Issues of Language in Education in Pakistan (original) (raw)
There has been debate among educationists, researchers and intellectuals about the role of a language in education in Pakistan. Educational policy makers in Pakistan couldn't determine proper role of any language in education. This resulted often in tossing of English and Urdu medium of instruction policies in Pakistan. Present study is the outcome of two inspirations. First inspiration came from one of the government policies in 2003 regarding medium of instruction, whereby it was decided that medium of instruction in government schools be changed to English from class six onwards in science subjects. The second inspiration was the theory of Jim Cummins, which purported that a Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in a particular language is possible if a learner is, immersed in that language for 5 to 7 years. The researcher became interested to measure the conceptual and cognitive understanding of those students in first Year College whose medium was changed from Urdu to English at sixth class by comparing them with their fellows in English medium whose medium never changed from English. Experimental methodology was adopted for teaching the selected content from science subjects followed by a test made in the guidelines of Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning. The obtained data revealed that on average there was no difference in the conceptual and cognitive understanding of the students of both groups. The data collected on the basis of teachers' interviews corroborated the results of the tests.
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