Media and Communication Studies at the State Universities in Sri Lanka: Challenges of English Medium Education

Abstract

Media education was introduced to Sri Lankan university education in 1973. But media education is mainly offered in Sinhala medium in university education. Therefore, students face some challenges in finding job opportunities, foreign scholarships, research and publications etc. due to the English language barrier. In this context, the purpose of the study is to investigate the challenges of offering media education in English medium in state universities by using the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory. Therefore, the Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and the in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data for the study. The results showed that there were some challenges in offering media education in English medium in the state universities such as the difficulty of finding visiting academics or resource persons who are capable of teaching media and communication in English medium, the limited permanent members available in the universities, the lack of exposure to the English language by both the permanent academic members and students in the field of Media and Communication Studies etc. Therefore, academics should take the necessary actions to offer media education in English medium. Then only the students and teachers can be familiar with English medium education to empower themselves in finding job opportunities, foreign scholarships, postgraduate opportunities, research, publications etc.