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Although smart writing skill is equally important in both academic and professional spheres, many Bangladeshi tertiary level learners find writing skills too difficult to be developed. In respect of this, the students are given many writing tasks (such as composing a five-paragraph essay) to improve their competencies in a language classroom. Anyhow, writing a good essay needs several cognitive steps that a student has to go through demanding a high level of motivation and constructive teacher feedback. Considering the fact, this paper has investigated tertiary level Bangladeshi learners’ perspectives about how the essay-writing tasks keep them motivated in class. This pilot project had been conducted using a set of 20 items (quantitative survey questionnaire), which was administered among thirty participants from the Department of English of a reputed Bangladeshi public university. The small-scale research revealed that the majority of the undergraduates stay motivated during the brainstorming part of essay writing tasks. However, many of them find the patterns of essays quite confusing. However, these learners believe more writing assignments, along with effective teacher feedback, can highly encourage them to develop their writing skills.

The aftermath of COVID-19 has affected the lives of Bangladeshi people and impacted dramatically on the educational systems. Due to the pandemic situation, the Bangladeshi tertiary education sector had to switch to an online learning and teaching model from the traditional ones. This paper aims to identify the obstacles encountered by the university teachers in online teaching during the pandemic in Bangladesh. An exploratory qualitative research methodology has been used in this paper. The study was conducted among the teachers working in several universities of Bangladesh. Open-ended questions and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted among 13 male and 17 female educators to collect data regarding the problems faced by them. The findings revealed four different categories of impediments that the teachers faced during the online mode of teaching and learning. The study results can be helpful to the regulatory authorities and employers of higher education institutions who are planning to adopt online teaching as a regular activity in the future.

In Bangladesh, private university sectors have observed several modifications with the initiation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The communicative approach is expected to form such an ambience in the language classrooms where anxiety, fear and boredom are minimized and students are not under the influence of the affective factors in a tertiary level. This paper intends to explore the reasons that the students' background and affective factors affect highly on the speaking skills of the undergraduate level learners and it aims to find the solutions to these problems from the students’ perspectives. To collect the data, researchers used a questionnaire to specify major problems faced by the tertiary level learners in speaking English and strategies to overcome those from their viewpoints. The survey shows, in many cases, anxiety, fear and hesitation and performance pressure hinders the speaking of individuals, whereas, if the speaking situation is friendly and provide a platform to uninterrupted speaking with constructive feedback, it may facilitate learners speaking. In the end, analyzing the results, the researchers have discussed some effective solutions from their experiences to overcome these affective states among adult learners.

Reading being one of the four skills has to be mastered properly to be a successful language learner. In an ESL (English as a Second Language) context, particularly in Bangladesh, the newly admitted University students who are from Bangla medium background, often find it difficult to understand English textbooks especially when they are in the Department of English. For most of the students, reading everything in English, decoding the words, understanding the deeper meanings becomes quite difficult and leads them to anxiety. This paper aims to identify the types of difficulties the English Department Undergraduates encounter during reading and also points out the kinds of strategies they implement to prevail over the problems.