A Health-Check of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Rural Primary Schools of Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh ELT situation has been deteriorating for the last four decades. Regional and national projects including ELTIP and EIA proved to be futile in improving this situation, especially, in the Bangladesh rural primary schools with almost 0% properly trained English teachers to implement the current CLT curriculum. This article investigates the on-going poor health-status of CLT at randomly selected schools of northern Bangladesh through delving into the research gaps linked with the ELT practitioners’ own English proficiency, their training needs, motivation and teaching skills; their perception on the instructional module; and perception of the YLs of English in Bangladesh. This enquiry uses a mixed method involving a questionnaire survey, semi-structured interview with ELT teachers, teacher trainers, head-teachers and lesson observation followed by a workshop and informal discussion with 100 participants from all ELT stake-holders to validate the findings of the earlier questionnaire survey. The findings conclude that ineffective and lack of teacher training, non-availability of English subject teacher, unproductive instructional materials, unhelpful learning environment, learners’ socio-economic background, teachers’ poor competence in English and knowledge of CLT methods are responsible for this deterioration. It recommends that implementation of a rigorous teacher training program for CLT to produce English subject teachers for each school, production of a pedagogically user-friendly instructional module for CPD, a culture-oriented teaching-learning environment and a program of regular guidance and supervision by CLT experts would address the gaps prevailing in the ELT (and CLT) situation at the rural primary schools of Bangladesh.

ESL Primary Teachers’ Perceptions on the Use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach to Teach CEFR Speaking Skill

“…Nonetheless, it was impossible to overlook that 78 (25.6%) were neutral and 8 (2.6%) disagreed with the statement. Similar circumstances occurred across several studies whereby it was found that CEFR teachers were not given adequate training, leading to misconceptions about CLT application (Hoque et al, 2018& Nuby, 2019. Furthermore, item B4 (I look positively on the use of CLT approach to replace traditional methods like memorisation and drillings in teaching CEFR speaking lessons) revealed positive attitudes of the respondents, which 145 (47.5%) strongly agreed and 102 (33.4%) agreed on the use of CLT approach as a suitable teaching method which contradicted the findings of a study which claimed that ESL teachers tended to rely on old-school techniques such as memorisation, drilling and translation (Alghamdi, 2021).…”

“…Students living in rural communities are often deprived of mastering English because of their poor socio-economic status and relatively low school attendance (Hoque et al, 2018;Nuby et al, 2019). Meanwhile, many struggles to switch their mother tongue to English in daily communication as they fail to comprehend the meanings and necessities of speaking in English (Khoja and Mohapatra, 2017).…”

Teachers’ Challenges in Teaching English to Young Learners in Rural Area

“…According to Hoque (2019), different teaching methods can result in different student understandings and learning outcomes. Meanwhile, a qualified teacher is someone who can create learning activity plans.…”

Untangling the Tongues: Exploring Pronunciation Development Strategies for Learners of English at High Schools in Oromia Region of Ethiopia

“…The results show that the subjects often engaged in activities both in and out of class that helped students improve their pronunciation of the English language. Learning strategies, including self-instruction, naturalistic learning, and self-directed naturalistic learning, are together referred to as "outside-of-class language exposure" (Benson, 2013;Hoque et al, 2018;Hamid et al 2023). What this indicates is that exposure gained through classroom instruction settings alone is insufficient.…”