LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:11 November 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2016
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Using English Literature in Higher Secondary EFL Classrooms in Rural Bangladesh:
Bridging the Cultures to Facilitate EFL Learning
M.A. Dissertation

Mossa. Sohana Khatun, M.A.

Abstract

The present research explores the use of literature in language teaching from a different dimension. It experiments with the use of literature to eliminate cultural alienation from the EFL classrooms with the hope that this will eventually facilitate language teaching and learning. The subjects of this study are the students of Higher Secondary level of some small-town colleges of Bangladesh. The basis of the paper is grounded on the assumption that the subjects are intolerant toward the target-language culture, i.e. the Western culture. They are biased with some wrong assumptions about the Western culture, and their sense of ‘otherness’ comes into play in the EFL classrooms all of which set some potential barriers before their learning of English. The study tries to incorporate literary items into language teaching materials keeping cultural similarities at the centre. No language can be taught and learnt without some references to its culture because the development of a language in a community essentially chronicles its culture. Similarly, the literature of a community embodies its language and culture simultaneously. Teaching a foreign language with an emphasis on its culture and its similarity with the native culture is likely to generate a friendly environment into the EFL class. Literature can make the culture of the target language familiar to the learners and thus facilitate learning an SL/FL.

Keywords: EFL, Bangladesh, rural schools, culture in EFL learning

Introduction

Keeping in mind the present status of the English language in the whole world, the importance and necessity of learning the language have been a priority in a third world country like Bangladesh. Though Bangladesh bears almost 400 years’ legacy of British reign, English is not the second language here. Instead, it is a foreign language because unlike in an Anglophone country, it is learned as a part of the usual school curriculum to pass an examination or as a necessary part of one’s education. It is learned in a country where English is not the dominant language. The distinction is important because it makes a lot of differences in the teaching and learning of a language other than the mother tongue. The teacher in an EFL setting assumes that the learners are competent in the mother tongue. On the contrary, the learners in an ESL classroom are usually of different nationalities. As ESL applies to learners who are immigrants or visitors to an Anglophone country, the learners have more opportunities to practice the language outside the classroom. However, the distinction that is more relevant to this research is that an EFL learner has very “limited exposure to the English-speaking culture” (Bell, 2011, para. 3) since this study capitalizes on a notion of target-culture centred learning of EFL.

This is only the beginning part of the dissertation. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE DISSERTATION IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Mossa. Sohana Khatun, M.A.
Lecturer, Department of English
Bangladesh University of Business and Technology (BUBT)
Dhaka Commerce College Road, Mirpur-2
Dhaka-1216
Bangladesh
shuhanaa@yahoo.com

Postal address:
B-4, House#15, Road#13
Rupnagar Residential Area, Mirpur-2
Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.