Are cultural barriers standing in the way of students learning English?

Illustration: TBS

"Miss, I find no interest in learning the language as I am not familiar with their culture. The dynamics between the parents and their children, as well as the settings and situations they show in the cartoon, differ from what I know and experience." 

I have heard many such complaints from my students during my three-year tenure as a teacher. 

I have seen students complaining about how challenging it is to learn and adopt English as their primary language. 

When I inquired about the reasons, the responses either indicated a lack of understanding of the culture, leading to a sense of boredom, or a perception that the culture is not relevant to our societal context, causing them to feel uncomfortable. 

Over the years, I have seen many parents with unhealthy expectations insisting that children learn English only with English examples or context, which they believe will help them speak with a certain accent and help them attain fluency.

However, the learning process differs from student to student. Not all students are equally interested in building a certain accent. Rather, some of them are anxious about speaking fluently. On the contrary, some students put effort into understanding the grammar and context, leaving fluency behind. 

In my teaching experience, integrating Bangladeshi culture into English language lessons has been a success.  

Children are more likely to be engaged and interested when they can connect the dots between what they are learning and their own little experiences. Using local folktales or stories increases a student's interest, reducing the fear of learning a completely different contextual language. 

Such folktales and stories can be Thakurmar Jhuli, Sisimpur, Meena Cartoon, The Greedy Monster, and so forth. Translating these Bengali stories into English is a convenient way for most students to learn new words with motivation, as it allows them to try translating other stories on their own. 

One of my students once tried to translate a poem by Rabindranath Tagore named 'Chuti/Some Time Away,' that too, happily.  

The translation went like this:  

"The sunlight is passing the clouds

And the rain went away,

Hurray, holiday sneak peeks,

Dear, holiday sneak peeks." 

These creative lines surprised both me and the parents. It clearly shows that the student understood the context and related it to his feelings. This practice develops their learning ability and encourages them to come up with creative ideas.  

In this competitive world, we are prone to learning different languages to make us more advanced than others. Paradoxically, this belief leads us to place importance on one language, English, hindering children's advancement at the same time. 

However, combining culture with language learning improves multilingualism skills. 

Parents in Bangladesh believe that exposing children to English videos and speeches will help them foster English language acquisition. Not only does this belief pressurise the children but it also creates an insecurity within them, resulting in not having basic comprehension. 

I have frequently observed students losing their confidence, transitioning from extroverted to introverted, and also decreasing their social interactions. Later on, this deteriorates their learning desires as they become hyper-aware of their accents and the mistakes they make when speaking out loud. 

While understanding the importance of fusing Bangladeshi context into English language learning, parents should not overshadow the students' well-being and pressurise them to learn unconventionally. 

Nusrat Jahan Esa is an English language instructor at the Center for Language Studies (CLS).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.