Exploring Secondary English Teachers’ Perception on the Application of Sociolinguistic, Discourse and Strategic Competence

Abstract

This study examines English teachers’ perceptions and their actual teaching of communicative competence (CC) at secondary schools in Bangladesh. A contemporary literature survey on the Bangladeshi ELT scenario demonstrates that linguistic competence is a much-emphasized component in actual teaching practices in any English classroom, the other three components remain ignored to a larger extent. Hence, the study focuses on the facilitation of sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic communicative competence through ELT. The research design is primarily qualitative in nature and the data for this research were collected using a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. While interview data recorded the participant teachers’ perceptions of the significance of CC along the side with their reported teaching practices of sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competencies; the questionnaire survey extracted the teachers’ understanding of the concept of communicative competence. A total of 230 secondary English teachers from four different districts from two divisions in Bangladesh took part in the questionnaire survey and 12 teachers were interviewed. The findings of this research reveal the fact that there is a discrepancy between the views of the teachers and their actual teaching practices of sociolinguistic, discourse competence and strategic competence. This thesis puts light on the scenario that the practising teachers’ application of sociolinguistic competence waves from moderate to strong, discourse competence overlays within rare or weak; and the practice of strategic competence exists from weak to moderate. Thus, it can be concluded that the holistic scenario of application of the communicative competence by secondary English teachers waves from weak to moderate. One key implication of this study is the necessity of incorporating innovative techniques for improving the skills of the teachers in the rural, urban and semi-urban contexts in Bangladesh which are to be attained through different training. Assessment strategies should be redesigned in a way that students can be assessed all the required components of communicative competence.