SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN A MONOLINGUAL COUNTRY: ITS IMPACT AND CHALLENGES ON ESL TEACHING AND LEARNING

Abstract

Learning through mistakes and shortcomings is natural and a must and the same applies to 
dealing with problems in the teaching and learning of English in Bangladesh. The absence of 
ideal classrooms, poor infrastructural amenities both for ESL teachers and learners, lack of 
technological and modern equipment, lack of adroit and highly-trained teachers, imported 
teaching strategies, examination-oriented teaching approaches, and most importantly, the 
pervasiveness of a nationalistic-rooted monolingual sentiment for the mother tongue are among 
the problems that the education sector in Bangladesh must contend with, which consequently 
affect the cultivation of competent teachers and learners. The prevailing English language 
teaching methods in Bangladesh, including the grammar-translation method, direct method, 
audio-lingual method, present practice procedure method, communicative language teaching 
(CLT) and task-based learning, failed to resolve the above-mentioned issues. English language 
has been treated by the majority of the learners as a subject instead of a language, and they do 
not seem to be aware of the importance of spontaneity in acquiring it. This paper scrutinizes the 
challenges faced by ESL teachers in Bangladesh classrooms and provides some effective 
solutions to overcome these issues, such as establishing advanced infrastructural facilities, 
ameliorating teachers‟ proficiency and ensuring Language Teacher Education is up-to-date. The 
paper also speculates how there are some inconsistencies and asymmetries between the stated 
objectives of teaching English and the actual teaching methods and strategies implemented in 
classrooms, then gives recommendations on how the ESL teachers can utilize CLT techniques in 
the classroom effectively in an effort to reduce the nationalistic monolingual sentiments that may 
be present among the learners.