CREATIVE WRITING IN ENGLISH: HOW FAR THE BANGLADESHI EDUCATION SYSTEM FOCUSES ON ITS DEVELOPMENT AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL.

The primary goal of the present study is to investigate if the teachers related to the ELT promotion programmes in the Secondary level schools of Bangladesh follow any particular method in teaching writing in the classroom. The study also examines what difficulties English teachers of the Secondary level schools face teaching writing independently in the classroom. A further purpose of the study is to determine the influence of the teachers' assistance to the students and monitoring of the students' work on their improvement of their independent writing ability. In order to conduct the study, three research questions were formulated and then three null hypotheses were assumed as the probable answers to the research questions. The data for the investigation were gathered from 197 students of class VIII, IX and X who were randomly selected from seven high schools of Dhaka Board and two English medium schools of Dhaka city. The data were also gathered from the teachers of the same schools visited. In order to get the data, the English writing lessons of the schools were visited and classroom observation reports were made. English writing proficiency tests were arranged and the writings of the students were collected as the data. Questionnaires were administered with the students and the teachers to collect data relevant to the study. The data resulting were then analyzed in the light of mixed method of qualitative and quantitative researches. Analysis of the data reveals that most of the teachers in the study do not follow any particular method in teaching writing in English which is one of the main reasons for the students to remain weak in writing. The results further show that most of the students are weak in writing. The results further show that most of the teachers in the study do not have enough knowledge of the process of writing. As a result, they go their own ways to teach their students writing independently. It is also revealed from the study that not only the teachers' inefficiency but also different sorts of limitations of the students and the education system are major hindrances towards the desirable achievement in students' independent writing ability. Teachers' assistance to the learners in framing ideas and their close monitoring of students' activities are found to be quite helpful to the improvement of students' writing ability. Based on the results of the study certain recommendations for the improvement of EFL study in Bangladesh have been made. The investigator particularly recommends that English language teaching programmes for Bangladeshi high school students should focus on the modern approaches to teaching writing along with the up to date and compulsory teacher training programme and the regular monitoring of the teachers‘ role and teaching techniques in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]