Teaching English at rural secondary schools of Bangladesh: Facilitating or disadvantaging?

Abstract

This research aims at digging up the barriers and facilities of English teaching at rural secondary schools in Bangladesh. In a country like Bangladesh, the rural areas are deprived of different opportunities and facilities which are available in urban areas. In case of education, rural education system is also far behind the urban education system. So along with the students, the teachers also face different difficulties in case of teaching and learning in rural areas. However, this research focuses on the English teachers of rural secondary schools. Since I wanted to understand the scenario of English teaching in rural secondary schools I went for qualitative research. I visited four secondary schools of different rural areas and interviewed the teachers and students and also observed the English classes to get the genuine information. Though the data collected from these four schools cannot generalize the whole picture of English teaching in rural secondary schools, it gives important and valuable information of teaching English in rural areas of Bangladesh. This study tries to find out the pros and cons of English teaching at rural secondary schools. Along with the barriers, it also tries to find out whether there are any facilities in case of teaching English in rural areas.