KARACHI: A variety of speakers kicked off the first day of the 31st Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) conference at Habib Public School on Saturday.

The morning session started with the speech by Associates Representative at the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Dr Lou McLaughlin.

Speaking about the journey so far, and specifically about teachers cognition in language, Dr McLaughlin said the existing tensions between belief and practice demonstrate the importance of addressing the area of teacher cognition in training courses.

“Raising a teacher’s awareness through trainings can lead them to being more open to change and inculcate the same in the students,” she added.

From there onwards, training sessions started in about 20 rooms of the school where teachers coming from all over Pakistan were trained on recognising blockades in reaching out to their students.

During a session on ‘Teachers as leaders’, a trainer from National University of Modern Languages, Hatesh Kumar, said the “idea is to balance traditional and formal way of teaching. We have to be sensitive to the way each student is and retains information. Being an observer, a teacher’s job is to be as mindful of a student’s shortcomings as well as of her own. It is for this reason that our training focuses on teachers to lead the way by being observant as well as open-minded about the current trends”.

In the auditorium, right across the classrooms, Prof Dr Syeda Arifa Zehra spoke about the Urdu language, education and the challenges facing it. “I asked some of my students why they don’t communicate in Urdu. They told me they are punished if they speak in Urdu outside of their classrooms. When you make speaking of a language embarrassing for the students, you lose it,” she said while speaking about the challenges facing Urdu as a language and its implication in schools.

She added: “Everyone speaks about change, but do we know what it actually means? Change does not mean to ape anything that seems different. You keep your core values while accepting what speaks to you on a soul level.”

Uks Research Centre Director Tasneem Ahmer spoke to the trainers about getting rid of the ‘Gender Benders’ during one of the workshops. “Thinking is one of the most important challenges in questioning stereotypes. At times, you need to know things on your own to make decisions,” she said.

Continuing, she added, there had been a few notable changes in the media industry where women were getting positions in the higher hierarchy within their organisations.

At the same time, she told the trainers how they ought to be aware of the subtleties used in stereotyping women everywhere. “There is blatant gender bias happening in a subtle manner that it is considered inoffensive to most. But keep looking for it. Look at the positives, let go of the negatives, but don’t feel embarrassed in discussing the negatives. It gives you answers,” she added.

The second session of the day began around noon with a tribute paid to the professor of linguistics Ruqaiya Hassan and her contributions to the study of literacy. Speaking to the audience in a packed gymnasium, Dr Mubina Talat, head of the department of linguistics at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, spoke about Ms Hassan who passed away in June this year.

Born in 1931, in UP India, Ms Hassan held various pioneering positions over the years, the last one being her appointment at Macquarie University in Sydney. “It is a loss of intellectual heritage,” she added.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2015

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