World Englishes and Language Assessment in English Language Teaching in Sri Lanka: A Conceptual Review

Abstract

This study is a conceptual review investigating the significance of World Englishes (WE) ideologies and its perspectives for (re)conceptualizing language assessment (LA) in English language teaching (ELT) in Sri Lanka. For this research, a keyword search was conducted on Jstor and Taylor & Francis databases and the internet and 21 scholarly publications with most relevance to the purpose of the study were selected. As such, 7 books, 12 articles from journals and research article compilations, and 2 conference papers were reviewed thematically in terms of the research objectives guiding the study: to identify what ideologies the scholarship of WE is based on and how they are useful for (re) conceptualizing LA; to identify what suggestions are made in the field of WE with regard to LA and how practical these suggestions are; and to understand the relevance of WE perspectives on LA, for understanding the role of SLE in LA in ELT in Sri Lanka. The findings reveal that the WE scholarship promotes five ideologies and that they are necessary for understanding WE position on pluricentric language norms, i.e. language standards which are regionally and locally determined. While this implies the relevance of Sri Lankan English (SLE) as the target language for LA practices in ELT in Sri Lanka, several obstacles to this speculative argument was also found through the analysis of literature. It can be concluded that although WE scholarship has much to offer in terms of the relevance of SLE to LA in Sri Lanka, these theories remain highly abstract until they are practically implemented and tested.