English for communication in Bangladesh: baseline research to establish the pre-existing environment for the ‘English in Action’ project

Although Bangladesh is largely monolingual, English is increasingly important for international communication. The English in Action project was established to enhance the use of English as a tool for better access to the world economy. Interventions in three sectors (primary education, secondary education and adult learning) aim to improve the teaching and learning of communicative English over a 9-year period. At the outset of the project a range of baseline studies was undertaken to collect relevant data to develop a detailed representation of the communicative environment for English in Bangladesh. The main focus of this article is formal education contexts. Data collection for these studies involved various methods including interviews, surveys, classroom observations and desk research of existing sources. This article describes the nature of those studies and presents some of the key findings. Together, the studies create a rich picture of the circumstances that bring about a generally low level of competence in communicative English, despite individuals experiencing many years of compulsory study of the subject within formal education

English teachers' choice of language for publication: Qualitative insights from Bangladesh

The aim of this small-scale research was to gain some understanding of Bangladeshi English language teachers' language preference for publication purposes & the extent of the use of Bangla (Bengali), the L1, in their professional practice. Qualitative data for the study were gathered by means of a self-produced questionnaire. Results show that about three-quarters of the teachers published or would publish entirely in English because they believed that it was, among other reasons, the usual professional practice. More importantly, a number of teachers stated that they felt more comfortable writing academic essays in English. Regarding the use of L1, all 37 respondents pointed out that they used it sparingly in the classroom, & only a small number considered it a barrier in learning English, the L2. While emphasising the study's limitations, the paper suggests that English teachers' lack of confidence in L1 academic writing may be seen as indicating the potential direction of a slowly emerging individual bilingualism among university teachers of English. However, the paper also argues that the emergence of this potential bilingualism can be seen only at the individual rather than societal level, &, within the academic context, only in the limited domain of academic writing. Figures, References. Adapted from the source documen