Language policy and planning in the teaching of native languages in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

The teaching of native languages is seen as being key to the development of cognitive skills, better academic performance in early grades and a resource for linguistic (re)vitalization and cultural revival. This study examines the institutional challenges in teaching and learning native languages in Pakistan. The study uses teachers’ agency through the public sphere paradigm as a theoretical framework to investigate the concerns and opinions of teachers and their agency regarding the challenges to native languages policy. The majority of teachers overwhelmingly support native languages, and endorse their importance in education, particularly in the development of cognitive skills and better academic performance. However, several institutional challenges hold back the teaching of native languages in public schools in Pakistan. The participants argue that native languages need an effective language-in-education policy. In addition, students, teachers and parents are not likely to deem native languages as resources until they gain some economic value. The study suggests that the current policy regarding native languages should be reviewed and refashioned considering their importance to students’ academic performance. Further, a dynamic policy-making mechanism is proposed where stakeholders at every level are able to coordinate in policy formulation and its effective implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Native languages
• language policy and planning
• language-in-education policy
• bi/multilingualism
• language-as-a-resource

Acknowledgement

The authors like to thank all the teachers from three districts for their valuable time and cooperation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zia ur Rehman Bazai

Zia ur Rehman Bazai^a is a PhD scholar, faculty of languages and linguistics, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. His area of interests are Language policy and planning, language-in-education planning, native languages planning, and discourse analysis. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Syed Abdul Manan

Syed Abdul Manan is an associate professor, at the Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, in Nur-Sultan (Astana), Kazakhstan. He completed his PhD at the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. His areas of interest are general sociolinguistics, language policy & planning, language-in-education, mother tongue based instruction and multilingualism. His PhD research is focused on a critical survey of the English-medium private schools in Pakistan. His research papers (co-authored) have recently been published and accepted for publication in various prestigious journals.

Stefanie Pillai

Stefanie Pillai is a professor at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, UniversitiMalaya (UM). Her main areas of research interest include the acoustic features of spoken languages and language use in multilingual contexts. The latter includes language policies and the documentation and revitalization of endangered langauges in multilingual settings. l i