The Present Scenario of English Language Teaching in a Bangladeshi School

Sumi, Mst. Farhana Rahat

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The Present Scenario of English Language Teaching in a Bangladeshi School

Sumi, Mst. Farhana Rahat

URI: http://dspace.daffodilvarsity.edu.bd:8080/handle/123456789/4321

Date: 2019-12-26

Abstract:

The motive of the study is to know the present state of English language teaching system at a school in Bangladesh as well as to evaluate the application of methods and techniques by the teachers and their impacts upon students. As a part of this study, a school named Balarampur High School was chosen which is situated at a village area in Tangail district. After taking permission from school authority, three classes of three different levels were observed from which some findings regarding interactive relationship between teachers and students, teacher’s qualification and training, shortage of equipment, teacher’s application of method and teaching style et cetera were discovered. These findings are significant to justify how much the students are becoming able to learn the English language in the classroom. A class was also conducted and after the completion of teaching, the feedbacks of the students have been marked. At last, some recommendations have been suggested based on the class observation and findings that may help to develop and improve the English language teaching system of this school. This project paper is based on one particular school so the result may vary in case of other schools in Bangladesh.

Description:

English is the most popular international language which has no alternative to connect the whole world. To maintain global communication and economic growth, English language teaching in Bangladesh has become a supreme concern. People of Bangladesh have been learning English since the eighteenth century for various purposes. To learn English, Traditional Grammar Translation Method (GTM) was used in British period (1700-1947) in Bangladesh as the main focus was to gain reading and writing skill at that period. But, gradually the situation has been changed and thus the purpose of learning English has been changed also. Though GT method is appropriate for learning grammar and enhancing writing skill, this method cannot fulfill all the needs in this age of globalization. Existing in this age, people feel the necessity to be communicatively competent for which the Communicative Language Teaching Approach (CLTA) has been introduced in the year 1998-1999 in Bangladesh. But, many English language teachers did not receive this changing warmly. Selim and Tasneem (2011) have stated about these ELT teachers that, “When CLT came to Bangladesh, the traditional English teachers vehemently opposed it because they were not ready for something new (p.141)”. Researchers have found that still the teachers of Bangladesh feel comfortable using traditional methods and styles of teaching English. From a study of Salahuddin Khan and Rahman (2013), it is found that the teachers conduct their English class by checking homework, continuing with GTM based lesson and ends by giving homework. According to the teachers, they do not use any other teaching technique to teach the students. English is taught to the students of Bangladesh from the grade I though the purpose of learning English remains unfulfilled in most of the cases for various reasons. From the researches of Ahmed (2006) and Chowdhury & Shaila (2011), several points including large classes, lack of confidence, lack of co-operative and less access of communicative environment, students’ shyness et cetera have been gotten which are the main hindrances behind learning and speaking English of the students of Bangladesh. Besides, the teachers of Bangladesh are not trained properly before giving them opportunity to teach the students. Siddique (2004) has stated that, “Bangladesh is one of the few countries of the world where teachers can start teaching without any formal training (p.2)”. In addition, in Bangladesh good result is given the priority for which the students remain busy in memorizing particular things to make a good result. Hence, most of the students fail to get skilled in using English language.

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