Learn Your Learner; Assess Later: Addressing Individual Learner Differences in a Writing Class

We all have a way in which we best learn.  Likewise every student in our class has a different preferred learning style, which can make it difficult for us to be the most effective teacher especially in a writing course.  However, by trying to find out the learners’ differences and incorporating various methods into our teaching, we may be able to reach the majority of our students and can yield optimum result in our writing class. In the different studies of learner characteristics in applied linguistics, learning attitudes, strategies and motivation have received most attention. These learner individual difference variables have usually been seen as background learner variables that modify and personalize the overall trajectory of the language acquisition processes (Dörnyei, 2009). This paper, thus, sheds light on different types of learners based on their learning strategies that define students’ preferences and guide a teacher to design her/his lesson. This is very important for a heterogeneous class for any kind of mismatches between the teaching style of a teacher and the students’ learning styles, we will not be able to attain the objective of a course that might result in a demotivated class and the extreme consequence might be the increase in the drop outs from the university. Keywords: Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, Learning Strategies, Individual Learner Difference

Impact of Collaborative Reading Annotation System on EFL/ESL Learners on A Digital Platform: A Case Study of Tertiary Level Students in Bangladesh

The year 2020 is a significant milestone in the history of human civilization. Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the whole world literally came to stand still. The loss of human lives, the financial setback, new-norms of social behavior, potential threat to the progress of education and the mass paranoia have forced the world order to re-consider the traditional lifestyle and values. As a part of this re-consideration, Bangladesh with the aid of Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BDREN) came forward to offer the Zoom platform to all the educational institutions in the country for free in order to continue the progress of education. As a result the screen time of all the students increased. They started to spend considerable time reading electronic materials and media. Nevertheless, many studies show that screen-based reading tends to lead students to surface reading, attention deficiency and that results in poor comprehension. This study, thus, explores the use of a collaborative reading annotation system (CRAS) that enhances digital reading performance on an online platform. A group of thirty low-achievers in a Short Stories course was selected and CRAS was introduced to them. At the end of four months’ intensive instruction, a significant change in their performance was noted. Moreover, the group showed a remarkable interest in the reading tasks and high learning satisfaction. Keywords: Collaborative Reading, Reading Strategies, Digital Reading, EFL/ESL teaching/learning strategies DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-18-07 Publication date:June 30th 202

EFL Students’ English Language Proficiency and Their Academic Achievement

The major problem Bangladeshi students at the undergraduate level face in their field of study is their inability to understand the English of the prescribed text books and the failure to write properly in examinations to achieve good grades while they aspire to graduate; as a result, they are assumed to not be successful because they are unable to get good jobs. This problem is due to their weakness in general English, which influences their academic success. The purpose of the present study is to explore the built-in strength of the relationship between English language proficiency and the academic achievement of Bangladeshi EFL students. For this purpose, the correlation between English Language proficiency and academic achievement is delved into in this study, and a significant connection is found between Language proficiency and cumulative grade point averages which indicate academic achievement

Strategies for Enhancing the Use of Textbooks in Language Classrooms at the Tertiary Level

The majority of the literature of English Language Teaching is fundamentally derived from published course books. In many language teaching situations, much of the materials fail to meet the instructors’ expectations, and the materials are criticized for their isolation, irrelevance on taking into account of personal and local contexts and inadequate coverage of the essential aspects of language learning/teaching. Moreover, the existing materials are almost all developed and flourish in the western context, which pose some difficulties both for the teachers and for the learners to bridge them into various local contexts. This paper explores some of the strategies for ESL/EFL teachersthat they might incorporate to enhance the use of textbooks in the classroom. For this, we examine some of the popular textbooks that are commonly used by different English Language teachers at the tertiary level and we pilot some of the strategies in the classrooms in a controlled situation to observe the outcome of the implementation of these strategies. It is found that in almost all cases learner-centred work with a course book and extension of text-based tasks with real life experience have produced positive results.

Reviewing the Challenges and Opportunities Presented by Code Switching and Mixing in Bangla

This paper investigates the issues related to code-switching/code- mixing in an ESL context. Some preliminary data on Bangla-English code-switching/code-mixing has been analyzed in order to determine which structural pattern of code-switching/code-mixing is predominant in different social strata. This study also explores the relationship of language use to the socioeconomic class of the language user. The redefined concept of modernization, the increased number of cross-cultural contact and the need for language innovation play a dominant role in the language user’s application of code-switching/mixing that determine the socioeconomic rank. Out of four major types of code-switching/mixing, our focus of interest is on “inter-sentential mixing’ and ‘intra-sentential mixing’ i.e. where elements are mixed from both languages that are used in the same sentence and/or in the same conversation. The context and factors that lead to the motivation of using L1 and L2 in a social milieu are also explored in this paper. Our findings suggest that the users are concerned about the language during their speech in order to establish and/or to realize social function, pragmatic function, and meta-linguistic function. Banu and Sussex (2001) conducted a research on code-switching/missing in the context of business names only. To our knowledge, no work has done on English-Bangla code-switching/mixing with predominant structural pattern in relationship with different social strata in the context of Bangladesh.  That drive and motivation has worked on to conduct and explore the code-switching/mixing structural pattern in different social rung of Bangladeshi community. Keywords: Code-switching, Code-mixing, Code-borrowing, Intersentential Code-switching/mixing, Intrasentential Code-switching/mixin