KARACHI - A team comprising representatives of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the British Council Pakistan (BCP) visited the University of Karachi (KU) a few days ago in connection with their project of transforming the teaching of the English language in Pakistan at the tertiary level so that the teachers and students of other disciplines could also improve their linguistic proficiency.
The HEC and BCP have selected 12 universities across the country for running a pilot study that would include English language proficiency courses and preparing master trainers at the university level.
Prior to running this study in the selected universities, the HEC-BCP team visited these 12 varsities, including KU, to meet the teachers and students of different disciplines for finding out the challenges they face with the English language.
The visit to KU comprised two parallel focus group discussions: one with the teachers of different departments, including the English, Chemical Engineering, Public Administration, Microbiology, Economics and Psychology departments; and the other with the students of the faculties of Arts and Science.
The discussions, which were conducted at the Department of English, covered the use of English as a medium of instruction and the problems that teachers and students encounter while using the language.
Kaleem Raza Khan, KU Registrar as well as Professor at the Department of English, also participated in the discussion along with other teachers.
Talking about his research on classroom discussions, Khan said switching between English and Urdu takes place often in the classroom, which results in the students being unable to conduct a coherent discourse in one language.
The participants of the discussion agreed that there is a dire need to improve the students’ as well as the teachers’ proficiency in the English language, which is possible only with an extensive language course for students and teachers of all disciplines.
After visiting the main library, the HEC-BCP team also did a classroom observation to gain some insights into the kind of teaching and learning that takes place at the university.
This included observation of two classrooms: one in the Faculty of Science and the other in the Faculty of Arts.
Since the Department of English hosted the event, Shumaila Shafket Ali, Lecturer at the Department of English, accompanied the team during classroom observation.