Abstract:

Practices of linguistic shame and shaming associated with English language use considerably impact users’ willingness to communicate (WTC) publicly in English. This situation continues to confront the English language teaching in postcolonial contexts especially in the case of Sri Lanka. These practices of linguistic shame and shaming create pedagogical challenges for the teacher educators instructing at pre-service educational institutes which train young individuals to become professionally qualified teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL). Currently, they are increasingly being challenged because they need to teach students/trainees who come from disadvantaged local contexts with a very less exposure to English and have developed linguistic inhibitions that affect their willingness to communicate in English in public. The tacit nature in which these practices of linguistic shame and shaming operate within the tertiary instructional settings add an additional layer of difficulty to the teacher educators to understand and mitigate them. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the phenomenon of linguistic shame and the ways in which they manifest in national level tertiary pedagogical contexts is seen as a timely necessity for mitigating it effectively and creatively. Thus, this investigation examined ESL practitioners’ perceptions of linguistic shame and shaming and how it functions in ELT classrooms in Sri Lanka. The study used four English language educators at the National Colleges of Education and four ESL teachers at Sabararagamuwa University of Sri Lanka as participants. Semi-structured interviews were employed as an instrument for gathering data for this qualitative study. The findings indicated that participants’ consciousness and their ability to articulate what linguistic shame and shaming are diverse, and they can mitigate the negative impact of shame and shaming through the provision of meaningful Professional Development (PD) opportunities. Teacher PD has implications for teaching and learning of English in the Sri Lankan higher educational sector where practices of linguistic shame and shaming are prevalent. If this is the case, multiple professional and personal goals that ESL practitioners achieve via PD activities could support them to reorient their attitudes and conceptions. Given that the findings of the study have overarching consequences for ESL teacher trainees studying at tertiary level as well as ESL learners at schools and should therefore, have great capacity to inform and impact pre-service and in-service English language teacher education curricula in Sri Lanka.

Keywords:

English as a Second Language (ESL), Tertiary education, L2 pedagogy, linguistic shame and shaming, willingness to communicate (WTC), professional development (PD), personal and professional growth.