Webinar in English Department on “Making English studies relevant to Bangladeshi students: Promises from a translanguaging classroom”

Department of English of AIUB, organized a Webinar on “Making English studies relevant to Bangladeshi students: Promises from a translanguaging classroom” on May 1, 2021 at 03:00 pm. Abu Saleh Md Rafi, the speaker of the webinar is researching on the medium of instruction policy of Bangladeshi higher education in his PhD at James Cook University, Australia. Translanguaging as a pedagogical approach is often considered as the best way to educate bilingual students in the 21st century. The discussion in the webinar, focussed on how Translanguaging pedagogies can enhance understanding of English literature. The webinar also explored the pedagogical benefits of Translanguaging in language learning, promoting cultural literacy while providing Bangladeshi students with a comfort zone in the foreign language and literature classroom.

The English language used in the departments of English in Bangladesh seems to be inaccessible to the students to grasp the course material of the English department studies while students do not understand the critical structure of primitive and classical English language. According to the research observation of Mr. Rafi, the teachers in Bangladeshi universities in their classroom, are not concerned about the linguistic aspect of the context of their teaching in foreign language. Even if some teachers are concerned about the linguistic aspect, there is lack of training on how to manage the bilingual or multilingual resources for the students in the classroom. So there is a need for training or teacher education. The Associate Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Dr. ABM Rahmatullah and the Head of the department of English, Mr. M. Hamidul Haque were present along with the teachers and students of various departments of AIUB among the audience. Dr. Rahmatullah mentioned in his welcoming speech that the webinar dealt a very timely and relevant topic which may be very fruitful and may really help the audience understand the necessity of Translanguaging. The coordinator of the “Seminar, Workshop and Outreach” sub-committee and associate professor of English department, Mr. Asif Kamal organized and moderated the webinar.