The prospect and potential challenges of teaching Englishes in Pakistan

Abstract

The growing use of English by its L2 users for intra-national and international communication has created a need for dramatic changes in ELT (English Language Teaching). One of the major changes that scholars have called for is the need to incorporate the diversity of the form, user and culture of English into the existing ELT curriculum. However, this still remains at a theoretical level. Although some studies have attempted to uncover the practicality of this call, they are mostly based in Inner Circle and Expanding Circle countries as opposed to Outer Circle countries with a colonial past. Therefore, this study explores in detail the prospect and potential challenges of teaching Englishes in Pakistan. For this purpose, a qualitative method was used to examine postgraduate linguistics students’ responses or views when introduced to different varieties of English in five-day workshops at a university in Pakistan. The results indicate that some of the students displayed deficit perspectives when introduced to the diversity of the forms of English language and its users outside the context of Inner Circle countries. These perspectives seemed to echo the powerful voices of the teachers and Pakistan Army who play very influential roles in maintaining the status of English as a product of Inner Circle countries (British and American English only) in Pakistan. Despite these, the workshops were to some extent successful, managing to inspire students to challenge their deficit perspectives and to learn to take ownership of their own use of English.