Ranjit Podder :
Research indicates that assessment systems dictate classroom practices although they do not always have a positive impact on classroom behaviours. Although Bangladesh secondary English curriculum follows CLT, aural-oral skills practices and assessment are mostly ignored. The focus of the present study was to explore Bangladesh secondary English teachers’ understanding of listening and speaking skills assessment as well as to learn the barriers and enablers they encountered in assessing those two skills. This qualitative study with six Bangladeshi secondary English teachers from three schools in three districts employed classroom observation and semi-structured interviews. The study showed that Bangladesh secondary English curriculum did not include the assessment of listening and speaking skills although the curriculum report-95 gave a mandate to teachers to practise and assess all the four English language skills – listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The study also indicated that teachers taught English mixing with Bangla ; they were not trained to assess listening and speaking skills; the English curriculum required restructuring to make way for listening and speaking skills assessment; teachers needed aural-oral resources to enable them to undertake listening and speaking skills assessment; and above all, the study demonstrated that the teachers needed instructions from the education authority in order to start aural-oral skills assessment in schools.
English language is taught at Bangladesh secondary level as a compulsory foreign language from class one to twelve. Since the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, English has continued to be in regular use despite a national policy favouring Bangla. The Language Introduction Act of 1987 put emphasis on the use of Bangla for record keeping, laws, legal actions, and proceedings; as well as in government offices, courts, official and semi-official correspondences, except in the case of foreign relations, and autonomous institutions affecting the use of English in those domains (Banu & Sussex, 2001; Ministry of Establishment, 1987). Language policy documents and government memoranda concerning the use of Bangla in the offices and courts indicated the weak status of English in Bangladesh at that time. The Quodrat-e-Khuda education commission (1974) exempted students from classes one to five from learning English but the 1976 National Curriculum Committee made English compulsory from class three. The aforesaid Bengali Language Introduction Act attached so much importance to Bangia that it warned the government officials that “if anyone puts forward an appeal at any of the institutions mentioned, in any other language than Bengali, it will be considered as illegal” (Ministry of Establishment, 1987). Bangla was declared one of the state languages of Pakistan in 1956; and after the independence, it still enjoys the status of the state language of Bangladesh. Following the government directives to use Bangla in every field of official communications, the teachers’ as well as students’ level of motivation to use English declined, which resulted in low quality of English in the country.
Moreover, the Bangladeshi people have a strong sentiment for Bangla, having sacrificed many lives in 1952 in order to retain the right to speak Bangla. However, most Bangladeshi people also regard English as equal important for personal, national, and international reasons.
Although English has been taught compulsorily in schools in Bangladesh for a period of ten years, most Bangladeshi students cannot communicate well orally in real life situations. In fact, Imam (2005) reports that the average English language skill level of university students is equivalent to that which is set by the government for the students of class seven. In order to address the low levels of oral communication proficiency”, the government of Bangladesh introduced Communicative English to class six in 1996 and then to higher classes at the secondary” level on an incremental basis. Textbooks called English for Today (EfT) are currently used from classes six to ten, and textbooks of the same title are also taught at primary and higher secondary levels. The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) has prepared teachers’ guides (TG) for those texts to enable teachers to implement the textbooks properly. However, despite the theoretical shift from a traditional to a more communicative mode of teaching and learning English in Bangladesh, the physical facilities and the teaching-learning approaches actually employed have remained much the same over the past one and a half decades.
Secondary English teachers in Bangladesh have been trained in English through projects such as the English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP), Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP), Secondary Education Sector Improvement Project (SESIP), Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project (TQI-SEP); and through through implemented by some other non-government organisations such as the. Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). However, despite these training programmes and the priority given to communicative language teaching (CLT) approaches in the curriculum and syllabus report published in 1996, many teachers in Bangladesh continue to teach using the grammar translation (GT) method. As a result, most Bangladeshi students usually pass the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations with good grades in English but their grades are not reflected in their real-life aural-oral use of English beyond the classrooms .
The first Education Commission of Bangladesh, which is popularly known as the Qudrat-e-Khuda Education Commission, spelt out the importance and the place of English language in the curriculum in the commission report in 1974. The commission recommended that although the medium of instruction at all levels would be Bangla, English should be taught as a compulsory foreign language at primary’ and secondary levels, as it was before the independence of the country in 1971. However, English education in Bangladesh has not always enjoyed equal importance over the last four decades and assessment of the four language skills has never received proper judgement.
Assessment systems very’ often Impact the language teaching-learning and for that reason the Bangladesh curriculum and syllabus report (NCTB, 1996) describes assessment in education as an important way to measure and evaluate students’ progress and achievement; and as a device for checking students’ understanding.
This curriculum report further suggests that there should be continuous assessment throughout the months instead of month- tests, and teachers are advised to be careful to assess all the four macro skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) of the English language. Students engaged in the new communicative curriculum are expected to be more active than teachers, doing a variety of language activities including pair work, group work, presentation, debate, role play dramatization, and so on. Through these activities they are expected to be skilled in listening and speaking alongside reading, and writing. Although English teachers in Bangladesh assess the reading and the writing skills of their students other two skills are totally ignored.
Even though the curriculum report advocated for continuous assessment of the four language skills and the textbooks were produced attaching importance to listening speaking skills practices along with reading and writing, the test formats given in report did not include aural-oral skills assessment.
In order to know the practicing English teachers’ understanding of the aural-oral stills practices and assessment, the study reported in this article intended to address the following major research questions: How do Bangladeshi secondary English teachers make sense of listening and speaking skills assessment?
What are the barriers and enablers for them in assessing these two skills? The study involved six secondary English teachers from three districts in Bangladesh and explored what the teachers’ positions regarding listening and speaking skills assessment and aimed to investigate what assist them to be able to start assessing oral-aural skills. A full report of this study offered in Podder (2012).
Six experienced English teachers from three secondary schools in Dhaka, Gazipur, Narsingdi districts were selected as respondents for this qualitative study which employed classroom observations of listening and speaking teaching using a checklist and semi-structured interviews. Each of the participants was observed two times, once while teaching a listening lesson and once a speaking lesson. The observations focused mainly on teachers’ and students’ use of oral English and activities used in the classroom; resources used to accelerate English listening and speaking; and the formative assessment tools used by the participants. Background information about the six participants collected using a form which covered educational qualifications, experiences, training. Each of the participants was interviewed twice with two sets of semi-structured questions once on or before the day of the first observation and the other on the day or day after the second observation. Data collected through interviews were transcribed the observation field-notes were developed over the period of data collection through reading and re-reading, pondering, and reflecting. All data collected were then coded categorized for analysis, since qualitative data analysis searches for types, classes, sequences, processes and patterns (Seidel, 1998). The pseudonyms given to the six participants were Abonti, Atanu, Ali, Kamal, Wadud, and Abu respectively.
Assessment plays a vital role in supporting learning of a second or a foreign language and measuring students’ progress as well as informing the adjustment and development of teaching strategies (Blacks & William, 2003). Brown (2004) comments that assessment is a continuous process which encompasses tests, students’ responses and comments in and
outside the classroom, their written works, and so on. Teachers usually- keep on assessing students’ performances in an informal way as lessons proceed. According to Brown (2004), an effective teacher assesses students’ language skills, both incidentally and intentionally in-and-outside the classrooms.
When assessment is intended to give feedback to learners during a course, it is called assessment for learning or formative assessment. Studies show that innovative formative assessment produces significant learning gains for students (Black & William, 2001). When the assessment is used at the end of a term or a semester or a year to measure students’ total learning in a particular area, it is called assessment of learning or summative assessment. In other words, continual recording of achievements when added to determine the learners’ final grades is also summative assessment. The ultimate goal of assessment is to benefit learners through feedback (NZCER, 2006; Nunan, 1988), although there are some other reasons for assessment, for instance, to promote life-long learning; and for entry to universities (NZCER, 2006).
(To be continued)
Research indicates that assessment systems dictate classroom practices although they do not always have a positive impact on classroom behaviours. Although Bangladesh secondary English curriculum follows CLT, aural-oral skills practices and assessment are mostly ignored. The focus of the present study was to explore Bangladesh secondary English teachers’ understanding of listening and speaking skills assessment as well as to learn the barriers and enablers they encountered in assessing those two skills. This qualitative study with six Bangladeshi secondary English teachers from three schools in three districts employed classroom observation and semi-structured interviews. The study showed that Bangladesh secondary English curriculum did not include the assessment of listening and speaking skills although the curriculum report-95 gave a mandate to teachers to practise and assess all the four English language skills – listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The study also indicated that teachers taught English mixing with Bangla ; they were not trained to assess listening and speaking skills; the English curriculum required restructuring to make way for listening and speaking skills assessment; teachers needed aural-oral resources to enable them to undertake listening and speaking skills assessment; and above all, the study demonstrated that the teachers needed instructions from the education authority in order to start aural-oral skills assessment in schools.
English language is taught at Bangladesh secondary level as a compulsory foreign language from class one to twelve. Since the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, English has continued to be in regular use despite a national policy favouring Bangla. The Language Introduction Act of 1987 put emphasis on the use of Bangla for record keeping, laws, legal actions, and proceedings; as well as in government offices, courts, official and semi-official correspondences, except in the case of foreign relations, and autonomous institutions affecting the use of English in those domains (Banu & Sussex, 2001; Ministry of Establishment, 1987). Language policy documents and government memoranda concerning the use of Bangla in the offices and courts indicated the weak status of English in Bangladesh at that time. The Quodrat-e-Khuda education commission (1974) exempted students from classes one to five from learning English but the 1976 National Curriculum Committee made English compulsory from class three. The aforesaid Bengali Language Introduction Act attached so much importance to Bangia that it warned the government officials that “if anyone puts forward an appeal at any of the institutions mentioned, in any other language than Bengali, it will be considered as illegal” (Ministry of Establishment, 1987). Bangla was declared one of the state languages of Pakistan in 1956; and after the independence, it still enjoys the status of the state language of Bangladesh. Following the government directives to use Bangla in every field of official communications, the teachers’ as well as students’ level of motivation to use English declined, which resulted in low quality of English in the country.
Moreover, the Bangladeshi people have a strong sentiment for Bangla, having sacrificed many lives in 1952 in order to retain the right to speak Bangla. However, most Bangladeshi people also regard English as equal important for personal, national, and international reasons.
Although English has been taught compulsorily in schools in Bangladesh for a period of ten years, most Bangladeshi students cannot communicate well orally in real life situations. In fact, Imam (2005) reports that the average English language skill level of university students is equivalent to that which is set by the government for the students of class seven. In order to address the low levels of oral communication proficiency”, the government of Bangladesh introduced Communicative English to class six in 1996 and then to higher classes at the secondary” level on an incremental basis. Textbooks called English for Today (EfT) are currently used from classes six to ten, and textbooks of the same title are also taught at primary and higher secondary levels. The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) has prepared teachers’ guides (TG) for those texts to enable teachers to implement the textbooks properly. However, despite the theoretical shift from a traditional to a more communicative mode of teaching and learning English in Bangladesh, the physical facilities and the teaching-learning approaches actually employed have remained much the same over the past one and a half decades.
Secondary English teachers in Bangladesh have been trained in English through projects such as the English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP), Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP), Secondary Education Sector Improvement Project (SESIP), Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project (TQI-SEP); and through through implemented by some other non-government organisations such as the. Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). However, despite these training programmes and the priority given to communicative language teaching (CLT) approaches in the curriculum and syllabus report published in 1996, many teachers in Bangladesh continue to teach using the grammar translation (GT) method. As a result, most Bangladeshi students usually pass the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations with good grades in English but their grades are not reflected in their real-life aural-oral use of English beyond the classrooms .
The first Education Commission of Bangladesh, which is popularly known as the Qudrat-e-Khuda Education Commission, spelt out the importance and the place of English language in the curriculum in the commission report in 1974. The commission recommended that although the medium of instruction at all levels would be Bangla, English should be taught as a compulsory foreign language at primary’ and secondary levels, as it was before the independence of the country in 1971. However, English education in Bangladesh has not always enjoyed equal importance over the last four decades and assessment of the four language skills has never received proper judgement.
Assessment systems very’ often Impact the language teaching-learning and for that reason the Bangladesh curriculum and syllabus report (NCTB, 1996) describes assessment in education as an important way to measure and evaluate students’ progress and achievement; and as a device for checking students’ understanding.
This curriculum report further suggests that there should be continuous assessment throughout the months instead of month- tests, and teachers are advised to be careful to assess all the four macro skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) of the English language. Students engaged in the new communicative curriculum are expected to be more active than teachers, doing a variety of language activities including pair work, group work, presentation, debate, role play dramatization, and so on. Through these activities they are expected to be skilled in listening and speaking alongside reading, and writing. Although English teachers in Bangladesh assess the reading and the writing skills of their students other two skills are totally ignored.
Even though the curriculum report advocated for continuous assessment of the four language skills and the textbooks were produced attaching importance to listening speaking skills practices along with reading and writing, the test formats given in report did not include aural-oral skills assessment.
In order to know the practicing English teachers’ understanding of the aural-oral stills practices and assessment, the study reported in this article intended to address the following major research questions: How do Bangladeshi secondary English teachers make sense of listening and speaking skills assessment?
What are the barriers and enablers for them in assessing these two skills? The study involved six secondary English teachers from three districts in Bangladesh and explored what the teachers’ positions regarding listening and speaking skills assessment and aimed to investigate what assist them to be able to start assessing oral-aural skills. A full report of this study offered in Podder (2012).
Six experienced English teachers from three secondary schools in Dhaka, Gazipur, Narsingdi districts were selected as respondents for this qualitative study which employed classroom observations of listening and speaking teaching using a checklist and semi-structured interviews. Each of the participants was observed two times, once while teaching a listening lesson and once a speaking lesson. The observations focused mainly on teachers’ and students’ use of oral English and activities used in the classroom; resources used to accelerate English listening and speaking; and the formative assessment tools used by the participants. Background information about the six participants collected using a form which covered educational qualifications, experiences, training. Each of the participants was interviewed twice with two sets of semi-structured questions once on or before the day of the first observation and the other on the day or day after the second observation. Data collected through interviews were transcribed the observation field-notes were developed over the period of data collection through reading and re-reading, pondering, and reflecting. All data collected were then coded categorized for analysis, since qualitative data analysis searches for types, classes, sequences, processes and patterns (Seidel, 1998). The pseudonyms given to the six participants were Abonti, Atanu, Ali, Kamal, Wadud, and Abu respectively.
Assessment plays a vital role in supporting learning of a second or a foreign language and measuring students’ progress as well as informing the adjustment and development of teaching strategies (Blacks & William, 2003). Brown (2004) comments that assessment is a continuous process which encompasses tests, students’ responses and comments in and
outside the classroom, their written works, and so on. Teachers usually- keep on assessing students’ performances in an informal way as lessons proceed. According to Brown (2004), an effective teacher assesses students’ language skills, both incidentally and intentionally in-and-outside the classrooms.
When assessment is intended to give feedback to learners during a course, it is called assessment for learning or formative assessment. Studies show that innovative formative assessment produces significant learning gains for students (Black & William, 2001). When the assessment is used at the end of a term or a semester or a year to measure students’ total learning in a particular area, it is called assessment of learning or summative assessment. In other words, continual recording of achievements when added to determine the learners’ final grades is also summative assessment. The ultimate goal of assessment is to benefit learners through feedback (NZCER, 2006; Nunan, 1988), although there are some other reasons for assessment, for instance, to promote life-long learning; and for entry to universities (NZCER, 2006).
(To be continued)
