Touhid Ebrahim :English is an international language and it is widely used in many countries of the world in recent times as a means of local and international communication. There are some other languages like French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese etc. in the world but none of them can be compared with English in terms of its role, scope, use and popularity. English is used by millions of people in all the continents in the world either as a first language or as the second one or as a foreign language or as an additional language. It has become one of our principal assets in getting global exposure. English is undoubtedly needed for any kind of jobs, business, and carrying research activities and many other purposes.It is good that our education system lays emphasis on the learning of English. In order to learn English well, we have to develop the four basic skills — listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among these four skills, speaking is in the second position. In case of learning English, the speaking skill is immensely important for various reasons such as getting a high flying job, getting a scholarship in a first world country or communicating with others who speak in English, mainly in verbal official communication. Students who go for higher studies either abroad or inside the country need to speak fluently in English. Most of the times, business partners prefer to sit for one-to-one a dialogue in spite of regular correspondence. So, for smooth running of business speaking skill is important. To travel in a foreign country speaking in English is a must. In recent times, communication through phones is an essential part of communicating with others. For effective communication to take place with international partners speaking in English is important. So, we have to master this skill with due importance to be a good speaker in English.In Bangladesh, traditional teaching methods followed by the teachers are not suitable for teaching communicative English. My experiences in school and college are not happy ones. I was not taught how to speak something in English to others. As a result, I was not able to converse English fluently. Since English is a foreign language in our country, most students are not familiar with it. They use English only inside the classrooms for a while but not outside the classrooms. Besides, they do not have enough scope to practice English outside the classrooms. The environment in schools and colleges does not support the students to speak English fluently. In my previous classes, I have seen that when a student tried to speak something in English in the classrooms and made a mistake, other students would laugh at him/her. Thus students were discouraged to practice speaking. In schools and colleges we see that Grammar Translation Method of teaching English is followed. Students have to memorize some sentences, structures, grammatical rules, and some translations from the text-books. But memorizing some sentence structures and some translations without understanding are not enough to learn speaking.On the other hand, the teachers are not interested to impart lessons to the students properly. Most of the teachers do not want to spend much time for the students in the process of learning English. They think that students should learn English only for passing the public exams and mainly for getting a good grade. Besides, there are many teachers who teach English are not skilled enough or have good command in English because the recruitment procedures are not good and the appointment of a teacher sometimes depends upon the prospective candidate’s capacity to pay bribe money than that of merit. This is the common scenario in almost all non-English medium schools all ever the country. There are many teachers who have not received any training at all to teach English. So, as an untrained teacher he/she cannot help the students to remove the problems and fear of this subject. He cannot make the lesson interesting because of the lack of proper strategies as well. As a result, the students cannot learn speaking English too.To learn the English speaking in an atmosphere where English is a foreign language, teachers should involve the students in a variety of activities such as pair work, question-answer, role-play, discussion, project work etc. Students’ participation should be given priority over teachers’ participation. Teachers’ attitude towards learning English speaking using the ‘read and translate’ method should be changed. The teachers have to emphasize on students’ participation and presentation. Moreover, teachers should create an environment where mistakes are accepted as part of the learning process because students also learn from their mistakes. It is possible that through the practices, students can develop their speaking skill. So, teachers should create an opportunity for the students to practice speaking inside the class. They can also arrange debate, speaking test in weekend and evaluate them for improving their competency in speaking English.Although we need good English teachers to help the students, motivating students to learn is also needed. Unless the learners are interested, even the most expert teachers can do nothing good to the students. I have seen the teaching approaches in Govt. Teachers’ Training College, Dhaka are quite different. Teachers are ready to help the students. But the question is how much the students are motivated to work hard? So, the students should be encouraged to learn speaking in English on reular basis between themselves off the the class rooms and with the teachers as well. May be they may initially use incorrect sentences but it doesn’t matter; the fact is, they are learning. They can make a group and practise speaking for some times after class hours. Besides, they can follow some more strategies to develop their speaking skill such as creating reasons to speak English, having confidence to learn speaking English, choosing a topic and trying to say something on it every day; listening to English music, broadcasts and news; watching English movies, theatres; taking part in debate programmes; joining an English language club or conversation group; having friends who are also encouraged to learn speaking English; and using some internet based voice chat like Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Skype etc.The learning of speaking English may initially pose some problems but if the practice is continued and the strategies are followed, I believe that the learners will develop their competency in speaking English within a short time.(The writer is a first year ‘Bachelor of Education’ honours student at Govt. Teachers’ Training College, Dhaka. email: touhidebrahim69 @ gmail.com).
