Few days ago, I was discharging my duty as an invigilator in the Secondary School Certificate examination at Binapani Govt. Girls’ High School, Gopalganj. My first glimpse into the question of English First Paper discovered only reading and writing parts. Speaking and Listening, two integral parts of any language used by mankind, were absent in our most popular public examinations. I tried to make a connection between our curriculum and reality. What I have found tells a pathetic story about the state of English teaching and learning in our country.

Let’s find out what Bangladesh’s National Curriculum and Textbook Board prescribes as the principle of language teaching and learning. The curriculum wants our learners or students to be able to achieve communicative competence. Achieving communicative competence won’t be possible without developing four basic skills : Listening, speaking, reading and writing. Shockingly enough, our examinations don’t test a student’s listening and speaking abilities. This exclusion of listening and speaking from our public examinations has promoted our students to take recourse to commercial guide books and to memorize important paragraphs and compositions before the arrival of examinations. Speaking as well as listening is miserably neglected in our current system of language learning. As a result, Bangladeshi students’ performance in speaking and listening is not up to the mark despite 12 years of schooling at the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels. Most of the students getting A+ also can’t communicate using the language which they have been studying from class one.

With the completion of Millennium Development Goals, the focus has now shifted to ensuring quality in secondary education. Increasing the number without ensuring quality won’t materialize Sustainable Development Goals. Quality in the field of English teaching and learning will only come If our teachers conduct their English classes in English and four skills are equally stressed. After that, speaking and listening tests as an integral part of our SSC English examinations need to be introduced.

Most of the English teachers at the secondary level don’t take classes in English. They think that It will be of no importance to the students in light of grades. Being totally oblivious to the direction specified by the curriculum they teach students commercial guides and traditional grammar in order to make their students come out successful. In this way, a vicious circle of malpractice prevails and our government just looks on.

Schools have a variety of laboratories for creating a nexus between theory and reality. Setting up English or Foreign Language labs at the secondary level institutions is a necessity now. Students will use those labs for enriching their practical knowledge of English and marks should be allotted for their speaking and listening skills like Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Such labs will certainly be a game changer on the way to making our students communicably competent. #

Mostafa kamal Molla ,34th BCS(non cadre)

Assistant Teacher (English)

Sheikh Hasina Govt. Girls’ High School &College, Gopalganj.

09.02.2020