Techniques of teaching English in secondary school

Technique means strategy and teaching means to give new knowledge. Technique of teaching means strategy of giving new knowledge. The student of Bangladesh is learning English from their childhood but they do not know proper English. Because teachers are not applying proper techniques.


There are many types of techniques for teaching English in secondary school for example Individual Work, Pair Work, Group Work, Chain Drill, Choral Drill etc.

Individual Work: Individual work means working individually. The positive side of this is s/he can express his/her feeling, thought, idea perfectly. The negative side of this is one cannot get help from other.

Pair Work: Pair Work means working two persons together. There are some systems of making pair.

Calling name: When teacher will make pair should mention the name of students.If a teacher calls the students by name they feel proud .They think that teacher loves me very much. That’s why s/he knows my name. As a result students do not make disturb in the classroom. Teacher can teach the students properly.

Hand Movement: When teacher will call the student by name, teacher will indicate whom s/he is calling by hand. For example for making pair, if teacher calls/mentions the name of Karim his/her hand will indicate Karim. If s/he mentions the name of Rahim his/her hand will indicate Rahim.

Eye contact: When teacher will mention Karim at that time teacher will see to Karim. When teacher will mention the name of Rahim,teacher will see to Rahim.

Positive side: The positive sides of this technique are

1. One will get idea from other.
2. Students will develop their speaking power.
3. It could be implemented easily.

Negative side: The negative sides of this technique are

1. Classroom may become noisy.
2. Who knows a lot s/he will speak always, others will listen.
3. The better one will dominate another student.



There are many students in the class. So making pair by mentioning everybody’s name is not possible. That’s why by mentioning first two student’s name we can say your side man is your partner.

Group Work: When students work in group is called group work. We can make group very simply. For example, if in a class have sixty students. We can make twelve groups. That means one group will consists of five members. At the time of making group we can give the name of rivers for example, the Padma, the Jamuna etc. We can give the name of flowers for example, rose, night queen etc. We also can give the name of colors for example, white, red, green. Black, blue, yellow etc. But we should not give the name of number for example 1, 2, 3, etc. Because if we give the names of number who will be members of group one, they will think that they are the most brilliant. Who are the members of twelve they will think that they are the worst in the class. At the time of making group we should remember that good students will be in every group.

Positive side: It has some positive sides

1. Because of having some students in a group one can share his ideas, feeling, thought etc with others.
2. Students get much information from others.
3. It develops student’s speaking and listening power.

Negative side: It has some negative sides also

1. Good students can take leadership.
2. Classroom can be noisy.
3. Who are not good they suffer from shortage of confidence.
4. It is difficult to implement

Chain Drill: Chain Drill means first one student will give answer. Then his side man will give answer after that his side student in this way.

Advantageous: It has some advantageous

1. Easy to implement.
2. Everybody gets opportunity to speak.
3. When one student speaks other students listen so it develops listening power also.

Disadvantageous: It has some disadvantageous also

1. Some students may not know the answer so they may get shame.
2. Who does not know the answer he/she may loose the confidence.

Choral Drill: Choral means working together. In this drill all students work together. When a teacher teaches pronunciation and while teacher pronounce the word correctly after pronouncing word teacher, students will pronounce the word together.

Positive side: It has some positive sides.

1. Everybody utters the answer together so who does not know answer he can learn answer from others.
2. Everybody gets opportunity to speak.

Negative side: It has negative side also

Everybody says together so teacher cannot find out who are speaking accurately and who are speaking wrong.

Problems in implementation: Our teachers are getting training from many organizations for example BRAC, British Council, Government etc. but teachers cannot implement techniques properly. It has many reasons.

1. Our teachers are not very good in English. As a result, they cannot implement techniques properly.
2. One teacher has to conduct six classes on average in a day. So they cannot get enough time for making lesson plan.
3. High school teachers are getting very poor salary. That’s why they are engaged in private and coaching center. For this reason, they cannot have enough time for preparation.
4. Most of the classes have near about 120 students. So it is difficult to implement every technique properly.
5. Because of shortage of teaching aids teacher cannot implement all techniques. For example poster, marker, dictionary, over hed projector are not available.
6. For implementing all techniques our classroom should become U shape. Because of having many students in the class teacher cannot make it U shape.
7. In many schools teachers are aged. So they cannot implement all techniques skilled fully.
8. In many schools level of students are not very good. Secondary schools are getting poor students from primary schools so difficult to implement.
9. In many schools Head Master, Assistant Head Master, members of School Managing Committee have not got training. So they do not like to make classroom noisy.

From above mentions, we can say that there are many techniques for teaching English in secondary schools properly. Every technique has some positive and negative sides. Positive side is stronger than negative side. So we can say that all techniques are effective to teach. That’s why our teachers should apply all techniques in the classroom then teaching will be fruitful.

Mohammad Mostafizur Rahman
Teacher’s Trainer (English) PACE
PIN-66100
Rangamati Sadar, Rangamati.