Spelt right

By Rizwana Naqvi


English is widely used in Pakistan in official, business and academic circles, not only as an easy medium for science and technology but also for political and social considerations. Our students need to learn the language as most advanced material, especially for technical subjects, is available in English — besides providing access to international books and journals, it helps them to cope with university classes, getting good jobs as well as while travelling abroad; not to mention the fact that it is the language of their future careers.

However, as English is not our native language, learning it for Pakistani students is a complex phenomenon. Since the teaching conditions for English are far from satisfactory, despite studying English in schools and colleges for about six to eight years, students, especially those coming from rural backgrounds, are not really able to communicate in English with relative ease. They lack all the four major linguistic skills — reading, writing, listening and speaking.

It is to be realised that acquiring a second language is a skill, something very different from learning one’s native language. Hence we should have a different approach for both. English should be taught in Pakistan in a way that prepares students to use it not only as a second language but also as an international language.

The problem is that our teachers lack the required training and skills. Still not aware of the innovative teaching techniques, they cling to the traditional ways of teaching. It has been commonly observed that the focus of teachers is on enabling students to pass the exams.

The students here are not encouraged to think and their creativity is marred by the continuous spoon feeding by the teachers. It would not be wrong to say that in our country the teaching of English is content-based and not skill-based; and it is the one reason why the writing and communicative skills of the students here are not developed.

The government has hardly made any training facilities available for the teachers here and English language teaching is a low priority with the present meagre education budget. Whatever facilities for teachers’ training are available are bookish in nature and based on imported theories quite irrelevant in our setting.

Most of these programmes advocate foreign ideas, which have long been abandoned by the educators of our country. Irrelevant to our context, they make the process of teaching and learning boring and ineffective, leaving the teachers unable to contribute towards educational change here.

Books by English writers meant for students whose native language is English pose great difficulty for our learners. The students find it difficult to relate to the foreign contexts but no efforts are made by the course designers or teachers to make it interesting or culturally relevant.

We need to develop our own material, which incorporates our cultural values, if English Language Teaching (ELT) is to be made useful for our students. It will make learning English as a second language more meaningful with better cognitive development as the learners will be able to relate to the material. It will also lead to more positive attitudes and motivation for the students to learn English.

Among the other problems in the teaching of English is the fact that the teachers too lack proper communicative skills. Hence they fail to develop the required confidence among their students. The students are taught English as a subject rather than a language. Besides, the lack of coordination between different levels, large classes and lack of student motivation also result in the poor standard of English language teaching.

While the education authorities continued to remain complacent and did not feel the need to bring about any change, it was the teachers themselves who realised that ELT in Pakistan had failed to keep pace with the latest developments in linguistics the world over.

Frustrated with the ELT scene in Pakistan and feeling the need for a professional forum for ELT teachers in order to Write to us at education@dawn.com

contain the falling standards while improving the level of teaching English in Pakistan, eight teachers got together to take action in 1984. Realising that complaining would not change anything; they decided to work themselves towards bringing a change.

“We thought why shouldn’t we ourselves do something about it,” says Zakia Sarwar, one of the founding members of Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT). And this is how SPELT was born.

SPELT realised that teachers need continuous professional development and that one of the ways to bring about a change is by improving the professional expertise of the teachers. It came into being with the objectives to provide a professional forum for English language teachers in Pakistan through which they could get an opportunity to upgrade their expertise without having to depend on government training programmes, which were outdated and far in between anyway.

It recognised the value of sharing classroom experiences and indigenous innovation for the professional development of ELT in Pakistan. SPELT saw training and development of teachers as its major role, and gave priority to teacher training and teacher education programmes. Today it is striving to improve the ELT environment in Pakistan.

It is SPELT’s mission to provide a professional forum for its members and practitioners and teaching English as a foreign/second language to facilitate effective communication and improve the teaching and learning standards of English in Pakistan.

Zakia Sarwar explains that SPELT provides a unique forum for the professional development of English language teachers. Its four core programmes — monthly academic sessions, quarterly ELT journal, annual international conference and certified teacher training courses — provide an opportunity for teachers to learn and share their experiences and exchange ideas on how to tackle the grim scenario facing English language teachers, especially school teachers. Academic sessions, conferences and teacher-training programmes are oraganised on a regular basis in order to enhance their knowledge and skills.

Besides this, SPELT also conducts specialised courses and workshops and customised programmes for various institutions while producing indigenous English language teaching material. These are all high-quality contextually suitable teaching aids to help the teachers enhance their research skills as well. The organisation also collaborates with government agencies in developing textbooks for the public sector and works with various institutions on national ELT initiatives, too. It also networks with sister organisations worldwide to disseminate and share ideas and methodologies appropriate for local situations.

The year 2009 marks SPELT’s silver jubilee. The organisation that came into being 25 years ago from humble beginnings has now grown into an institution with chapters in many cities all over the country. It is due to its efforts alone that one finds a large number of ELT professionals capable to deliver in this area throughout Pakistan.

The success story of SPELT shows that change can be brought about if one possesses the will power to do so and with the people concerned commi- tted to their cause and willing to work as hard as it takes with selflessness and total dedication.