Problems of CLT in Secondary Level: Urban Context

Abstract

National Curriculum Text Book (in Hamid and Baldauf, 2008) explains that students learn English following the communicative methodology. It is believed that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) helps to develop learners’ ability to learn English by maintaining standard teaching and learning of English at various levels of formal education. CLT was introduced in Bangladesh to change the scenario of English Language Teaching (ELT). But unfortunately it has not been used appropriately in the classroom. The study looked at the problems of CLT as well as sought answers to three central questions—what are the teachers’ and the students’ view about CLT or Grammar Translation Method (GTM), what kind of problems do teachers and students face in teaching and learning English through the communicative approach; and how do they to overcome these problems. The data was collected from 30 teachers and 150 students from 10 schools. The findings suggest that Grammar Translation Method (GTM) is still dominating in the schools. Teachers are not skilled enough to teach properly in the class. Their income is very low. They are always busy with private tuition. They use Bangla in the English class because students do not understand English lectures. As a result both teachers and students are weak in speaking English. English speaking and listening skills are neglected though they are in the syllabus. Students have no proper knowledge of grammar. Their vocabulary stock is very limited. They prefer memorizing the answer. It has been noticed from the findings that there exists a gap between the teachers and the students. As a result, the students do not get feedback from the teachers. This kind of environment hampers implementing CLT approach in the classrooms.