“Who Bothers!” A Common Ailment in Higher Education ELT Classrooms in Nepal

Abstract

Critics of higher education in Nepal, even the concerned agencies, are much worried about the decreased quality resulting in low employability of higher education. The most common adjectives used by them to describe this state are ‘theoretical’ and/or ‘impractical’. The present case study was instigated when two college students of third year Bachelor’s degree majoring in English, one from Bachelor of Arts (B. A.) and the other from Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.), remarked that the excessive lecture-based classes at college were not worth attending regularly. Stemming from this problem, each of the classes was observed once to see if the students’ remark would be verified. As a triangulation process, the observation was then followed by an informal post-class interaction with the faculties whose classes were observed. This article, thus, basically assesses the efficacy of the excessive lecture (EL) within the limitation of teaching English to adult learners of higher education in Nepal. Considering the inefficacious nature of EL to cause learning, and the faculties’ (Note 1) perceptions towards, and an over-attachment with, this method as the unique one, some alternative strategies applicable to English language teaching (ELT) classes have been recommended with the hope that they would be properly used to keep the burdened use of EL reasonably low. The article also recommends some changing roles of faculties involved in ELT in the higher education sector.