Let's be smart

By Shoaib M. Siddiqui Dhaka City College
17 April 2005, 18:00 PM
I completely agree with Ms. Wali who wrote about improving our English pronunciation. It's a big problem in our country nowadays. In my opinion, this happens because of our lack of opportunity of practising English in day to day life. Most of the people of our country don't use English and thus the pronunciation remains bad. The English medium schools are playing a good role in this regard but everybody cannot afford to enter an English medium school. Also there is lack of quality English medium schools in most of the places outside Dhaka and Chittagong. As people don't know what is the appropriate pronunciation of a word--they laugh at those who speak English in correct pronunciation. When I was in class eight, most of my friends could not pronounce all the words perfectly. But fortunately we got a native American as our English teacher in class nine. Things changed dramatically within a short time. Most of my friends started speaking English properly as they had to communicate with our foreigner teacher in English both inside and outside the classroom. And the students stopped bullying those who pronounced English correctly. The total situation changed for the better.

So, everything depends on practice. If we get enough chance to communicate in English and have the opportunity to learn the perfect pronunciation, I believe that people of Bangladesh will get smarter in the true sense. I think the education authorities have a role to play in this respect.