24/02/2021
English for Academic Purposes
Though English has been used in the Indian subcontinent and its educational systems for more than 200 years, the language education policy in Pakistan has not been explicit until recently. The long-term policy goal was to have Urdu as the MOI at secondary, tertiary, and higher education levels (Mansoor, 2004; Ministry of Education, 1959). Yet from the earliest education policy documents in Pakistan, English was maintained as the MOI in higher education (Ministry of Education,
1959). For most of the period after Independence, Urdu was officially the MOI for Grades 1-12 and, despite occasional shifts to English, the predominant code for all classroom registers, including the discourse and lexis across school subjects, particularly in public sector institutions (Ashraf, 2008). According to the NEP, study of English is now to be introduced in schools from the primary level along with Urdu and a regional language. It is also recommended as the MOI from Grade 4 onwards and compulsory from Grade 6 (Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 20). The policy declares that after completion of Grade 12, learners of English as a second language are expected to be proficient users of the language, possessing effective listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills (Ministry of Education, 2009). The Higher Education Commission (HEC; previously known as the University Grants Commission – UGC) recommends all higher education instruction to be in English, except for some subjects of humanities for which English-language resources are not available. The implications of using English MOI in higher education, as Schleppegrell and O’Hallaron (2011, p. 4) note, cannot be ignored: “learning to read, write, and interact using academic language requires support for language development that assists students in engaging with the communicative and literacy demands of disciplinary learning.” Given a lack of trained English-language teachers, limited resources, and students’ familial backgrounds and education, such support has been largely absent and the transition from Urdu or local language MOI to English MOI in higher education has not yet been achieved.
Research from Pakistani schools suggested that, even in those using English as the MOI, students are taught in a local language, and assessed in English (Canagarajah & Ashraf, in press; Mansoor, 2005; Rahman, 2002; Shamim, 2008,
2011). Although students are assessed using English only, in textbooks English is interspersed with Urdu terminology, translation, and explanation. Reliance on Urdu was also reflected in pedagogical practices in higher education in the traditional English programs (e.g. Master of Arts) in classical British English literature and canonical prose; for learning, students tended to rely on the translated versions of texts yet were examined in English (for details, see Rahman, 2001). Such practices are forms of translanguaging, a term originally translated from Welsh, rawsieithu referring to a pedagogical practice in bilingual classes in which input is provided in one language and tasks are performed in another (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011). The scope of this term has now broadened to refer to a process, a naturally occurring phenomenon in communicative practices of multilinguals (Canagarajah, 2009,
2011), and the norm in multilingual countries (García, 2009), involving multiple discursive practices, that is, “a systematic shift from one language to the other for specific reasons” (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010, p. 16) with “no clear cut borders between the languages of bilinguals” (García, 2009, p. 47). Notwithstanding, the NEP aims to separate English from local languages in higher education to designate it as the language to be used for academic purposes. To address this requirement of English MOI, the HEC has, therefore, in the past few years taken an aggressive approach to create more learning spaces for English that risks systematic weakening of Urdu and other local languages.
HEC’s English Language Teaching Reforms project (ELTR) was an attempt to bridge the gap between the MOI of schools and universities, and to address the dissatisfaction of students and teachers with available English-language resources (Higher Education Commission Pakistan, 2009). A National Committee on English (NCE) was formed in 2003 to address declining standards of English-language teaching in educational institutions (see Higher Education Commission Pakistan, Following the NCE recommendations, ELTR designed new curricula for English-language and EAP teachers. To enhance opportunities for students and teachers to use English as the MOI, ELTR also designed pedagogical courses for teachers of EAP. These courses match Gillett’s (2004) description of EAP, that is, “the language and associated skills that students need to undertake study in higher education through the medium of English.” HEC interventions to support English MOI, therefore, led to formulation of EAP courses such as Communication Skills in English, Functional English, Technical Writing, and Business Communication, the prescribed curricula of which are made available to educational institutions through HEC. These courses are now compulsory in undergraduate degree programs, and aim to support students’ academic research skills in postgraduate English-medium programs. In the first year, for example, university students are taught to communicate in English only and use English for performing various functions such as making requests, writing job applications, and reporting experiments. In the second and subsequent years, these courses are centered on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and academic writing in different disciplines, aiming to develop students’ proficiency and performance in core subject areas. Teacher training and capacity-building workshops for university teachers, presented by local experts and international consultants, are also conducted by ELTR on a regular basis. Ideally, this array of initiatives would create English MOI classrooms that enable students to meet the academic goals of university education and research. Yet the languages and repertoire of the local linguistic landscape impact significantly on the goals of English MOI and EAP in Pakistan. In the next section we describe plurilingual practices, and their influence on development of English-language skills
