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Given the significance of English in the global world, English language teaching in Bangladesh has become subject to a supreme concern in maintaining economic growth and developing a skilled workforce. In this article, several barriers have been discussed based on a critical analysis of published materials. This review article covers several key issues such as the status of English in the country; English in education policies; factors affecting the implementation of communicative language teaching curriculum, method, and materials in Bangladesh; validity of the current assessment and its washback effect on English language teaching in Bangladesh; and current situation of teachers' professional development. The article concluded with language policy and planning implications for policymakers, curriculum and material developers, public exams' test-setters, and future English teacher training programmes, keeping the overall development of ELT in Bangladesh in mind.

This study focuses on the selected factors affecting teachers’ implementation of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) curriculum in secondary schools in Bangladesh. The study is explorative, interpretivist, and qualitative in nature. A phenomenology approach, under qualitative method, was adopted to explore how teachers experience the phenomenon of CLT based curriculum change. Four schools were chosen, two from Dhaka (Urban), the capital of the country, and two from the villages in Chandpur (Rural). Eight selected participants were chosen from these schools based on a purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observation and document analysis of curriculum, assessment, and teaching materials were the instruments of data collection. The finding of the study suggests that the shift from traditional Grammar Translation Method (GTM) to CLT was needed a positive outlook from all the selected factors in the context of change; however, this did not happen. Numerous factors such as, needs of classroom teachers, complexities regarding the mismatch of teaching syllabus and material with assessment, unequipped classrooms, and quality of teacher development facilities have challenged teachers to implement CLT as it was intended in the curriculum. The study suggests some recommendations to ensure the effective implementation of CLT curriculum. Future research is also recommended based on other factors and stakeholders.

The 2016 World Bank report on worldwide per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) identified Bangladesh as a lower middle-income country based on its consistent GDP growth throughout last decade (World Bank, 2016). To maintain this growth rate and meet the radical demand for human resources in increasingly globalised world markets, the country needs to communicate more effectively with the outside world. Inevitably, this means improving the quality of English teaching and learning. The significance of English, as the global lingua franca, to Bangladeshi learners is at its zenith. In this developing country, however, economic constraints mean that funds allocated to education are limited compared to many other Southeast Asian countries (Habib & Adhikary, 2016). Even given the generally low level of educational standards in Bangladesh (Islam, 2015), the standard of English language teaching and learning has decreased alarmingly in recent years (Hamid, 2011). English language education in Bangladesh has always been problematic, despite various attempts to initiate curriculum reform. As Hamid & Baldauf (2008) point out, the first of these major shifts in the ELT curriculum took place in the mid-1990s, when the traditional Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) was replaced with a curriculum based on a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) model. The principal objective of this article is to review the major problems associated with ELT in Bangladesh that have hindered the implementation of the new CLT curriculum from the perspective of teachers, and eventually to make recommendations for more effective ELT curriculum reform.

English-medium instruction (EMI) has been perceived as a key strategy through which universities, propelled by academic, political, social and economic motives, respond to the influence of globalisation (Altbach & Knight, 2007). This has been fuelled by the fact that English, defined as the global common language, is needed to create the knowledge base in global tertiary education (Fishman, 2000). In the process, English has become the universal second language of advanced education (Brumfit, 2004), due to the value attached to the language in present times and the advantage of using the language in the existing global language order (Zhang, 2017). These motivations have contributed to the global phenomenon of English being the medium of instruction (MOI), and higher education has been the venue where EMI could be implemented more consistently (Dearden, 2014). This has resulted in the generation of a growing body of work on how universities plan their language policies (Liddicoat, 2016).

This paper presents a case study that investigated and compared the stated beliefs and observed classroom practices relating to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) of two ESL teachers. The findings of the study revealed that both the teachers hold similar complex beliefs that mostly contradict the philosophy of CLT. The practices were not in line with their stated belief or CLT principles either. The findings also indicate that teachers indeed possess a set of complex beliefs that are not always realized in their classroom practices for a variety of potential reasons: some of these might be directly related to the context of teaching. Additionally, this study found that by articulating and reflecting on his beliefs, the teacher became more aware of the meaning and impact of these beliefs on his classroom practices. Some implications of future studies have also discussed.

Identifying the EFL learners' errors in writing has no longer been important but essential. As such, drawing the pertinent questions that what are the most common types of error committed by EFL learners in Bangladesh and what are the perceptions possessed by them concerning error correction, the article addressed the commonest errors committed by the learners and the perceptions of them toward error correction. Additionally, adopting the error analysis suggested by Ellis, the categorical presentation of the errors was also accomplished. This study comprised a corpus of EFL learners in the secondary level to enquire the commonest errors. Along with this, a student survey was carried out to reveal the perceptions of the students regarding error correction. The common errors identified were subjected to, grammar, misinformation, misordering and overgeneralization. Additionally, the study uncovered strong preference of the EFL learners to get their errors to be corrected by the teachers.

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