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English for Law (EfL) programme

Striving for improvement of legal English

SHAMSUL HOQUE
The legal community now agrees that the standard of English of the law graduates in Bangladesh is in generally very low. The most cogent reason inter alia why this is so is English lost its importance and status after the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation in 1971. Since then the learning of English (as well as other subjects) at all stages and for all purposesgeneral or specifichas not been effective for various socio-economic, political and academic factors deeply rooted in a virtually unproductive education system like ours. Under this system the poor quality of English acquired at the primary stage is always snowballed towards, and multiplied at, the later stages, i.e. secondary and tertiary.
Effect of the low standard of English
In the above circumstances, most students come to law colleges and also to the universities in some cases with little English knowledge. And there they study law mainly through the medium of Bangla. The learning materials they use are also mainly Bangla notebooks and guidebooks. Hence most of them cannot have any access to the vast domain of legal texts, documents, reports, journals, etc. As a result, they remain seriously deficient in English. This poor English language proficiency works in them as a deterrent to their understanding and practising of law as a profession. How to improve the situation?
To reverse the existing situation the legal community has realised that there is no alternative but to make the study of appropriate English compulsory for all the law graduates as well as young entrants to the Bar. The pioneering initiative towards achieving this goal was taken for the first time in Bangladesh by the Legal Education Committee of Bangladesh Bar Council. As a result a course titled 'English for Law' (EfL) was designed for the new entrants to the Bar and introduced in 1995 at LETI, an arm of Bangladesh Bar Council.
What does the EfL course aim to achieve?
The EfL course aims to develop the English language proficiency of those law graduates who are willing to enter the Bar. The mastery of the language skills, ie reading, speaking, listening and writing, enables them to access information and source materials such as law books, law reports, journals, etc and to use English both orally and in writing. The course helps the participants upgrade these language skills, thereby improving their professional standard, both in and outside the courts. What is the course about?
EfL is a 50-hour intensive course delivered in 5 weeks, with a 2-hour session each day, 5 days a week. The main focus areas of the course are: Basic language skills in reading, speaking, listening and writing; remedial grammar; language of advocacy; reading legal texts, documents, etc; legal drafting and presentation skills. The EfL course is designed to help participants use all the four language skills in legal profession with greater emphasis on reading and writing.
Speaking and listening skills: There is little or no scope for the young law graduates and lawyers to speak English in their real-life situations, particularly at the lower courts. Also their study of English for 12/14 years as a compulsory subject at schools and colleges is almost totally unproductive. As a result, their proficiency in spoken English is so low that it remains almost always far below communicative competence.
The course provides the participants with favourable classroom conditions and teacher input, which create a friendly atmosphere encouraging and stimulating them to speak English. In this congenial working environment they are given suitable situations and problems to think about, discuss and debate on. The participants themselves, through pair and group work, carry out all these interactive classroom activities facilitated by the resource person. These speaking-listening activities are often reinforced by practice with audio-video materials available at LETI.
Reading skills: Law students study law for 3/4 years at universities and law colleges, mainly for a specific purpose, i.e. to earn a law degree for becoming legal practitioners. Thus the knowledge they get from their academic study is theoretical and limited. But to become professionally successful legal practitioners they need to acquire new knowledge the demand of which is ever increasing in the changing sociopolitical scenario of the country vis-a-vis the present-day rapid growth of information technology and globalisation. Poised for upgrading their lawyering and advocacy skills, they have no alternative but to read law books, judgements, reports, journals, etc. The work is inexhaustibly stupendous, as its volume is staggeringly huge. So they must acquire the skills in reading that will enable them to decipher legal texts, to gather main ideas and specific information from a text, to organise ideas, facts and points found in a document chronologically and coherently, to differentiate between facts and opinions, to analyse a case, to summarise the facts of a case, and most importantly, to do these activities very fast. A considerable part of the EfL course is given to developing such skills in reading as extensive reading, intensive reading, contextual reading, inferential reading, etc.
Writing skills: Law students have the option to take either Bangla or English medium to answer their examination questions. But in reality most of them choose the former mainly for three reasons: (a) The standard of English they come to law college with is very low and they don't dare to do their study through it (b) they hear classroom lectures in Bangla and are allowed to write answers to their examination questions in Bangla and (c) Bangla guidebooks and notebooks are available for the law courses, which are easy for the law students to use for rote learning.
As a result of the above options and opportunities the students enjoy during their academic life, they develop a kind of writing both in English and Bangla, which has in most cases little or nothing to do with writing skills. They write mostly memorised answers and as such they cannot express their own thoughts, ideas and feelings coherently and clearly in a piece of writing. This lacking in their writing ability is acutely noticed when they write English.
It is true that the young entrants to the Bar hardly write their pleadings, notices, etc in English while they practice at the lower courts. But many of them one day may become the honourable Judges and learned Advocates of the Supreme Court. And here both the Bench and the Bar use English in the discharge of their respective duties (i.e. writing judgements, plaints, written statements, etc). So the aspiring young entrants to the Bar have to develop writing skills properly for their future elevated positions in life in the higher court.
The EfL course has been designed to meet this need for developing the participants' writing skills. Starting with remedial grammar in context, the course proceeds to develop inter alia corpus of words, organisation of facts, opinions and ideas and techniques of legal drafting.
What prospects does EfL look forward to?
EfL is the only specialised course of its kind in Bangladesh that is intended for the would-be legal practitioners of the whole country. The course holds out prospects for these future professionals by improving their language proficiency, which they badly need for upgrading their lawyering and advocacy skills.
Based on the usefulness of the course as realised by the experienced legal professionals (and also by the BVC participants), EfL should be a compulsory component of the BVC program. To meet this need the course is being further redesigned, catering for participants of wide-ranging abilities.
Shamsul Hoque is Director, Legal Education & Training Institute (LETI), Bangladesh Bar Council and former Professor, Bangladesh Open University.