Mahmudul Haque Shah
It is a common phenomenon that some Bangladeshi students come to London for higher education. They come here with a good academic background of English language. It is a good thing that they can write a very decent piece of academic work at their educational institutes but the problem arises when they want to communicate in the real-life situations of London’s multicultural community. They find a difference between the language of books and the language of communication. Only good grades in schools, colleges, and universities by studying in English medium do not indicate that they will be successful in communication in English in every real-life situations at any part of the world. They come with the expectation that London English will be like BBC English because that is the main variety of English they are familiar with; but they are disillusioned with the endless varieties of English and the practices of the language against its social perspective. The usage of words and even the interpretations of words are quite different from what they have learnt from the books: the gap between the language of books and the language of real-life communications is a shocking experience.
