student within the University premise and as specific objective to examine how demographic nature of student’s influence on their continuation of study in English medium. The research has carried out using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Purposive random sampling method being applied to collect primary data. The sample was consisted with 100 undergraduates under the department of Philosophy, University of Kelaniya. The collected qualitative data through questionnaire has being analysed using SPSS version 22 manually to draw up descriptive statistics. The research has found that, among the total sample 14% of the students face physical difficulties such as body shivering, drowsiness, suffocating, fast heartbeat, and swatting while 32% of students indicated mentally stressed such as feeling uneasy, confuse, shy, sleepy and anger. Therefore, it can be concluding as English become provocative language among the English medium undergraduates and that has been caused by psychological, physiological and demographic factors as well.