This study explores Bangladeshi secondary teacher educators’ experiences and perceptions of the application of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) at secondary level in Bangladesh. It also aims to find out what the opportunities and challenges are for teacher educators who are preparing secondary English teachers to implement CLT in Bangladesh. The study adopts a qualitative case study methodology. Participants in the project are three teacher-educators of English from three different government teacher training colleges situated in three different districts in Bangladesh. The teacher educators who were part of the study support an ongoing emphasis on communication in English teaching. They understand CLT in ways that reflect the literature and theory of CLT. However, they acknowledge the challenges in the ways CLT is implemented, in particular a disconnection between secondary teacher education and realities of practice in secondary schools, the relevance of textbooks used, and relationships between teacher educators and trainee teachers, and between teachers and students. The study concludes by arguing that these challenges should be addressed in order to support the pedagogical shifts needed for effective preparation of teachers of English in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is a monolingual country in which the majority of people speak the dominant and official language, Bangla. The reality is that, even after studying English for 10 to 12 years, most learners in Bangladesh cannot communicate well in English in real life situations. Concerns about communication in English have precipitated government policy changes regarding English language teaching and learning in Bangladesh.
The status of English in Bangladesh changed from English as a Second Language (ESL) to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) after 1971 when Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan. Before that English was studied as a second language. As a global medium of communication, the importance of English has increased considerably in social, political and commercial contexts of Bangladesh. It has been argued that the impact of Information Technology (IT) has contributed to English being regarded by many as arguably the predominant ‘lingua franca’ for world citizens (podder, 2007). It is English which helps the developing countries like Bangladesh to keep pace with developed ones, as English is the main communication media among the latter. In these changing circumstances, the philosophy and practice of English teaching and learning in developing countries, including Bangladesh, needs to be considered.
In Bangladesh before 1996, English was long taught as a compulsory subject from grade 1 to grade 12 using the Grammar Translation Method. In this method, maximum emphasis is put on reading and writing and little emphasis is placed on developing speaking and listening skills. Moreover, this traditional system of teaching in Bangladesh encourages memorization and does not encourage or support the development of speaking skills (podder, 2007).
Increasingly though in Bangladesh, and in many other countries where English is taught as a foreign language, consideration has been given to developing communication and fluency to prepare learners to be able to participate in an increasingly globalised society. The CLT approach to teaching and learning English was introduced into the Bangladesh syllabus in 1996 (National Curriculum and Textbook Board [NCTB], 1995). To support the introduction of the new syllabus, new textbooks were developed which included a focus on all the major language skills (including speaking and listening) rather than just the traditional focus on reading and grammar. The English for Today (EIT) books which are currently the prescribed English textbooks for grades 6 to 12, support the intentions of using CLT through the types of learning activities that are described in the texts.
Communicative English was introduced in grade 6 in 1996, and has been introduced up to grade 12 on an incremental basis since then. However, the effectiveness of policy changes regarding the communicative competence of learners of English is questionable. As already indicated, even twelve years after the introduction of CLT in the syllabus, students’ communication skills in English have not improved to the expected level. There are possibly a number of reasons for this. For example, it might be a matter of pedagogy and a problem with teachers’ practice or with English teacher education and/or training, or might it be an issue more broadly with the construction of CLT within the Bangladeshi education context or the wash back effect of the’exam system, or implementation procedures, or a combination of all these factors. From my own experience as a teacher educator the reasons behind this are not clear. Ongoing concerns about English language proficiency and the teaching of English in Bangladesh schools suggest that there are difficulties and challenges in the implementation of CLT in practice.
Teacher preparation for CLT is done in Bangladesh in two ways: in-service and preservice. The Bangladesh Government started providing in-service training to English teachers in 1999 because the English teachers are responsible for implementing the communicative English curriculum. By March 2007, a total of 28,886 secondary school English teachers nationwide had received training as part of the English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP) (podder, 2007). Since 2007, ELTIP has continued to provide training to the remaining secondary English teachers through its seven Regional Resource Centres (RRCs) and twenty-seven Satellite Resource Centres (SRCs) throughout the country. The Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP) reported that despite the potential benefits of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the teaching and learning activities undertaken in classrooms have remained much the same, owing to a lack of competent and well trained teachers in English (podder, 2007). Eight thousand English teachers from selected schools are being trained by FSSAP-II in an attempt to improve the situation. By March 2007, FSSAP-II was able to train 5494 English teachers countrywide (podder, 2007). The Teaching Quality Improving Project (TQI) has been in progress since 2005 and is ongoing and the Enhancement Project (SEQAEP) began in 2009. All of these programmes are providing training to secondary English teachers for their professional development based on CL T.
Current practice is for the in-service preparation of English teachers through short term secondary English education programmes. In government teacher training colleges, in service teachers are trained through government projects. In in-service training
programmes, English teachers from different government and non government schools are trained for 14 to 21 days for their professional development in subject teaching. They are recognised as the English teachers who warrant training on the basis of the head teachers’ authorisation and also the letter from the district education officer (DEO). They are all existing secondary English teachers. This short term training does not contribute towards a B.Ed qualification. The training manual was prepared for them by foreign and national experts on CLT, in collaboration. The manuals form the foundation for the training of existing English teachers in how to teach English language at secondary level using communicative methods. Teacher educators in in-service programmes model CLT based teaching methods, techniques and skills. The aim is to increase teachers’ awareness and confidence through workshops, simulations, microteaching, feedback and exchanging views with each other.
There are 14 government teacher training colleges (ITC) including one for women, as well as 68 non-government TICs, the Bangladesh Open University, and some private universities which provide Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degrees. Bangladesh Open University conducts B.Ed and M.Ed degrees through distance teaching and learning programmes. Although it is not mandatory to gain the B.Ed degree to be a teacher at the secondary level in Bangladesh, it is expected that teachers should have this degree and some financial benefits are given by the government for achieving it. This type of degree may be regarded as a post-graduate diploma according to many other countries’ qualifications structures, because one is enrolled in this course after graduating, in any discipline. One cannot enrol until gaining a prior degree. A BEd degree is preferred when teachers are recruited in secondary schools, but it is not mandatory. A secondary teacher in government secondary schools must complete a B.Ed within five years of teaching. In non government schools this rule is flexible. However, all teachers are financially benefitted when they have gained their B.Ed degree.
The 14 TTCs as well as private TTCs are run by the National University of Bangladesh. All these government and non-government training institutes follow the B.Ed curriculum implemented by the National University. On the other hand, the Institute for Educational Research (IER), University of Dhaka and that of Rajshahi, Bangladesh along with other private universities are autonomous and conduct the B.Ed (Diploma in Education) and M.Ed degrees according to their own curriculum, which is different from that of the national University. In addition, there are a number of other projects which are working under relevant TTCs to train in-service secondary teachers: the Secondary Education Development Project (SEDP), the Female Student Stipend Assistance Project (FSSAP), and the Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project (TQISEP).
The regular B.Ed English courses are organised around some major developmental themes. The objectives state that trainees will have a clear understanding of the
secondary English curriculum (grade 6-10) (Ministry of Education (MOE), 2006). The REd curriculum aims to enable trainees to develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes and practices to function effectively in the language classroom (Ministry of Education, 2006). This B.Ed English curriculum is based on two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical parts help future English teachers to understand English teaching approaches, methods and techniques in diverse situations. In practical parts, teacher educators teach students through lectures, activities and by sharing ideas and discussion.
In Bangladesh, from the National University the regular B.Ed degree is a 12-month, fulltime course and is the most common one for teacher education. The other institutions confer a B.Ed degree that can be studied on a full-time or part-time basis. During one year courses or programmes, student teachers are sent to practise teaching for two months in a school, to get practical experience of teaching. During this practice time they learn how to use English text books effectively, prepare lesson plans, engage students in participatory activities, and use teaching aids to support language teaching as they are instructed in teacher education classrooms. Student teachers use CLT based English textbooks for instruction and teaching in teaching practise. Also during this teaching practice, teacher educators visit and observe the student teachers in classroom teaching, evaluate their teaching and give feedback to them by demonstrating simulation classes. During the 12-month course, there are two internal assessments while external assessment is done by a formal examination set by the National University, Bangladesh.
Throughout the year all student teachers have to do a variety of tasks in relation to the teaching of English as a part of the curriculum. These include records of performance, written reports and presentations. During the teaching practice, the trainee teachers are instructed in how to teach in English classes effectively through CLT, the challenges they may face in the classrooms and how these challenges can be minimised. Teacher educators along with peer teachers observe their classes and give feedback to student teachers.
In Bangladesh, teacher education in support of the communicative curriculum for language teaching might be done by teacher educators who may have or may not have had personal teaching experience in school. Government policy has established CLT as the mandatory method for English teachers, and teacher education programmes have had to prepare students to follow a new government directive. Preparing teachers to teach English using the CLT method has been underway now for more than one decade through government trainings. What is not known, though, is what the teacher educators’ personal experiences are of CLT and their attitudes and ideas about CLT. This idea leads to focus on teacher educators’ experiences and perceptions of CLT at the secondary level in Bangladesh.
Considering the above discussion and the purpose of the study, the following research questions have been formulated:
1. What do the participants think are the issues, opportunities and challenges for teacher education in relation to CLT?
2. What do the participants think is the ‘way ahead’ for English language teaching in Bangladesh in relation to CLT?
The study used a qualitative case study approach to investigate the research questions. The following provides an overview of the methods used in the work; further details can be found in Mazumder (2011).
Participants in the project were three teacher-educators of English from three different government teacher training colleges situated in three different districts in Bangladesh. The participants were studying for a Master of Education at a university in New Zealand. They were leading teacher educators who deal with CLT in pre-service and in-service teacher education.
The participants were chosen for a variety of reasons. They were available to take part in my project. All three are in the age group of 35-45 years, which in Bangladesh is the mid career age range when people are actively involved in work. Their teaching experiences in schools and/or in teacher education range from 10 years to over 15 years. They are experienced teacher educators, and as such are able to explore the history of English teacher education along with present practices of English in secondary level in Bangladesh.
Data were collected in the form of a questionnaire, with semi-structured interviews being administered following completion of the questionnaire. The three participants were given pseudonyms as Robin, Ananda and Sabuz.
The findings for the themes were organised in a pattern by analysing the open-ended questionnaire and interviews. Categories were developed out of the analysis, and then compiled and grouped under unifying ideas, as follows:
All participants agree that in spite of lessons on the four language skills being contained in the secondary English textbooks English for Today, only two skills, reading and writing, are being practised and assessed in schools and in the school final (SSC) examinations. The other two skills, listening and speaking, are ignored even after 15 years of CLT introduction in Bangladesh. They claim that teachers do not need to assess the listening and speaking skills because no instruction is given from a higher authority for assessing these two skills and no marks are allotted for listening and speaking in school examinations or in SSC examinations. The participants want to know why teachers would waste their time practicing them when there are no marks attributed to these and when students do not need to face any test in listening and speaking skills. Robin’s experiences in schools have led him to question the realities of practice for teachers and the pragmatic value for them of practising speaking and listening activities. He says that:
[a] visit to schools reveals that English classes are taught in Bangla. When asked, some English teachers informed that they face resistance from the students, guardians, colleagues, and sometimes from the head teachers if they spend time on listening and speaking. Sometimes they are warned for doing worthless activities other than finishing the syllabus. Then the proactive and motivated teachers who recognise the value of listening and speaking skills find no other alternative but to retreat. It is not such that some teachers are not involving students in aural-oral practices, what can be said that the number is too insignificant to bring any tangible change in the English teaching-learning situation.
Sabuz maintains the same oprmons; “Without stressing all those skills together, it is difficult to acquire students’ communicative competences in using English well. Teachers feel no interest of speaking or listening in the English classroom.” Participants’ observations recognise a pragmatic reality for teachers, while revealing personal frustration that CLT will not be implemented as long as the listening and speaking practises are not practically implemented.
(To be continued)
(Sanjoy Kumar Mazumder,
Govt. Teachers Training College, Feni )
All participants report that the school examination regimes affect teacher’s everyday classroom practices. They all think that the implementation of CLT based secondary curriculum is closely linked to the secondary school certificate (SSC) examination which occurs at the end of grade 10. As exam-questions are set on the basis of reading and writing skills, teachers concentrate on teaching mostly these exam-oriented items and skills rather than speaking and listening skills. They add that teachers are under pressure by the school authorities and by the guardians of the students to make students prepared for exams and to do well in the exams. As Ananda explains, “[the] exam system is placed as barrier to implement CLT because exams are based on only reading and writing skills”. This is why there is a reluctance to adopt a CLT approach and particularly the speaking and listening components of CLT. Robin states that, “as the curriculum focuses mainly on exams, teachers are also interested to finishing the syllabus in time, at any cost.” According to the participants, a teacher will be accountable to the authority for not completing the syllabus within the limited time frame available. Sabuz adds that, “guardians also concern about their student’s getting good score in the exams, rather than developing their English competence,” which leads to a negative impact on implementing CLT at secondary level.
All of the participants are agreed that almost all secondary teachers go back to their traditional way of teaching as they did before their training, thinking that there is no regular monitoring of their classes in relation to whether they are enacting the approaches from the pre-service or in-service trainings. They also declare that simply rraining teachers about CLT cannor ensure CLT practice in the classroom. They favour the idea that teacher-educators should go to visit secondary schools to monitor or supervise the English teachers in relation to whether they are teaching students using communicative approaches. They identify a lack of English teacher educators to visit a large number of schools as a problem; “Suppose, among fifty teaching staffs, only two or three are English teacher educators who are not enough to run a lot of programs held in our college, including regular classes” (Robin). In a similar vein, Ananda explains that teacher-educators with no English background visit English classes and that with their “limited understanding of CLT knowledge, English teachers do not get useful feedback from them what they need really.” In relation to this, Ananda states that in the TIC where he teaches, there is no specific rule that English teacher educator must visit English classes. Robin, in contrast, notes that, “it was introduced in our college that if there is even a single English teacher-educator available, he will observe all English students and will observe the English classes of the schools he assigned.” From the opposite experiences of the two participants, they explain there is no hard and fast rule in TICs about monitoring secondary English classes.
In relation to this issue of monitoring, Ananda is quite different from the others’ point of view. He thinks that monitoring should come from inside of school administration, rather than from outside observers, believing that if the teachers are informed earlier about the schedule of class-visit by the teacher educator or by government officials, this would be “artificial monitoring” as teachers would be well prepared with CLT activities to show their best performances, which is not the reflection of their everyday classroom practices. He claims, if the monitoring is done by the school authority including the head teacher, there would be continuous observation of the teachers of how they are exploring their pedagogical knowledge gained from CLT training, which would result in teachers more actively implementing CLT. He emphasises regular monitoring of the teachers from school management itself, rather than occasional supervision of teachers, by the authority beyond school. The participants’ experiences are that without monitoring secondary English classes, it is difficult to implement CLT and to have change in the traditional classroom practices.
The participants highlight insufficient instructional time and class size as barriers to effective CLT implementation. They report that the contact time for a class is not enough to focus on individual student’s needs in a large class (more than 50 students). For example, Sabuz notes;
From my experiences in visiting schools, every class-period is only forty minutes, except for the first period, which is forty five minutes, might be the biggest session in a day. Most English classes are held as beginning session in secondary school schools. Attendance of the students is taken in the first session by the teacher, which takes more than ten minutes if it is a large class consisting of about seventy students. Another five to ten minutes are taken as ‘warm-up’ to go into the text.
He wants to know how it is possible for teachers to teach all the students in this limited (30 minutes approximately) time via a CLT approach. All participants make similar criticisms about class time and size. However, while secondary teachers may be seen to suffer from limited time to conduct CLT activities, the participants’ experiences differ from those they are exposed to as teachers in a B.Ed. programme. They feel that they have sufficient contact time for every English session, which consists of 90 minutes, giving many opportunities to teach in a communicative manner. For example, Sabuz explains that he can do “a lot of activities such as, group work or pair work, language games, puzzles, acting, dramatization, role-playing etc, as offered by CLT, to make the English classroom more interesting, more enjoyable.” In a similar way, Ananda reports that the “B.Ed English class size is good enough for limited number of students, class time is 90 minutes per session, and the physical environment is supportive enough to involve trainee teachers into different activities, though there are some limitations.” Participants recognise a disjunction between TIC and secondary schooling contexts.
Robin claims that there should be a requirement for extended class time in English classes. He argues that “as a foreign or second language, more time should be allotted for practicing English, rather than Bangla as mother tongue, though same time has been allotted (class period) for both Bangla and English in the curriculum”. He puts forward examples from his experience showing that a few schools have been joining two 35 or 40 minute classes together, though this is a very isolated scenario in secondary schools in Bangladesh. Robin raises questions about having the same contact time allotted for both English and Bangla for language teaching in the secondary school curriculum in Bangladesh.
