Writing is ones own genuine idea of any topic .how this situation might be created in pakistani english language teaching classroom?
Answers
Answer:
The first time I heard Nadia* read, it broke my heart. I had been prepared for this. As a newly-initiated Teach for Pakistan Fellow, I knew about the achievement gap. I knew that our public schooling system was producing students who couldn’t read simple sentences in English or Urdu. I knew this and yet, the sight of a fifth grader pausing at every word was nothing I’d ever been prepared for. As I listened to Nadia struggle, I thought of the glossy hard-bound reader my school had assigned in the fifth grade and the ability to read complex stories fluently and confidently that I had so far been taking for granted, like the ability to breathe.
I’d started my Fellowship believing reading to be a skill and a pathway for further learning. All you need is the right sort of instruction, the right sort of texts and you’ll be able to read. That’s what I was there for. I was obsessed with empowering my students to read — and to love it as much as I did; it was my Big Goal for my Fellowship.
Towards the end of my Fellowship, as Nadia and her classmates showed academic improvement, I had stopped believing that mastering reading was all that mattered. Poverty was vicious, encroaching every aspect of my students’ lives from the healthcare they were able to access to the difficulties they faced in commuting to school. When I was writing this article, the Kemari gas leak happened. The fumes were reported to have reached Shirin Jinnah Colony — where their school is. Every headline reminded me of them; they were disproportionately affected, did they have access to doctors? Did they know how to protect themselves? Could they protect themselves? I thought of Samira, whose mother had once fallen sick because there was a gas leak in her house. Now as the country grapples with Covid-19, these questions still remain.