- International Refereed Social Sciences Journal

DOI : 10.18843/rwjasc/v10i4/04
DOI URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.18843/rwjasc/v10i4/04

CLT Theory and Classroom Practices in Secondary Education in

Bangladesh: An Investigation into the Present Scenario

Tahmina Sultana Sima, Muhammad Azizul Hoque,

Adjunct Faculty, Associate Professor,
Dept. of English Language and Literature, Dept. of English Language and Literature,
International Islamic University Chittagong, International Islamic University Chittagong
Kumira, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Kumira, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

(Received September 22, 2019; Accepted October 22, 2019)

ABSTRACT

This study examined how Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is applied to English
Language Classrooms in secondary education in Bangladesh. In conducting this study, the
researchers used a mixed-method approach. The study used quantitative data collected from
a questionnaire conducted with ninety-one students of secondary level and qualitative data
from interview conducted with eight English teachers. The findings of the study reveal that
English language classroom practices in secondary education hardly go with the principles
of CLT. In some cases, the practices are far different from the techniques suggested by the
CLT approach. The analysis reveals that although some teachers are willing to bridge this
gap between CLT theory and classroom practices, they fail to do so because of time
constraint, pressure from authorities to complete the syllabus, students’ and their parents’
eagerness to secure a good Grade Point Average (GPA) in the examination and their
unawareness of the necessity of achieving communicative competence (CC). Based on these
findings, some recommendations are provided at the end of the study for the improvement of
pedagogical practices in secondary education.

Keywords: Communicative competence (CC), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT),

Grammar Translation Method (GTM), Secondary Education.

INTRODUCTION:
Introduction of CLT to English pedagogy in Bangladesh has stimulated a lot of debate and concerns
because most of the students still fail to achieve CC even after its application for two decades. The
Ministry of Education (MoE) introduced CLT to teaching and learning English at the secondary level
with a purpose of enabling students to use English “for effective communication in real life situations”
(National Curriculum, 2012, p. 74). Yet, students of secondary level are struggling to achieve CC (Ali,
2010). Ali and Walker (2014) shed light on different problems that encumber the implementation of CLT
in Bangladesh. These are: “(a) lack of consistency in ELT practice in various institutions; (b) lack of
collaboration among different stakeholders, i.e. teachers, learners, curriculum planners, syllabus
designers, materials developers and methodologists, etc.; (c) the insignificant impact of teacher training;
and (d) the insignificant outcome of the innovative language teaching projects” (Ali & Walker, 2014, p.
35). Roy (2016) points out that one of the reasons behind students’ failure in achieving CC is the gap
between the objectives of CLT and what is assessed in the examination. A recent study by Ali, Hamid and
Hardy (2018) revealed a mismatch between what is expected in the curriculum and what is tested. The
secondary examinations do not assess test-takers’ listening and speaking skills. Therefore, many teachers
seem to ignore these skills in their classroom practices. Only two skills-reading and writing are assessed

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in the examinations “and the assessed items had little relevance for communication in real life” (Ali et al.,
2018, p. 10). The official textbooks for implementing CLT have also been subjected to criticism as these
materials pay little attention to listening and speaking skills (Ali, 2014) While these previous studies,
have indicated several problems that may encumber implementation of CLT, they have not explored to
what extent CLT approach is implemented in the classroom. This led the researchers to examine whether
or not CLT is implemented in secondary education.
Previously, English was taught based on Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in which the emphasis
was given mostly on teaching and learning of grammar. Later, this grammar-based method of teaching
and learning English was replaced by CLT in 1996 with the purpose of developing students’ CC
(National Curriculum, 2012). However, Kabir (2015) argued that the change was partial, as the
examination system was not innovated according to the change in methodology. However, it is argued
that until or unless CLT theory is reflected in classroom practices, students will not be able to achieve CC
(Ali, 2017). As Nunan (1988) perfectly said that the theory of CLT should not only remain as a
document, rather it should be practised “in classroom activities, patterns of classroom interaction, and in
tests of communicative performance” (pp. 5-6). Therefore, this research aims to explore to what extent
CLT is implemented in secondary education in Bangladesh.

LITERATURE REVIEW:
Many researchers (Rahman, 2015; Ahmed, 2016; Rahman & Karim, 2015; Roy, 2016) examined the
present condition of CLT at different levels in Bangladesh. Almost all of them found that Bangladesh is
still facing different kinds of difficulties and obstacles in properly applying CLT. Before going to discuss
the present condition of CLT in Bangladesh, it would be useful to have an idea about CLT.

2.1 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT):

CLT is an approach that emphasizes communication as the basis of teaching and learning a language.
Before CLT, some other methods came into the field such as Grammar Translation Method (GTM),
Direct Method (DM), and Audio Lingual Method (ALM) etc. with a purpose of teaching English
effectively. However, all these methods appeared insufficient to develop learners’ communication skills
so that they could communicate outside the classroom. Finally, there was a shift from grammar-centred
method to CLT in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which is an approach that “aims to make
communicative competence the goal of language teaching” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 155).

2.2 Principles and Techniques of CLT:

Widdowson (1978) & Littlewood (1981) remarked that one of the main principles of CLT is that it focuses
more on ‘use’ and ‘fluency’ rather than ‘usage’ and ‘accuracy’. CLT also encourages the practice of skills in
an integrated way (Widdowson, 1978; Littlewood, 1981). Larsen-Freeman (2000) mentioned some
prominent principles and techniques of CLT. These principles of CLT include using target language and
authentic materials in the classroom, teaching a variety of language form through language games, tolerating
students’ error, and ensuring learner-centred classroom and teachers’ role as a facilitator and some key
techniques of CLT are role play, scrambled sentences, language games, picture strip story, group work, pair
work etc. The following sub-section focuses on CC, which is the ultimate purpose of the CLT approach.

2.3 Communicative Competence (CC):

CLT gives its utmost emphasis on developing CC that (Richards and Rodgers, 2001) define as the ability
to use language efficiently and appropriately for meaningful communication in a speech community (as
cited in Rahman, Singh & Pandian, 2018). Dell Hymes (1971) was the first to coin this term and his view
of CC refers to the competency of using linguistic knowledge “in a variety of social situations” (Hymes,
1979, p. 3). CC holds the view that acquiring grammatical knowledge is not enough for the efficient use
of a language, rather having knowledge of using appropriate language based on different social contexts
is the foremost necessity (Savignon, 2018). This is “the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of
a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use
these sentences and to whom” (Richards, Platt & Weber, 1985, p. 48). According to (Canale and Swain
1980), CC includes grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and
strategic competence. Grammatical competence refers to the ability of using grammatical structures
correctly, sociolinguistic competence refers to the ability of using language based on social context,
discourse competence refers to the ability of combining grammatical rules and meaning for different
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purposes and it makes the learners aware of the discourse pattern of the target language, and strategic
competence refers to the ability of understanding verbal and non-verbal communication strategies (as
cited in Karim, 2004). Therefore, only mastering linguistic structures is not enough for being
communicatively competent (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). The reason of devising CLT approach was to
achieve CC that focuses on knowing how to use a language according to the setting and participants, and
continue communication “despite the restriction in one’s language knowledge” (Fazil, Nor & Halim,
2018). In a word, CLT not only emphasizes learning and teaching of linguistic forms but also aims at
improving students’ knowledge of “when to speak, when not, what to talk about with whom, when,
where, in what manner” (Hymes, 1972, p. 277).

2.4 CLT in Bangladesh: Its Introduction and Present Condition:

CLT was introduced in Bangladesh to develop students’ CC in English. This approach came into practice
by the end of the 1990s and it was introduced at the secondary level in 1996 through a project called
English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP) (Ahmed, 2016). Since then, the implementation
of CLT was going through many challenges (Ahmed, 2016; Rahman, 2015; Rahman & Karim, 2015; Roy,
2016; Ullah, 2015). In these studies, the researchers depicted several causes behind the challenges that
CLT faces in the context of Bangladesh. They included lack of teaching materials and teacher training,
students’ unwillingness to do communicative tasks in the classroom, the large size of the classroom,
contradictory to the socio-culture of Bangladesh, shortage of teaching equipment, time constraint etc.
Ullah’s (2015) study on CLT at the Higher Secondary level revealed that the classroom practices, teachers’
role in the classroom, the selected materials, even the testing system at the Higher Secondary level do not
follow CLT principles and techniques. Ali (2014) also pointed out that there is a mismatch between the
goal of English language teaching (ELT) curriculum and the way the textbook was designed. However, the
training that the teachers receive is not adequate as this training gives less emphasis on how teachers could
teach language skills effectively in the classroom, and different projects that are innovated in Bangladesh
to improve ELT had a very insignificant role in the improvement of ELT (Ali & Walker, 2014). The
finding of another study led by (Haider & Chowdhury 2012) revealed that though textbooks are well-
revised based on CLT theory, the secondary level classroom practices do not reflect the effective use of
these textbooks because of untrained teachers, defective assessment system, and materials shortage. In this
research, the researchers’ aim is to build on these studies by investigating whether any necessary step has
been taken to change the classroom scenario to implement CLT successfully.

METHODOLOGY:
3.1 Research Design:
As mentioned earlier, the aim of this study is to assess whether the classroom practices of secondary level
reflect the principles and techniques of CLT. In doing so, the researchers used a mixed-method approach
that “involves the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods in a single study” (Fraenkel & Wallen,
2009, p. 557). This approach was conducted in order to increase “the scope of the investigation”
(Dornyei, 2007, p. 164). The researchers collected quantitative data from a questionnaire conducted with
students of secondary level, and qualitative data from an interview conducted with English teachers
teaching at the secondary level. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected in order to
strengthen the findings of the real scenario of the secondary level classroom in Bangladesh. This study
was guided by the following research questions:
RQ1: Are the principles and techniques of CLT applied to the secondary level classroom?
RQ2: To what extent do the classroom practices of the secondary level correspond to CLT?

3.2 Respondents, Participants and Sampling:

The respondents and participants of this study were selected through the help of purposive sampling in
which the researchers believe that “the sample selected would be representative of the population”
(Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009, p. 99). Among ninety-one selected students, fifty-three students were female
and thirty-eight students were male, and their average age is sixteen. Among the selected eight English
teachers, four were female and four were male, and they all have teaching experience of five to ten years.

3.3 Data Collection Tools:

In this study, the researchers used two survey instruments-questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire
designed for the students of secondary level includes twelve close-ended questions. An unstructured
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interview was conducted to collect qualitative data from selected English teachers.
3.4 Data Collection Procedure:
Quantitative data were collected from ninety-one students of secondary level with their consent by
maintaining the ethics. The researchers visited nine different government and non-government schools of
Chittagong and sought permission from the principals of these schools before collecting data. Among
these schools, only the principals of seven schools permitted to collect data from their schools.
Quantitative data were collected by providing the students of these schools with the questionnaire. In
order to ensure that all the participants understand what they are asked, the researchers were present
there. Then, eight English teachers of seven government and non-government urban schools who have
been teaching in these schools for several years were interviewed. Point to be noted a letter of consent
has been sent to the participants before collecting data.

3.5 Data Analysis Procedure:

The quantitative data have been analysed following the descriptive analysis of survey using simple
statistical tools like frequency counts, averages, percentages, tables, and graphs. Then again, the
qualitative data have been analysed following the thematic analysis of interview data. The interviewed
teachers have been coded as T1…T8 based on (Richards’ 2003) model.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION:

4.1 Analysis of Students’ Questionnaire:
4.1.1 Reflection of CLT Objectives in the Secondary Level Classrooms:
As one of the main objectives of CLT is to develop students’ CC, the researchers designed some
questions to examine how much the participating students of the secondary level have achieved CC. At
first, students were asked to choose one option that describes their condition when they have to use
English outside the classroom. They were given four options to choose one what describes them the best.
These four options have been measured by a four-point Likert scale (1= I can speak English without
making any mistake, 2= I try to speak English with fewer mistakes, 3= I try to speak English but do many
mistakes, 4= I cannot speak English at all). The percentage of students’ responses has been shown in
figure 1 of Appendix-1. Figure 1 illustrates that most of the students (64%) have not been able to attain
CC, and they still make mistakes while trying to speak English outside the classroom. Moreover, it is
noteworthy that a large number of students (33%) claimed that they cannot speak English at all.
Then, the researchers tried to assess how much the students of secondary level are confident to speak
English in a real-life situation and found that about 87% students are not confident enough to use English
in a real-life situation while rest of the students (13%) are somewhat confident. However, no student was
found to be ‘very confident’ or ‘confident’ to use English in a real-life situation which is a clear
indication that the classroom activities done at the secondary level are not practised based on CLT
principles and techniques. (See figure 2 of Appendix 1)

4.1.2 The Mismatch in Implementation of the CLT Principles and Techniques in Teaching Students
of Secondary Level:
At first, the researchers tried to examine how accurately CLT theory is being followed in classroom
practices. In doing so, they chose two classroom activities, ‘fill in the gaps’ and ‘dialogue writing’, from
the prescribed CLT-based English syllabus, and assessed whether students of secondary level practise
these two activities in the classroom based on CLT principles and techniques.
At first, students were asked how they practise grammatical items in their classroom, and most of the
students’ response (38%) indicates that their teachers make them understand the grammatical rules, while
some (62%) of the students memorize grammatical rules and grammatical items like fill in the gaps with
clues or without clues. Unfortunately, not a single student was found to practise grammatical items by
writing a short story using a specific grammatical rule. Then, students were also asked how they practise
‘dialogue writing’ activity in the classroom, and a large number of students’ response (84%) shows that
they just memorize some selected dialogues from their guide-books which is not relevant to the
principles of CLT. Some other students (16%) responded that they practise this activity by trying to write
dialogues by themselves and knowing the strategies regarding how to write a dialogue. However, none of
them practised this activity by applying the role-play technique in the classroom. All these data are shown
in table I of Appendix 2.

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These findings suggest that though these two activities (i.e., fill in the gaps’ and ‘dialogue writing’) could
play an outstanding role in attaining, to some extent, the objective of CLT, the classroom practices do not
appear to be the proper way to fulfill the requirement of CLT.
Therefore, it is obvious that there is a gap between the classroom practices at the secondary level and the
CLT theory, but the question is how big that gap is. In order to know how much the classroom practices are
deviant from the CLT theory the researchers framed a questionnaire with some questions for the students.
At first, students were asked whether they have enough practice on speaking and listening in the
classroom. Figure 3 of Appendix-1 shows students’ response regarding their practice on listening and
speaking skill.
It is found that 86% of the students do not practise listening and speaking skill at all, while only 14% of
them claimed that they have practice on these two skills rarely. So, students of the secondary level do not
have enough practice on these two skills. Therefore, it is clear that the classroom practices of secondary
level do not correspond to CLT as in order to achieve the goal of CLT students must “work on all four
skills from the beginning” (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, p. 131).
Then, in order to know the true picture of the secondary level classroom, the researchers designed some
more questions based on CLT principles and techniques. Students’ responses to these questions have been
shown in table II (See Appendix-2).
Their responses depict that the classroom scenario at the secondary level is far different from the CLT
theory. The findings revealed that in most of the secondary level classrooms, there is no use of authentic
materials and CLT techniques like role-play, language game, picture strip story etc. Moreover, most of
the students do not work in groups or pairs, watch English movies or listen to English news, and use
English in their classrooms. All these data indicate that the teachers and students of the secondary level
do not adhere to CLT theory, although the present English curriculum promotes CLT (Ali, 2014).
Then, the researchers tried to assess whether teachers are playing their expected role in the classroom to
implement CLT in the classroom. Students were asked regarding their teachers’ role in the classroom, and
their responses have been presented in table III (See Appendix-2).
Table II shows that teachers play different kinds of roles in the secondary level classroom. Although most
teachers (44%) play an authoritative role which is not suggested in CLT, it is a matter of hope that some
of them (56%) try to act differently. Moreover, data in this study revealed that whenever the students
make errors, most of the teachers (89%) correct them directly or let them correct themselves, which does
not match with the CLT principle.

4.2. Analysis of Interview:

4.2.1. Present Scenario of Secondary Level Classroom:
4.2.1.1. Students’ Memorization Tendency
Almost all teachers agreed at a point that though CLT was introduced to the teaching and learning English
with a specific purpose, its principles and techniques are not being applied in the classroom. They pointed
out that students’ memorization tendency is acting as a barrier against the proper implementation of CLT
in the secondary level classroom. Hence, statement of T1 is noticeable in extract 4.1.

Extract 4.1
T1: The classroom practices do not help students much improve their communicative
competence as most of the students have a tendency to memorize everything. (May 3, 2019)

Moreover, students are not eager to practise those activities that will not appear in their examination, as
T1 opines. However, other selected teachers also expressed their concern regarding students’
memorization tendency that is ultimately acting as a hindrance in achieving the goal of CLT.

4.2.1.2. Following Previous Teaching Method:

Most of the English language teachers still follow the previous teaching method in teaching language. T3
admitted the phenomenon, as Extract 4.2 indicates.

Extract 4.2
T3: The Education ministry of Bangladesh wanted to come out of traditional way of
teaching and learning English in order to ensure that students have practice on four
skills- listening, speaking, reading, and writing. But the present classroom practices do
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not give emphasis on practising these four skills. (May 3, 2019)

T2 added that English teaching and learning at the secondary level ‘could not yet come out of GTM.’
4.2.1.3. Partial Implementation
All the participants (T1-T8) in the interview pointed out that the present classroom practices clearly
depict that the revision, after introducing CLT, was done partially. In this regard, T8’s opinion reflected in
extract 4.3 is worth mentioning.

Extract 4.3
T8: the classroom practices of secondary level is still a challenging factor as the
prescribed English syllabus, selected materials, and the testing system have not been
revised based on CLT. (May 4, 2019)

4.2.2. Role of Present Classroom Practices in Developing Students’ CC:

The selected teachers were also asked to give opinion regarding whether students have achieved CC
through the present classroom practices of secondary level that claim to follow CLT principles and
techniques. T1, T2, and T3 opined that the present classroom practices of secondary level more focus on
exam-based study than developing students’ CC. Other selected teachers (T4…T8) also stated that the
classroom scenario of secondary level depicts that most of the teachers and students are more concerned
about securing a good GPA in the examination than achieving CC. All these factors appear to be big
challenges in the proper implementation of CLT in Bangladesh.
However, all the selected teachers opined that they themselves failed to apply CLT to their classrooms
because of constant pressure from authorities and guardians to complete the syllabus in a limited time,
students’ and their parents’ demand to secure a good GPA in the examination, lack of teaching equipment
and favourable environment, students’ low competency level, etc.

4.3 Summary of the Findings:

4.3.1. Mismatch between CLT Theory and Secondary Level Classroom Practices:
Based on the findings of the study, it can be argued that CLT is not properly practiced in the secondary
level classroom. As a result, students still fail to develop their CC in English as manifested in the
findings. Moreover, CLT is bound to face challenges in an environment where students are not “engaging
themselves in real communicative activities” (Kabir, 2015, p. 23).

4.3.2. The Reality of the Present Classroom Scenario:

The analysis of the collected data shows that there is a huge gap between the classroom activities and
CLT theory. In order to achieve the goal of secondary English curriculum, CLT principles and techniques
should be applied to the classroom. However, the secondary level classroom practices are not
representative of CLT principles and techniques in a true sense. Thus, based on the findings of the study,
it may be argued that the disjuncture between the key principles of CLT and its application to the
classroom contributes to the current dissatisfaction towards the expected outcome of CLT in Bangladesh.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Based on the findings, the following steps have been recommended so that CLT theory can be applied in
the secondary level classroom effectively:
i. All the four skills should be emphasized in the classroom equally that CLT aims.
ii. The classroom communication should be carried out in English.
iii. Different engaging classroom techniques like role-play, picture strip story, language games etc.
should be arranged on regular basis that CLT demands.
iv. The use of authentic materials like newspaper, magazine, movies, menus, etc. in the classroom
should be given the utmost priority.
v. The number of motivating classroom activities like debate, drama, speaking and listening contest
etc. should be increased.
vi. Authorities should manage necessary teaching equipment and ensure the fruitful use of them in the
classroom.

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vii. The attitudes of the learners and their parents, and all stakeholders towards teaching and learning
English should be changed. They should also be aware of the goal of CLT and purpose of
introducing it in Bangladesh.
CONCLUSION:
In Bangladesh, CLT was introduced to develop CC among the students. However, this objective has not
yet been achieved. As described in this study, the classroom activities at the secondary level are not
appropriate to the expected pedagogy based on CLT. These activities are merely reflecting the traditional
way of teaching and learning English which is, ultimately, keeping the students away from achieving CC.
The century-old teaching culture of Bangladesh is also not suitable for implementing this western
methodology. Implementation of CLT requires materials support and environment, which are not
available in many schools. As a result, neither CLT can be implemented properly nor the teaching
outcome is satisfactory in this country.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
The authors would like to thank all the participants of this study who gave their precious time,
cooperated, and showed admiring patience in answering all the questions. Without their cooperation, the
authors could not complete this study.
Above all, thanks to the Almighty who made the authors able to complete this study.

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APPENDIX-1:
Figure 1: Students’ Condition while Trying to Speak English outside the Classroom

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 - International Refereed Social Sciences Journal

3%

16%

48%

33%

Figure 2: Students’ level of confidence in speaking English

Students' confidence level

100%
90% 87%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
13%
20%
10% 0% 0%
0%
very confident confident somewhat confident not confident

Figure 3: Frequency of Students’ Practice of Listening and Speaking Skill

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 - International Refereed Social Sciences Journal

Studens' practice of listening & speaking skill

100%
90% 86%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20% 14%
10% 0% 0%
0%
always sometimes rarely never

APPENDIX-2
Table 1: Students’ Way of Practising Grammatical Items and ‘Dialogue Writing’

How Students Practise Grammatical Items How Students Practise ‘Dialogue Writing’

1. Understanding grammatical rules 38% 1. Applying the role-play technique 0%

2. Memorizing grammatical rules 37% 2. Memorizing selected dialogues 84%

3. Memorizing ‘gap filling’ 25% 3. Writing dialogues by themselves 12%

4. Practising by writing a short story 4. Knowing the strategies regarding how

0% 4%
using a specific grammatical rule to write a dialogue

Table 2: Students’ Responses to the Questions Regarding Classroom Scenario

1. Which one of the Live Radio

EFT or any
followings does your English English or
grammar
teacher use in the Newspaper Magazine Television
books
classroom as teaching Broadcast
material? 3% 0% 0% 97%
2. Which one of the Picture Language None of
Role Play
following techniques is Strip Story Game these
used in your classroom? 0% 0% 0% 100%
In a small group In a large group
3. How do you complete a In pairs Individually
(of 3-5 students) (of 6-8 students)
classroom task?
3% 0% 10% 87%
4. How often does your Always Sometimes Rarely Never
teacher deliver lecture in
English? 0% 4% 12% 84%
5. How often do you have to Always Sometimes Rarely Never
watch English movies or
listen to English news to
solve your classroom 0% 0% 2% 98%
task?
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6. How often do you have to Always Sometimes Rarely Never

use English in your
classroom? 0% 4% 3% 93%

Table 3: Students’ Responses Regarding Teachers’ Role in the Classroom

Controller and Guide and Supreme
Facilitator
Monitor Communicator Authority
1. Your teacher acts as a-
5% 34% 17% 44%

Correct Reacts positively Let us correct by

2. How does your teacher React negatively
us and patiently ourselves
react whenever you do
error in the classroom? 33% 4% 7% 56%

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