There is a general consensus on the need for learning English well but no one seems to have a prescription of how it can be done. Not that standard English is not taught and learnt at all; some educational institutions, mostly English-medium, groom up students up to the international level but the overwhelming majority of schools fail to do the job. It is exactly because of this when a learner asks why students of the Bangla medium studying English up to class 12 fail to express themselves either in writing or verbally in the language, it becomes an intriguing question. Add to this the madrasa education - another stream of education, it proves to be an appalling situation so far as learning English is concerned. There is yet another problem of mastering the spoken form of the language for the Bangla-medium students. Even if they can write correct sentences, they feel shy of communicating in English in their classes; nor are they encouraged to do so.
It is against such a background, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali's insistence that the need for learning English has grown more than ever before with the country stepping into the threshold of the parameter of a developing country looks compelling. How compelling is understood by the fact that 47.8 per cent of the population is young and of them the number of those in the age bracket between 15 and 24 stands at 32.3 million. What remains unsaid is that this segment comprises the core group waiting for jobs. A distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a think tank, has been on record saying that higher education is not commensurate with employment. In fact, there is an impression that the higher the education is the greater chance of unemployment. This is corroborated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which puts the unemployment rate at the tertiary level at 12.1 per cent--highest in any segment.
Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with the entire education system here. And it would be wrong to assume that lack of English language proficiency is only to blame. In fact, learning a second language - other than English - well can open up door to a desirable career for students. The options may be for French, German, Chinese and Korean languages. In the British period, students learnt several languages - and quite well. Why then cannot students today learn one foreign language, English that is, in order to advance their cause? One simple answer is that those who teach them are not qualified enough to do justice to the subject. Teachers trained under a pilot programme in collaboration with a foreign mission yielded some appreciable results.
Qualified and skilled English teachers can do the trick. A crash course should be taken up in order to produce such a crop of English teachers. Teachers must be taught first how to use the language at the primary level and how to upgrade when students enroll with high schools. The emphasis ought to be on getting the basic right. If the foundation is strong, students willing to learn the language will need not look back. In this age of information, they will come across literature and learning aid and implements to advance their English proficiency.
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