Difficulties of teaching English to native Bengali speakers

Teaching English is a global phenomenon. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. People from different countries, age, culture, backgrounds and gender are taking up teaching English as their profession to teach the language to Non-Native English Speakers (NNES).

Initially, Native English Speakers taught English to NNES by using methods and techniques that they had employed in teaching English in their countries or new techniques they had developed, which they thought were more effective (Brown, 2007). At different times different teachers used different methods and approaches, which they preferred. But now all agree that no single approach suits all learners.

An approach needs to be authentic for a particular group of learners and it is now acknowledged that one group of learner is different from another group in more than one way. Thus, English teaching approaches, besides taking into account only the educational background or age of a group, should consider learners’ cultural background, the environment in which they will use English and above all, their first language.

To make teaching of English most effective, EFL/ESL teachers should take into account how a particular language relates with English and how difficult or easy it is to teach L2 learners because of the differences or similarities of L2 with English.
This essay looks at the teaching of English to Native Bengali Speakers (NBS) from Bangladesh. It does not include the Bengali speakers of West Bengal in India because the Bengali language spoken there, including phonology and cultural background of learners, is different.