The History and Contemporary Reality of Learning English in Bangladesh

The learning of English language has become compulsory in the contemporary context of Bangladesh though it was introduced in the Indian Sub-continent by the British colonial power. The purpose of the paper is to find out the historical perspectives of introduction and enforcement of learning English, and the study also tries to dig into the contemporary reality of learning English. For the data collection, historical documents were analyzed, and information was collected from library sources like books, journals, documentations etc. Again, government websites, newspapers, and other secondary sources were also used for this purpose. The data reflects the findings that people were initially obliged to learn English by the British colonialists disregarding their own mother tongues. The local people had a very few accesses to practice their own language, and they did not have educational contexts to learn English. The learning and teaching of Engling language was prioritized by different laws and acts. In the emergence of Bangladesh through different historical phases, the native language ‘Bangla’ was disregarded and ignored by different authorities. But now in modern Bangladesh, the government accepted the reality of the global world and formulated newer policies emphasizing the learning and teaching of English language.