Education

Where have all the English Language teachers gone?

BELTA Revisited

Razia Sultana Khan

There was a hush of expectation broken every now and then by a muted comment and a snippet of conversation from the assembly of people gathered in the auditorium of the British Council on Thursday, July 15, 2004. They were an assorted group of people from all parts of Bangladesh linked by a common profession, similar aims and a variety of ideas. For many there was the euphoria of being part of a conference for the first time.

Home for the summer vacation I was told that BELTA (Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association) had been revived after almost two decades and was organising a conference on July 16 and 17. In the middle of summer inertia I decided it was easier to refuse when asked to present a paper for the conference, especially since I had the excuse, "it's too short a notice." I wasn't allowed to cop-out though, and Arifa Rahman (President, BELTA) told me, (no requests this time), that she had put my name down as the moderator for one of the sessions. Arifa Rahman and I go back a long way and having been a student of hers at a TEFL (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language) course way back in the mid '80's, "No" was not an option. My session was on day 2 but having been roped in I decided to turn up the first day in the hope of meeting old friends and acquaintances.

Forum on ELT and Teaching Development: (from left) Dr Mobasherra Khanum, Dr Arifa Rahman, Karim of Karim International, Razia Sultana Khan (Moderator), Suraiya Huda and Kishwar Kamal

I listened to the discussants and the presenter on the podium but part of me was busy drinking in the atmosphere of the conference. Admittedly the auditorium was not as full as one would have expected but what it lacked in physical strength was more than made up by the excitement.

During the morning tea break I placed myself strategically near the doors of the auditorium. I wasn't disappointed. Screams of "Razia!" "Apa!" "Madam!" and warm hugs, depending on whether the person was a friend, a junior colleague or an ex-student. Others came up to me and reminded me of the BELTA conference the first time around. There was no way I could forget that. It was the early 80s and I was out teaching for the first time. Still not certain whether I wanted to take up teaching as a profession, I had let myself be seduced, more by vacant teaching posts than any strong commitment. BELTA was in its heyday and the then executive members, Abdus Selim and Hamidur Rahman had wanted me to take a more active part. New to the profession and very insecure, I had shied away with the easy promise of "the next time." I had however listened attentively to all the papers presented and it had been my first exposure to a conference.

Twenty years later from the vantage point of experience and countless conferences under my belt, I looked around at the young eager faces, and felt their excitement. It wasn't just BELTA I was revisiting, it was part of my youth.

I realised how far I had come when, at the absence of a speaker, I needed little persuasion to face a session and give an extempore presentation on "Preparing an Effective Lesson Plan." The strategies learned in the last 20 years came to my aid and feeling a rush of adrenaline, I was able to provide my bit to keep the wheels of the conference turning. Teachers need to be improvisers and be ready for all eventualities. Who has not faced at least one of the following situations? You're ready with wonderfully detailed Over-Head Transparencies and find out you there is a power outage. You have a great handout and the photocopier breaks down. Or you prepare group work for a particular class and then find yourself in a room where the desks have all been nailed down. Did I mention that the class had 250 students?

Two forums were held the first day. One on employers' perspectives of needs and standards of English and the other on ELT Issues at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Speakers as diverse as an editor of a newspaper, a publisher, a lawyer, the CEOs of a bank and of an advertising company as well as the managing director of a tobacco company, looked at the standard of English from the employers' point of view. The gist of the discussion was the low language proficiency of prospective employees and the need for better English.

The Second forum dealt with ELT (English Language Teaching) issues at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The discussion was a little more diverse here though the problem of recruiting proficient teachers came up again. There was a suggestion from one of the speakers, that more communicative books be written and made available to students. This issue also took me back, to 1995 this time, when together with three other teachers we had been asked by NCTB (National Curriculum and Textbook Board) to write a communicative English text book for Class V. We set to the task with gusto, visualising the change we would, in our own small way, be able to bring about in English language teaching in the schools. With typical Bangladeshi urgency we were asked to finish the book the day before we had our first meeting. But one learns to work under that sort of pressure and "if only we had more time," is the underlying cliché in almost all projects in Bangladesh. Suffice it to say that we finished the book in three months. The following year I was in my village in Chandpur and on finding out that a young cousin of mine was in grade V, I asked to see the book (perhaps hoping subconsciously to rise in her esteem). She brought me a book which looked totally alien, though the cover boldly proclaimed that it was indeed "ENGLISH FOR TODAY" and in smaller letters "For Class Five." On flipping through it I found that 90 per cent of it was written in Bangla. Do not mistake me, I love Bangla, but my concern was in seeing it in English textbook, especially since the actual writers had refrained from using any Bangla. A ghostwriter had taken the trouble to translate all the communicative exercises and instructions into Bangla (and not too accurately). The names of the teachers had been lumped together as "written by three teachers." (I must admit this totally punctured my pride). The government books would have been distributed free of cost or at a very nominal price, but now the students were expected to pay for it. The real tragedy was that though the intention to improve had been genuine enough, the link had fallen apart somewhere along the line.

The third and last forum held on the concluding day was on Teacher Development. It was a real honour for me to be the moderator here, not just for the fact that we had an august panel of teacher educators, but because two of the discussants, Soreya Huda and Mobasherra Khanum were old class-friends from Dhaka University.

The discussants spoke of the lack of extensive programmes on the teaching of English. They informed us that, even institutes which provide teacher training, as well as in-service training for school teachers, do not stress the teaching of the English language and that one could become a teacher in Bangladesh with no formal academic training. Though most of us knew that intuitively, it was a shock to hear it from the podium. Another truth that was voiced was that despite the call for and desire to make classes more communicative, language classes were still lecture rooms. "Most teachers do not like the communicative method," a couple of participants pointed out. And would we if we did not have some knowledge of what it involved nor the communicative ability ourselves to use it effectively in class? We also have to ask ourselves, do we have the best teachers at the primary and secondary levels? This is where minds are formed and foundations forged. The tertiary level can only build on that and chisel the forms into sharper focus. But we are also aware of the direct ratio between salary and quality and that is one area I do not wish to visit at this moment.

I noticed a definite parting of ways between the presentations in the initial stages of the conference and the concluding part. On the first day the emphasis had been on the importance of starting the teaching of English language at a very early age but as the conference progressed, the focus moved to the importance of quality education. For me this was déjà vu: I'd been there. In a presentation, at exactly the same spot, some ten years back on the standard of ELT in Bangladesh. I had suggested, with relevant statistics supporting my argument, that we start English from grade 3 , instead of grade 1. The protest from a number of academics was quite violent. It is sad that the same issue needs to be focused on and discussed a decade later. Have we not moved at all? It's facile to say we need English from day one. It may seem like "a good thing." But what about the logistics? Where are the qualified teachers we need to teach the millions of students? No one in management or mid-management who has the difficult job of headhunting can be unaware of the fact that the trained English language teacher with proficiency in English is an endangered species in Bangladesh. The focus needs to be on teacher training. As groups of teachers become trained, they can in turn disperse and train other teachers. This would have a ripple effect and in a few years time our body of trained teachers would expand. If the initiative had been taken a decade back we would not be at the same crossroads again.

Arifa Rahman, President of BELTA, addressing the audience in the auditorium of The British Council

The concluding speaker was Professor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, I listened to him entranced with the rest of the packed auditorium as he lucidly brought language and literature together. Can one teach language divorced of culture? Is language not a vehicle of expression of the people and culture and is not literature a picture to that culture? It was Friday and close to Juma prayers, yet the audience sat spell bound.

It's noticeable that quite a few members of the audience eagerly asked BELTA to provide ongoing teacher education. This is missing the point, teacher development is not dependent on outside factors. It's a life-long process, and involves any activity aiming to achieve personal and professional growth for teachers. It can be something as mundane as observing colleagues' classes, or as casual as reading academic journals and books, and as formal as attending conferences. In my opinion BELTA had taken the most important step: it had brought English language teachers from all parts of Bangladesh together and given them a forum to express themselves. To know that they are not alone, the problems they have are not individual ones, and it's not true that there is no solution.

Over lunch we did the immediate post-conference discussion (this would continue for the next few days). The good, the bad and the "what should have been done," were minutely dealt with. I over heard the remark: "But what did we get out of it?" perhaps not too much in the way of the latest teaching/learning methodology. But even in international conferences like TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) or AWP (Association of Writers and Publishers) one does not necessarily come away, with pages of notes, or feel intellectually more knowledgeable. What one gets is the ambeance of the conference, the discussions in the corridors, the meetings with people you know, the making of new friendships and a list of new contacts. And BELTA 2004 more than satisfied my craving for that. In my heart I thanked the people responsible for reviving BELTA and giving me the opportunity to be a part of it.

Razia Sultana Khan teaches at North South University and is presently on leave doing her Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, U.S.A.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2004