IS IT THE WAY TO TEACH LANGUAGE THE WAY WE TEACH LANGUAGE? ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN RURAL PAKISTAN

With the growing importance and need of English language in the global context, efforts are being made in the developing context to improve the quality of teaching English with the assumption that teaching of English facilitates the acquisition of English Language. What is Pakistani teachers approach to the teaching of English language and does the way they teach English facilitate the language acquisition? The current study explores this question at secondary level in the context of Chitral, a remote district of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province Pakistan. The researcher visited the randomly selected secondary schools and consulted English teachers interviewing them and observing the teaching and learning processes. The study reveals that in the context of Chitral, teaching of English is not different from teaching of other subjects such as social studies, history etc. Translation method is the dominant way to teach English and learners hardly get any opportunity to practice language skills in the classrooms. The reasons behind this approach to the teaching of English are; lack of purposefully trained teachers, non-availability of in-service courses for secondary level English teachers, memory driven exam system, overcrowded classrooms, teachers’ work load, shortage of resources and lack of ongoing support system. The study suggests that English teachers should be trained separately focusing teaching English as a language unlike other subjects.