UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING: A STUDY ON THE STUDENTS OF THE S.S.C. AND H.S.C. LEVELS AT FAKIRHAT, BAGERHAT

Abstract

In Bangladesh the communicative syllabus at S.S.C. and H.S.C. levels was introduced in the 90s of the last century. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is deemed to be the most successful method of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language (SFL). But, if we look into the effectiveness of CLT in the implementation level, most possibly it will lead us to a big question mark. The article aims at finding out the effectiveness of introducing CLT in the S.S.C. and H.S.C. levels to see whether our students are really achieving competence in the target language or not. So, the authors initiated to carry out a survey on the teachers and the students of the classes IX & X, XI & XII and selected Fakirhat, one of the southern Upazillas of Bangladesh under Bagerhat district, as the study area for the survey. The study includes the students and the teachers of government and non-government schools, colleges and madrasas to unearth the problems the learners and the teachers usually face in practicing CLT. Besides, it attempts to indicate the impact of effectiveness and ineffectiveness of CLT on the learners and on our society as well. The authors have also suggested some corrective measures for maximizing the effectiveness of CLT in Bangladesh. Maximization of the effectiveness of CLT will result in quality products having excellent communicative competence. If it is done, only then we can hope that the nation will be benefited both locally and globally.