Exploring classroom and outside-classroom factors affecting oral fluency in english of Bengali-medium students

Abstract

In a few recent studies it has been found that teachers in national curriculum schools of Bangladesh mostly prefer to teach grammar-centered lessons. Furthermore, it is often seen that students who graduate from Bengali medium schools tend to show low oral fluency in English. Hence, this study was carried out from the perspective of six participants of former Bengali-medium students to explore the kinds of classroom and outside-classroom activities and experiences they had that affected their oral fluency in English. The results showed that, outside-classroom factors as well as learners’ own efforts had a more prominent effect on their oral fluency, although the classroom helped build their grammatical accuracy in speech. The significance of this study is to encourage teachers to include interactive oral activities in the classroom in order to facilitate learners’ oral fluency in English.