Introducing Interdisciplinary English Language Classroom in Bangladesh: An Assessment

Abstract

Yoriko Lida (2007) in a study defines the method of multidisciplinary approach to teach a foreign language claiming “the interdisciplinary curriculum is an approach using more than one discipline to examine a central theme, issue, problem, topic and so on. For instance, when students learn the English language, they study not only the language, but the English-speaking history and culture.” However, in the context of Bangladesh, changing an entire curriculum all of a sudden to dispatch knowledge about other disciplines along with sharpening language skill might be difficult, but it demands future research and evaluation as English possesses a vast space in the curriculum. If properly analyzed, it is found that the socio-cultural history of English, in Indian subcontinent, encroaching on the national curriculum of the country has “their roots in the colonial past” with the use of English “in political discourse” “to communicate with the elites of the region” (Rahman et al., 2019). Following the integration of English into national curriculum, “during the Pakistani regime, English continued to be widely used as a recognized state language with the status of second language” in earlier East Pakistan, present Bangladesh. After independence, Bangladesh adopted “article 3” in “1972” that legalized “the use of English in the official, social and educational spectrums” of the country. Such a long history of English gradually entering the social, cultural and academic domain in Bangladesh eventually necessitates the importance of design, implementation and investment regarding the training and use of English (Rahman et al., 2019). “With over 30 million students learning English as a compulsory subject from grade 1 in the different streams of pre-tertiary education, Bangladesh has one of the largest English learning populations in the world”, according to M. Obaidul Hamid and Elizabeth J. Erling (2016). This huge number of learners who are spending much time on learning English are primarily relying on language-based classroom as the government of Bangladesh has introduced Communicative English Teaching in 1996 that is implemented from class 6 to class 12 (Chowdhury & Kabir, 2014). Considering the number of learners as well as the amount of time involved in English language learning, it can be suggested that Bangladesh needs a multifunctioning method to foster the acquisition of language skills and disciplinary knowledge at the Abstract: Disciplinary knowledge aims at expertise while interdisciplinary education drives learners to brainstorm from multiple perspectives. In other words, interdisciplinary education reinforces the idea of salad bowl that preserves multiplicity of knowledge in a single pot. In Bangladesh, therefore, where learning English has an unparallel importance, exploring other branches of knowledge confronts the challenge of time and effort management at times. Learning English is essential to communicate with the world, but learning it combining with other disciplines can be more effective. To assess the practicality of implementing an interdisciplinary English language classroom, the study here has focused on Grammar Translation Method (GTM) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), mostly applied methods in Bangladesh’s classrooms, among other methods and approaches of foreign language learning. The study, however, has tried to transform certain activities from above-mentioned methods and later combine them with questions from the discipline of History to observe whether such combination is possible or not. Resultantly, it appears that the selected activities can successfully be transformed into interdisciplinary format which compels the study to recommend adopting an interdisciplinary method in Bangladesh’s English language classrooms on a short scale initially.