Abstract
This chapter begins with the premise that English Studies in Bangladesh is now going through a critical period and is beset by these problems: (a) the suspicion and anxiety created over decades in many Bangladeshi minds about linguistic encroachment and fear of an imperial language marginalising Bengali in public life yet again and the resulting perceived threat to the native language and culture; (b) the commodification of the language, which is the consequence of globalisation and the consequent imposition of pedagogies that have led to the attenuation of the language and the diminished capacity to teach it effectively and creatively; (c) the unplanned expansion of the education system and proliferation of teaching methods that go against effective learning, promote impractical pedagogies and concentrate on results rather than teaching; and (d) the conversion of the universities of Bangladesh in general and English departments of these universities in particular into places for churning out graduates who can meet the job market’s demands in the quickest and most facile manner without regard for in-depth knowledge and a pedagogy that is critical and humanistic in orientation. The chapter begins by commenting on the results of the University of Dhaka’s Arts Faculty Admission test of 2014 and goes on to link it to the English language teaching situation in our schools and colleges. It then attempts to connect this situation to the condition of English language teaching in our universities after the grammar-translation method was vilified, the British Council sponsored ELT valorised and the use of literary texts denigrated from the 1980s onwards. The chapter concludes by suggesting how a positive paradigm shift can be achieved to improve the condition of English Studies in Bangladesh by combining critical methods derived from literature and insights derived from accumulated experience, language education, recent theory, critical pedagogy and current best practices effectively and sequentially.
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Notes
- 1.
Officially, the institution is known as the University of Dhaka, but in Bangladesh it is known popularly as ‘Dhaka University’. In other words, both versions of the institute’s name are in use.
- 2.
In the end, it must be noted, only 70 out of 140 places were filled in the department’s 1st-year programme that year, after the admission ‘elective English bar’ was lowered to 12 from the 17 that had been announced as the minimum score required to be admitted to the department. However, 20 or so of these students withdrew, and so the English department of the university ended up with a class of 52. The department is being blamed covertly, and the test has been dropped this year without consulting it, and we have had to revert to the old system of testing in admitting students. It can be pointed out here that the University of Dhaka is not only the oldest and premier university of the nation but the largest. Competition for the seats to this institution is always intense.
- 3.
I must admit here that I was one of the two academics who ‘moderated’ the test on the basis of the five tests submitted by other senior colleagues. The other academic was the Dean of Arts. Both of us had many years’ experience of setting such tests.
- 4.
The movement led not merely to the birth of Bangladeshi in 1971 but eventually to the day being adopted as the International Mother Language Day by the United Nations on January 9, 1998.
- 5.
It needs to be noted, though, that there is considerable variation within each of these language teaching approaches; however, for the sake of simplicity, I will not be referring to these.
- 6.
It can be pointed out here that the pedagogy in place in West Bengal in this period did not change overnight; Bengalis there still continued to learn English in ways that did not discredit the use of literary pieces for their students.
- 7.
See, for instance, the essays collected in C. J. Brumfit and R. A. Carter’s collection of essays, Literature and Language Teaching (1986), particularly the contributions by the editors, Michael Long, William T. Littlewood, Braj B. Kachru and Sandra McKay.
- 8.
See Roland Barthes’ classic essay ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ and the discussion of ‘Italianicity’ in it.
- 9.
While Khan’s work has been thorough, I feel that because it is restricted to data collected from a limited number of participants who are, moreover, only ‘from prestigious schools in Dhaka city’, (Khan, p. 130) it does not reflect the far more dismal situation that exists not only in assessment but also the application of CLT-inspired methodology in the rest of the country, especially its rural areas.
- 10.
This part of my paper depends extensively on an earlier one. This paper, titled ‘English, the Language of Power, and the Power of Language’, was published in Harvest (see below).
- 11.
In fact, this has already happened in the new English HSC course book, for the older English text, developed according to ELT principles and critiqued extensively – see my paper ‘Using Postcolonial Literature in ELT’ cited above as an example.
- 12.
See the Richard Smith edited Teaching English as a Foreign Language 1936–1961: Foundations of ELT (London: Routledge, 2005) for more on West’s pedagogy.
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Alam, F. (2018). Revisioning English Studies in Bangladesh in the Age of Globalisation and ELT. In: Chowdhury, R., Sarkar, M., Mojumder, F., Roshid, M. (eds) Engaging in Educational Research. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 44. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0708-9_13
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