Secondary School EL Teachers’ Classroom Language Proficiency: A Case Study in Bangladesh

Abstract

The study reported here aimed to examine the classroom language proficiency (CLP) of secondary school (SS) English language (EL) teachers in Bangladesh. It is obvious that the EL teachers in a non-native English-speaking context like Bangladesh need to have a very good oral proficiency in the target language (TL) as part of their content knowledge so that learners can take them as models and classroom teaching-learning is effective. Following a multiple case study approach, data were collected from six SS EL teachers as primary informants and four head teachers (HTs), three teacher trainers (TTs), and one curriculum expert (CE) as secondary informants through classroom observations and face-to-face interviews. The collected data were analyzed with the qualitative data analysis software NVivo 11 Pro using thematic analysis as advocated by Braun and Clarke (2006). The key findings indicate EL teachers’ poor CLP as they demonstrated: (1) limited grammatical structures and lexical range of TL use; (2) TL inadequacy for interaction with learners; (3) nominal use of the TL for classroom instruction; and (4) overwhelming use of the L1 in the classrooms. Discussing the implications of the main findings, this paper proposes some recommendations for the stakeholders concerned.