Browsing by Author "Akther, Kohinoor"

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Constructing Sustainability or Let Them Do It: Alternative Social Assessment in Adult EFL Context
(Premier University, Chattogram, 2023-04) Akther, Kohinoor
This research shores the view of a learner’s subjective and self-reflective role in tile assessment process. Breaking the passive role-playing ground of attempting a test, a test taker as a conscious social independent identify can make a decisive contribution to tile existing evaluation process. Through active participation, and presentation as a positive social impact maker in dealing with various social issues outside the classroom under the umbrella of social assessment, a learner can assess himself or herself. This facilitates one to assess his or her roles in tile existing practices of different modes of formal classroom assessments to make a fresh start to meet the current discontents in the graduates’ employment scenario. Time unemployment rate among university graduates is higher than other times (FE 2020; Bangladesh Employment and labor Market Watch 2018). Apart from pandemic effects and other reasons, this fall alarmingly points to the quality of hillier education, to the most extent at the validity and reliability of the assessment process these graduates have already undergone in their hillier studies. Added with this, the preference of employability skills valued by the employment stakeholders, from hard to soft and social skills (57%) has linen the unemployment problem a new dimension. It gives the impression that the purpose of higher education is not just to produce only but also to create graduates with portable skills and knowledge for successful future employability. A number of studies have addressed quality issues in Hillier education but not many in the country’s Graduate attributes and assessment practices and policies. Therefore, this area needs thoughtful attention to review the existing studies and the strong emphasis on such Gaps. Along with formative/summative classroom assessments, sets of rubrics, and issues of test reliability, it is very important to address tile test taker (learner) in tile social context to address the current employment standards for acquiring both soft and hard skills. In this regard, social assessment within the context of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) teaching and learning can allow one to gather data 0n ‘21st-century skills’ of the learner, including intra/self-management and interpersonal/people skills. This paper recommends the incorporation of the graduates’ attributes and involvement along with the teachers’ in the tile learning and assessment process. Also, this claims for a paradigm shift in the current assessment practices at higher studies in Bangladesh by incorporating sustainable social assessment principles.
Shakespeare in the English Language Classroom: Using Drama Techniques to Develop Adult Learner’s L2 Speaking Skills
(Premier University, Chattogram, 2022-05) Akther, Kohinoor
Speaking in L2 is the most vital skill in this modern, globalized world. Shakespeare’s drama with its stage techniques can be a useful tool for developing L2 (English as a foreign/second) speaking skills. Drama skills/techniques on stage facilitate a learner’s fluency, pronunciation, and confidence in oral delivery. In the present communicative language teaching (CLT) method, there is still a lack of options for developing L2 speaking skills among our learners. So L2 speaking is always difficult for them from class one to twelve. The result is visible at the advanced level also. A learner suffers from severe anxiety to deliver an oral presentation or to attend a viva-voce exam. It often hinders one to speak naturally in public to present an impromptu speech even in front of classmates. Drama skills/techniques encourage a learner to come out of this challenging situation. To test this, a case study has been made on 68 learners of the Department of English Language and Literature (DELL) at Premier University, Chattagram. As research instruments, questionnaires and one-to-one interviews have been taken in three phases. The target group (TG) of students comprises three advanced-level students. These groups have done three compulsory courses— ‘Shakespeare: Tragedies and Histories’, ‘Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets’ and ‘The History of Theatre’. The department offers these courses in three different semesters for four and half months’ each with intensive theoretical and practical classes. From the study, it comes out that the influence of staging Shakespeare’s dramas on developing an L2 learner’s speaking skills is phenomenal. It has significantly increased the self-confidence along with other speaking skills of the L2 learners. Shakespeare on stage comes out as more beneficial for language learners than on the pages of the books.