DefinePK

Abstract

Educators in Pakistan are faced by the problematic and undulating challenges in teaching the English language as a second language (ESL) in multilingual classrooms, as linguistic and cultural diversity are overlapped by the structural constraint in education. In it, the author considered the experience of 20 ESL teachers throughout the Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan through semi-structured interviews and observation in the classrooms. The thematic analysis identified five key areas of concern which included language issues, teaching limitations, cultural and social factors, instructional resource shortages and instructional readiness. They stated intensive use of first language of students, the fear of making errors and their reluctance to talk as the main linguistic obstacles. Pedagogic issues of rote memorizing and crowded classes discouraged interactive, communicative, methodology. Socio- cultural factors which contributed to the complexity of learning dynamics were close regional language identities and the feeling that English is an elite language. There were shortfalls of resources especially in rural schools, updated materials or technological assistance could not be accessed and since the teachers were not specially trained, they were not sufficient to attend to varied classroom requirements. The research indicated that curricular reforms, professional development, investment of resources and community involvement can counter all these challenges effectively. The recommendations are that communicative methods of teaching should be adopted, teacher education should be improved to ensure multilingual teaching and maybe parent support must be created. Future study needs to examine the extent to which technology-enhanced learning improves attainment and how to identify regional differences to make locally sensitive policy-based interventions.