Say academics
The “business” of English Language Teaching (ELT) is “killing” the learning of English in Bangladesh, said eminent academics at a conference in the capital yesterday.
Popularity of ELT in the country has enabled some teachers and experts to profit from it, while the move away from teaching grammar and English literature to new ELT methods has caused harm to the quality of English teaching in the country, they said.
Textbooks produced by ELT practitioners lacks creativity, they highlighted.
They were speaking at debate session on the second day of the 6th international conference on “The Multiple Realities of English: ELT and Beyond” at National Academy of Educational Management (Naem) in the capital.
Prof Fakrul Alam of Dhaka University (DU), Dr Hamidur Rahman of the State University of Bangladesh, Prof Dr Arifa Rahman of DU, Kathryn Kelly, English language advisor of British Council, took part in the debate.
Prof Arifa Rahman argued that the ELT is helping to millions of students and teachers in Bangladesh.
The ELT textbooks focus on the real life contexts of the country, such as child labour, flood and women’s issues, instead of Chaucer and other elusive concepts, she said.
“Texts have to be relevant to the students and the exercises have to be interesting so that the student feels involved,” she added.
Kathryn Kelly said the age-old method of learning English through grammar and literature was elitist way of understanding a language.
In reply to the criticism that ELT was a business in Bangladesh, she said, “Let us not be embarrassed about it… We have a business that allows us to communicate with each other.”
The debate was one of the highlights of day-long events that consisted of workshops, talks and presentations on a wide range of topics.
The international conference is a forum for teachers, administrators, trainers, researchers, textbook writers and others from different countries to exchange ideas, discuss the challenges and issues of English teaching and seek new directions.
-With The Daily Star input
