LEARNING ENGLISH AT JSC LEVEL IN RURAL BANGLADESH: CHALLENGES AND WAYS AHEAD

With the advent of information revolution or software booming in Bangladesh a few years back and its impacts like highly perked opportunities in multination companies, people became more aware of the importance of English language. Communication in English has been playing a major role in the business world too. The status, the teaching and use of English have suffered adversely in Bangladesh over the period of last 45 years. The late realization that better proficiency in English is a pre-requisite for our national development and also for our survival in the global scenario, has prompted the Government to put highest priority on the teaching-learning of English at all levels of our education system. Despite the fact, no effort could bring any visible change in learning English. As the education system here is graded, the performance in the higher classes depends on the performance of the previous lower classes. As a result, if the students are not prepared at Junior School Certificate (JSC) level, they cannot be expected to do well in Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) level. So, English learning at the foundation level - meaning at JSC level is of utmost importance. The present literature on English teaching-learning is mainly centred on primary, secondary, higher secondary and tertiary levels’ English Education. There is little research on the English teaching program at JSC level in the rural Bangladesh. This paper is a little scale study on learning English at JSC level in the rural areas of Bangladesh. The study has been done through collection of data from both primary and secondary sources. It is expected that the study will provide an insight and better understanding of the English teaching- learning situation in rural Bangladesh for the stakeholders which will help them bringing qualitative changes at JSC level.