https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8468-9025
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ABSTRACT
This article seeks to locate Pakistan’s middle-tier English-medium private schools in the global educational discourse on immersion and submersion. Using qualitative and quantitative data from a case study conducted in Karachi, it highlights the effects of English-medium education on native speakers of the national language, Urdu, among the new middle class. The study findings illustrate the immersive nature of schooling and the importance placed on the English language by key stakeholders, such as administrators, English teachers, and parents, so much so that the majority of surveyed students prefer to do their pleasure reading in English instead of their high-status home language, Urdu. This heritage loss, acutely expressed by Urdu teachers in particular, shows that the students’ initial additive learning experience becomes subtractive due to the extended, unabated exposure to schooling in the English language and the increasing incorporation of English at home by Urdu-speaking parents at the behest of school officials. This research is important because earlier studies have focused on ‘Urdu imperialism’ over the minoritized regional languages in government or low-fee private schools whereas this study demonstrates the erosion of Urdu, the lingua franca across Pakistan, among the new middle class in the face of English’s linguistic imperialism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Two-way immersion evolved from the first model and is primarily found in the United States; it brings together a balanced number of majority-language (L1) and minority-language (L2) students in a classroom with instruction in both languages (Lü Citation2020; Serafini, Rozell, and Winsler Citation2022; Tedick, Christian, and Fortune Citation2011).
2 In the United States and Canada, most of the immersion programs are offered in elementary grades with only a minority of students opting for immersion in middle or high school (Lenker and Rhodes Citation2007; Lü Citation2020).
3 In the context of Pakistan, an example could be students whose mother tongue is Siraiki (12.19 percent of Pakistanis; PBS Citation2017) who are thrust into an Urdu-medium school where their language is (a) not recognised as legitimate, (b) not spoken/understood by other students, and (c) not spoken/understood by the teacher. Furthermore, Urdu may not be spoken by their family and even if the parents can speak or understand Urdu, they may themselves be illiterate and unable to support the children’s learning. Eventually, these students will pick up the Urdu language, especially if they are surrounded by Urdu both in school and in the outside environment, but it will come at the cost of their heritage loss of Siraiki since the school is not invested in maintaining it. This situation is worsened when these students are in a low-fee ‘English-medium’ school where even though teachers are unable to maintain English as a medium of instruction, it nonetheless is the language of curriculum. They learn to copy from the board and memorise their lessons without comprehending anything they are being taught. Such students are unable to gain grade-level literacy due to layers of complication alien languages present in their schooling (Naviwala Citation2019).
4 The name of the school and all other research subject names mentioned in the article have been changed.
5 Pre-Nursery, Nursery, and Kindergarten.
6 This also aligns with the findings of Maqsood (Citation2017) regarding the new middle class.
7 Non-participant classroom observations were conducted for English instructional periods only in Pre-Nursery, Nursery, Kindergarten, Grades 1, 3, and 6.
8 The following surveys were used: ERAS (McKenna and Kear Citation1990) for Grades 3 and 6 and SARA (Conradi et al. Citation2013) for Grade 9. Grade 1 students were asked simplified questions orally using the ERAS survey in January 2019; however, during data collection it became apparent that students were not fully understanding the questions and were more excited by the presence of a new adult in the classroom. Therefore, the survey data collected for Grade 1 was discarded and more data, whether questionnaires or surveys, from Grade 1 was not collected in November 2019.
9 These were class teachers of Pre-Nursey, Nursery, Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 3; an elementary grade reading teacher; English teachers of Grade 6 and 9, and Urdu teachers of Kindergarten, Grades 1, 3, 6, and 9.
10 KPA has several libraries catering to different sections and grades. For this study, the following librarians were interviewed: two from preprimary libraries, one from the elementary section library, and one from the middle section library.
11 These included academic coordinators, head mistresses, and a vice principal.
12 These included parents of the four students who had been randomly selected for interviews in addition to another six randomly selected students.
13 Locally, this practice of transliteration is called Roman.
14 A process of mindless memorisation of facts and figures (usually by a student who is interested only in securing high marks), especially during an academic examination (CitationCollins Dictionary).
15 A combination of Urdu and English.
16 ‘Readers’ here refers to the books she is reading.