Enforced CLT or disguised GTM?: investigating English curriculum implementation in secondary schools in Bangladesh”

Abstract

National curriculum and textbooks board (NCTB) curriculum of Secondary level in Bangladesh promotes communicative language teaching (CLT). NCTB curriculum is written to increase the practice of CLT in EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms. Although CLT has been incorporated in the secondary curriculum, still most of the teachers struggle to implement this in their classroom. Therefore, the execution of the curriculum in classroom is still controversial and doubtful. In this research, researcher tried to explore whether teachers and practitioners are following the CLT method prescribed in the NCTB curriculum, or their effort turns out only to establish camouflaged GTM (Grammar-Translation method) which is trying to inaugurate CLT by following the GTM in Bangladeshi context. More specifically this research is exploring whether the NCTB curriculum promotes CLT or it is encouraging teaching practices which can be termed as disguised GTM. Qualitative research design is chosen for this research so that the phenomena can be explored in details. Researcher have taken intensive interviews of secondary level teachers from different backgrounds to see the bigger picture of this scenario. This research portrays a rich picture of teachers’ practices in the classroom. It also depicts the gap between the curriculum expectation and the real scenario of teaching and learning. At the end some recommendations were made to overcome some of the barriers identified in this research.