Sharifa Chowdhury

Profile

My most current academic degree is MA TESOL (Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages) Studies, achieved with distinction in 2021 from the School of Education, University of Leeds, the UK. Earlier, I earned my BA (Honours) degree in English, and MA degree in Applied Linguistics and ELT (English Language Teaching) with top merit position from the Department of English, University of Dhaka (DU), Bangladesh. During my MA programme, based on my academic result and communication skills, I was appointed as one of the Student Mentors, a highly competitive role, to provide academic and personal counselling to the first-year students of the Department of English, DU. This mentoring programme was run by the Department of English in association with the University of Manchester, the UK, which influenced me greatly to choose my career. Being inspired with the rewarding experience of student mentoring at DU, immediately after my study completion in Bangladesh, I joined the profession of teaching as a lecturer at university level in 2015. Within my eight years of teaching career so far, I have worked in three prominent private and public universities in Bangladesh. At present, I am employed as an assistant professor (currently on study leave) in the Department of Language at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU)- a renowned public university situated in the capital of Bangladesh- Dhaka. Besides teaching courses on applied linguistics, English literature, ESP (English for Specific Purposes), and EAP (English for Academic Purposes), I published 12 research articles in peer reviewed esteemed local and international journals, and presented my research works at several national and international conferences in the bygone years.

In 2021, when I was doing my MA TESOL Studies to enrich my knowledge of teaching and research further, I come across an interesting and a very significant concept- academic literacies (discipline specific communicative practices), in the module titled Teaching Academic English which was taught by a prominent scholar in this field (my current PhD supervisor)- Dr Simon Green at that time. As an EAP teacher working in an interdisciplinary context, I realised that having consolidated knowledge of academic literacies- what it is, what its impact on teaching and learning- is a must to be able to teach EAP effectively to my science major students. The intrinsic motive of learning the concept profoundly led me to undertake my MA dissertation focusing on the same area under the supervision of Dr Diana Mazgutova- my another current PhD supervisor. I received distinction in my MA dissertation for the quality of my work and later published it as a research article in a highly reputed ELT journal co-authoring with her. This experience boosted my confidence up to pursue a PhD degree to explore the issue of my interest with more breadth and depth grounding it in my own teaching context. As a result, I designed my PhD study to explore what academic literacy practices my undergraduate students perform to produce disciplinary writings, and how they develop their understandings of academic literacy practices without which they cannot be successful in academic writings at SAU. The addressed subject is not only an under-research area in my context but worldwide. Hence, the study is expected to be a ground-breaking scholarly work in my context influencing the pedagogic provision in Bangladesh. Moreover, the study aims to enrich the target research field by offering a South Asian perspective to the emerging volume of literature of academic literacies. 

Research interests

My current research interest is academic literacies and tertiary students’ understanding of the concept. In general, I work in the area of EAP, ESP, sociolinguistics, teaching English language skills, and interdisciplinary studies. However, I am always open and keen to new ideas and pedagogic practices to explore and work on.

Qualifications

• MA TESOL Studies
• MA in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT)
• BA Honours in English

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Curriculum, Pedagogy and Policy
• Centre for Language Education