Speaking Skills in the Universities of Bangladesh

Abstract

The globalization of English and a growing demand for good English speaking skills in the job market in particular have been placing a greater emphasis on the teaching of speaking skills in Bangladesh (Farooqui, 2007). But in many ways it is one of the marginalized skills and Bangladeshi students hardly have the scope to learn this at SSC and HSC levels in our country (Khan, 2007, a: Bhattacharjee, 2008). As a result, most of the students enter higher education with a very poor command in spoken English (Jahan, 2008). Universities (both public and private) offer some courses which deal with speaking skills but these courses hardly help the students to be fluent in spoken English (Jahan 2008: Alam, 2006). This study is an attempt to explore whether there are specific courses on speaking for our tertiary level learners of English department, the factors (of methodologies and materials) that hampering the learning of spoken English, and obstacles faced by the teachers in case of teaching speaking skills. This study has used two theories; these are Meaningful Learning Theory by Ausuble (1978) and Social Interaction theory by Vygotsky (1978). In addition to that, three frameworks of speeches by Brown and Yule (1983) have also used to analyze the data. Through questionnaire survey and interviewing teachers it is found that the problems mainly lie within the inappropriate use of methodologies and materials. The findings of the study suggest that to teach spoken English most of the teachers use traditionallecture based GTM and foreign materials to teach spoken English. Whereas the theories and framework of this study says that CLT and contextualized materials should be used to teach spoken English. The findings also suggests that a very few of the universities specific courses on speaking. In case of teaching spoken English teachers face different kind of problems (students lack of motivation and confidence, lack of infrastructural support of the university, lack of training, lack of initiatives for the continuous development of spoken English and so on. handling large class within limited class duration, lack of training, lack of suitable materials. Such problems hamper the teaching and learning of spoken English.