A dedicated teacher teaches English in new methods

Assistant Teacher (English) Rafiqul Islam

A dedicated English teacher has been teaching Spoken English with new methods to different walks of life in Rajarhat and Sadar upazilas of Kurigram district for five years.

To spread his works, he established a small institution ‘Alternative English Language Initiative (AELI)’ in Kashem Bazar area of Gharialdanga union under Rajarhat upazila.

Besides AELI’s main campus, its activities are being conducted in three sub-centres by 50 trainers, who have been trained up by the English teacher. The sub-centres are one in Kurigram town and two in Rajarhat upazila town.

The English teacher is Rafiqul Islam, 48, son of late Abdul Hamid of Mushrat Nahenda village of Gharialdanga union under Rajarhat upazila and Assistant Teacher (English) of Deutirhat High School in Sadar upazila of Lalmonirhat district.

He learnt Basic English language to local three English experts Assistant Teacher Phoni Bhusan Roy, Assistant Headmaster Monir Uddin and Assistant Headmaster Yousuf Ali.

After joining to his school in 1993, he achieved efficiency on Spoken English through FM Method (in 2008) and British Council (in 2014).

He is involved with Pace Programme (English) under NGO Brac from 2008 as Master Trainer. He was a Master Trainer (English) of Secondary Education Quality Access and Enhancement Project (SEQAEP) in 2009 and Teachers’ Facilitator under EIA (English In Action) by British Council in 2010.

There are six modules of AELI on short technique that helps its learners easily. They have fixed 12 days for each module and two hours for class-hour. He has taught over one thousand students and professionals while most of them are students. ARLI authority takes some frees (Tk 400 – Tk 550) while free courses are conducted on Friday.

Even though AELI authority works on four skills of English language, but they emphasized on spoken skill. The courses are Course-1 (Blanding), Course-2 (Tense), Course-3 (Voice change), Course-4 (Right form of verbs, Transformation of sentences and Comparison of Adjective), Course-5 (Narration / Speech) and Course-6 (Simple, Complex and Compound).

Rafiqul Islam, Director of the AELI, said, “I found students all most students and job shakers of the district are weak in English. As a result have established, they would not reach to their expected fields. Considering their state, I began English teaching in small extent in my house. Later being increased interest of learners, I named the learning activity as AELI.”

“In future I want to establish AELI as an institution, where students will speak in English. Already we, two brothers have donated 10 decimals of land to the AELI and constructed a 72-feet tin-shade building of five rooms on the land,” Rafiqul added.

“Our main target is to make the participants confident on English language, create their hunger and thirst for learning English language, remove their English phobia by sharing English with fun and different activities. We give emphasis on using English in day to day life. We try to make participants creative avoiding memorization,” Rafiqul said.

“As there are Basic English Language Courses, these will help to make learners’ base strong in learning English. After doing these courses successfully, learners will be able to understand the updated teachers’ and trainers’ teaching easily. We try to make learners fit for learning English with confidence and use it everyday life. Really, we don’t teach them. We only inspire and prepare them to learn, he said.