• Mir Md Saifur Rahman

  Author

Writing is considered as a critical skill to be achieved in English classes of secondary
level education in Bangladesh. This skill is important for its implications in the high-stakes
external examinations and in students’ academic life beyond that. However, recent studies show
that majority of the students in Bangladesh struggle to write properly even after spending a
significant amount of time in activities related to writing. This raises concerns regarding the
methods of teaching writing. This study explores teachers’ perceptions and practices of
teaching writing in secondary schools of Bangladesh. Data was collected from 136 English
teachers purposively selected from urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. Three different methods
of data collection were employed. All the teachers responded to a questionnaire. In addition,
semi-structured interviews were conducted with a selected group (14 teachers) of them.
Furthermore, six classroom observations were conducted in classes of teachers from the same
group to elicit additional evidence on their actual practices. Findings from the study reveal some
incongruity between perception and practice of teaching writing. For example though teachers
said in the interview that they practice group-writing activity, it was not observed in their
classroom practices as students were found to be writing individually while sitting in a group.
Similarly, their comment about learning creative writing skills through practices was hardly
reflected in their classroom where students had almost no opportunity for free writing. Overall
findings from this study have the potential of helping in teachers’ professional development so
they can teach writing effectively.

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