English
for Law (EfL) programme
Striving
for improvement of legal English
Shamsul
Hoque
The
legal community now agrees that the standard of English of the law graduates
in Bangladesh is in generally very low. The most cogent reason inter
alia why this is so is English lost its importance and status after
the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation in 1971. Since
then the learning of English (as well as other subjects) at all stages
and for all purposesgeneral or specifichas not been effective for various
socio-economic, political and academic factors deeply rooted in a virtually
unproductive education system like ours. Under this system the poor
quality of English acquired at the primary stage is always snowballed
towards, and multiplied at, the later stages, i.e. secondary and tertiary.
Effect
of the low standard of English
In the above circumstances, most students come to law colleges and also
to the universities in some cases with little English knowledge. And
there they study law mainly through the medium of Bangla. The learning
materials they use are also mainly Bangla notebooks and guidebooks.
Hence most of them cannot have any access to the vast domain of legal
texts, documents, reports, journals, etc. As a result, they remain seriously
deficient in English. This poor English language proficiency works in
them as a deterrent to their understanding and practising of law as
a profession.
How
to improve the situation?
To reverse the existing
situation the legal community has realised that there is no alternative
but to make the study of appropriate English compulsory for all the
law graduates as well as young entrants to the Bar. The pioneering initiative
towards achieving this goal was taken for the first time in Bangladesh
by the Legal Education Committee of Bangladesh Bar Council. As a result
a course titled 'English for Law' (EfL) was designed for the new entrants
to the Bar and introduced in 1995 at LETI, an arm of Bangladesh Bar
Council.
What
does the EfL course aim to achieve?
The EfL course aims to develop the English language proficiency of those
law graduates who are willing to enter the Bar. The mastery of the language
skills, ie reading, speaking, listening and writing, enables them to
access information and source materials such as law books, law reports,
journals, etc and to use English both orally and in writing. The course
helps the participants upgrade these language skills, thereby improving
their professional standard, both in and outside the courts.
What
is the course about?
EfL is a 50-hour intensive course delivered in 5 weeks, with a 2-hour
session each day, 5 days a week. The main focus areas of the course
are: Basic language skills in reading, speaking, listening and writing;
remedial grammar; language of advocacy; reading legal texts, documents,
etc; legal drafting and presentation skills. The EfL course is designed
to help participants use all the four language skills in legal profession
with greater emphasis on reading and writing.
Speaking and listening
skills: There is little or no scope for the young law graduates and
lawyers to speak English in their real-life situations, particularly
at the lower courts. Also their study of English for 12/14 years as
a compulsory subject at schools and colleges is almost totally unproductive.
As a result, their proficiency in spoken English is so low that it remains
almost always far below communicative competence.
The course provides
the participants with favourable classroom conditions and teacher input,
which create a friendly atmosphere encouraging and stimulating them
to speak English. In this congenial working environment they are given
suitable situations and problems to think about, discuss and debate
on. The participants themselves, through pair and group work, carry
out all these interactive classroom activities facilitated by the resource
person. These speaking-listening activities are often reinforced by
practice with audio-video materials available at LETI.
Reading skills:
Law students study law for 3/4 years at universities and law colleges,
mainly for a specific purpose, i.e. to earn a law degree for becoming
legal practitioners. Thus the knowledge they get from their academic
study is theoretical and limited. But to become professionally successful
legal practitioners they need to acquire new knowledge the demand of
which is ever increasing in the changing socio-political scenario of
the country vis-à-vis the present-day rapid growth of information
technology and globalisation. Poised for upgrading their lawyering and
advocacy skills, they have no alternative but to read law books, judgements,
reports, journals, etc. The work is inexhaustibly stupendous, as its
volume is staggeringly huge. So they must acquire the skills in reading
that will enable them to decipher legal texts, to gather main ideas
and specific information from a text, to organise ideas, facts and points
found in a document chronologically and coherently, to differentiate
between facts and opinions, to analyse a case, to summarise the facts
of a case, and most importantly, to do these activities very fast. A
considerable part of the EfL course is given to developing such skills
in reading as extensive reading, intensive reading, contextual reading,
inferential reading, etc.
Writing skills:
Law students have the option to take either Bangla or English medium
to answer their examination questions. But in reality most of them choose
the former mainly for three reasons: (a) The standard of English they
come to law college with is very low and they don't dare to do their
study through it (b) they hear classroom lectures in Bangla and are
allowed to write answers to their examination questions in Bangla and
(c) Bangla guidebooks and notebooks are available for the law courses,
which are easy for the law students to use for rote learning.
As a result of the
above options and opportunities the students enjoy during their academic
life, they develop a kind of writing both in English and Bangla, which
has in most cases little or nothing to do with writing skills. They
write mostly memorised answers and as such they cannot express their
own thoughts, ideas and feelings coherently and clearly in a piece of
writing. This lacking in their writing ability is acutely noticed when
they write English.
It is true that
the young entrants to the Bar hardly write their pleadings, notices,
etc in English while they practice at the lower courts. But many of
them one day may become the honourable Judges and learned Advocates
of the Supreme Court. And here both the Bench and the Bar use English
in the discharge of their respective duties (i.e. writing judgements,
plaints, written statements, etc). So the aspiring young entrants to
the Bar have to develop writing skills properly for their future elevated
positions in life in the higher court.
The EfL course has
been designed to meet this need for developing the participants' writing
skills. Starting with remedial grammar in context, the course proceeds
to develop inter alia corpus of words, organisation of facts, opinions
and ideas and techniques of legal drafting.
What
prospects does EfL look forward to?
EfL is the only specialised course of its kind in Bangladesh that is
intended for the would-be legal practitioners of the whole country.
The course holds out prospects for these future professionals by improving
their language proficiency, which they badly need for upgrading their
lawyering and advocacy skills.
Based on the usefulness
of the course as realised by the experienced legal professionals (and
also by the BVC participants), EfL should be a compulsory component
of the BVC program. To meet this need the course is being further redesigned,
catering for participants of wide-ranging abilities.
Shamsul
Hoque is Director, Legal Education & Training Institute (LETI),
Bangladesh Bar Council and former Professor, Bangladesh Open University.
