Abstract:
Grammatical competence is defined as the linguistic skill that is necessary for producing
language accurately in a given situation. This research is intended to explore the
grammatical competence of the students of the tertiary level with special focus on
Daffodil International University. In Bangladesh, English is a foreign language and in
most of the cases, students remain weak in grammar despite years of learning efforts. For
this reason, they fail to write English correctly as students and later as employees. It is the
teachers’ responsibility to prepare students in such a way that they become capable of
using the English language accurately. In this respect it is important to understand the
nature of grammatical competence/incompetence of the students. The present research
has been adopted for this purpose. For fact finding, a survey was conducted among the
first year first/second semester students of different departments in different campuses of
DIU. The opinion of the English language teachers’ were also collected regarding the
grammatical competence of the students they teach and some pedagogical issues. Data
was collected through questionnaire and analyzed with competent software. Numerical
values of students’ grammatical competence were calculated and relative strengths and
weaknesses in certain grammatical elements (considered variables) were also measured.
Students’ and teachers’ feedbacks were compared with a view to understanding the
nature of assessments. The findings of this research could be utilized in developing a
need-based syllabus for the students of English at the tertiary level.
