The Department provides a liberal education in the pedagogical realm where courses are designed to blend the ‘thinking arts’ with practical training. For instance, classrooms are well equipped with technical support so students learn about rhetoric, logic, and grammar, along with fiction, prose, poetry, drama, and literary theories. More specifically, we aim to graduate students who have:

• The reading skills to examine literature from multiple eras, cultures, and genres with critical understanding
• The ability to express themselves clearly and comprehensively, orally and in writing
• Research skills which enable them to expand, from a variety of perspectives, their own readings of literature and understanding of language
• An appropriate knowledge of relevant fields within the discipline, including literature; literary history, criticism, and theory; the language structures of modern English and the history of the English language

The specific strategies we use to achieve these goals include:

• The close reading of texts in lectures, seminar presentations, and small-group discussions
• The writing of analytical and other kinds of essays
• Creative writing
• Professional writing
• Studio classes in theatre/drama and video production

On the other hand, club activities and academic centers like the English Language Centre, and performative aesthetics for staging of literary productions, and various seminars and workshops by contemporary academic veterans constructs a practical learning environment for our students.

The department appreciates thesis writing at undergraduate level. Many students visit various sites and remote areas to conduct their research. Students who are doing the major in Literature or Linguistics, are supervised by efficient academics to do a lot of research works with the help of the well-equipped NDUB library. Students who do not pursue thesis writing, submit s term paper and a comprehensive exam of 100 marks.

The broader prospect of English graduates is teaching, whether graduates are from the literature or linguistics stream. Bangladeshi schools, colleges, and universities need a wide range of faculty members for all English courses of all departments. However, graduates can also opt to be a researcher at various national and international research organizations, UN organizations (for instance, UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, ILO, and such).
Secondly, most of the English graduates are seen to perform efficiently in the print and visual media. As the Mass Media sector requires aesthetics and language skills, here the English graduates are mostly preferred.
Certainly, for any job, apart from technical skills, most important requirement is ‘Intelligence’ which means one’s capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, planning, creativity, problem solving, and eventually applying knowledge within an environment or context.
Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man, says Francis Bacon. By reading global literature and language, one understands history, politics, culture, international relations, and human psychology. Thereby, English Language and Literature smoothly, in tune, incorporates other disciplines, which makes it stronger.
Undoubtedly, this Department introduces such readings through which one can critically perform as a Statesperson who would have sound sense on the State policies in relation to culture, politics and the public psyche. In addition, to crack high score in BCS exam, one has to be proficient in English language.
In the Banking sector, if officials, have read the theory of power and money in relation to society and civilization, to be specific: theories by Marx and Weber, one can value the role of banking in a different way in society. Here again, fair selection in a job means high score in the selection exam where English language plays a great role. And the best way to learn a language is by reading.
Finally, entrepreneurship is one of the most creative sectors. To understand business, one has to understand how trends develop. Cultural, psychological, and literary theories would give a clear idea how a product or knowledge is produced and promoted, as well as consumed by the society that not only enhances the number of consumers but also creates a ‘taste’ for the products.
Every job is a performance, and performance means: speech and gesture — both are the pillars of literary practice. Novelists communicate through their characters, poets through their verses, and political activists through their slogans. It is all about having strong communication skills, whatever the job area is. And the Department of English perfectly trains in that direction.