Is importing ELT pedagogies viable anymore? : The case of Sri Lanka

Abstract: English Language Teaching (ELT) pedagogies in a country must adjust to the customs and habits of its people and its traditions. Importing of ELT pedagogies and their uniform application across the board may not be effective if learners prefer strategies contrary to the ones these pedagogies want them to adopt. The study described in this paper investigated language- learning strategies of 886 ESL students who belong to three distinct subcultures as demarcated by their L1, Religion and Ethnicity in Sri Lanka. The findings show differences in strategy use or rather the ways the three groups learn the target language indicating that these strategy choices are closely correlated to their Religion and Ethnicity. Based on the findings of this Sri Lankan study ELT pedagogy cannot be independent of its cultural context. It is therefore strongly suggested that ELT pedagogies should: (1) develop within the socio-cultural contexts of the learners; (2) orientate the learners to the culture of the native speakers of learners' socio-cultural context; (3) incorporate teaching material based on rhetoric indigenous to their culture.