Data were collected from three state universities in Sri Lanka. The main data collection instruments were focus group interviews with ESL learners, one-to-one semi-structured interviews with ESL teachers and ESL classroom observations. Accordingly, 12 Focus group interviews with ESL learners, 12 one-to-one interviews with ESL teachers and 20 classroom observations were conducted representing the three universities selected. This dataset contains audio recordings and interview transcripts of focus group interviews with ESL learners and one-to-one interviews with ESL teachers.