KARACHI: The second and concluding day of the 41st Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) International Conference 2025 at Habib University on Sunday began as well as ended with a focus on learners’ language, translations and translanguaging.

The keynote address by Professor Emeritus TESOL, UK, Dr Graham Hall was about ‘Using the Learners’ Own Language(s) in the ELT Classroom: What, Why, When?’

Until recently, the assumption underpinning much of the methodological literature of language teaching has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the learners’ own language(s). “But now, however, a re-evaluation and recognition of own-language use has begun.

“The monolingual assumption and emphasis on English-only teaching have been increasingly questioned, alongside the realisation that own-language use has continued in many classrooms around the world, no matter what the literature said,” pointed out Dr Hall.

SPELT Conference concludes; panel highlights challenges in translating nuanced terms and ensuring equity in education

The concluding session of the day was a panel discussion on ‘Translation and Translanguaging for Access and Equity in Education: Opportunities and Challenges’ moderated by SPELT Vice-President Dr Fauzia Shamim, with Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development Dean Dr Farid Panjwani, CEO Oak Consulting Dr Fatima Dar and head of Literacy and Life Skills at The Citizens Foundation (TCF) Adeel Baloch as the panellists.

While shedding light on translations, Dr Panjwani spoke using examples. “In the context of words such as ‘ishq’, ‘mohabbat’, ‘chahat’ and ‘pyaar’, which are very nuanced words for which you have a limited vocabulary in English, you either use one word such as ‘love’ for all, or maybe use ‘affection’, which doesn’t actually capture the true meaning of the words. So you have to use full sentences to make sense of the word,” he said.

“Sometimes your choice of words can also go wrong. For example, the term ‘secular’. In Urdu, it gets translated as ‘ladeeni’, which is absolutely not the right way of putting it because ‘ladeeni’ makes it sound anti-religious, whereas ‘secular’ is not necessarily ‘anti-religious’,” he pointed out.

“So many times, civilisations have really moved themselves higher in intellectual and cultural terms through translations. So, between the 8th and 10th centuries, in the Muslim context, a huge amount of work from India, Persia, Graeco-Roman, etc., was translated into Arabic, which really helped bring the Golden Age of Muslims intellectually. And then in the 13th and 14th centuries, much of the Arabic philosophy was translated into Latin, which helped bring the Renaissance and other developments there,” he said, pointing to the importance of translations.

While speaking about translanguaging, Dr Dar said that it is a unified force. “It is a unified linguistic repertoire that is present in a child’s mind, which helps the child understand concepts,” she said.

“What we do in our classrooms across the board is to try to make understanding intelligible in a language that they understand. Languages should work in companionship and not in competition. That is what translanguaging is asking us to do,” she said.

While discussing some success stories in translanguaging, Mr Baloch mentioned TCF’s Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education programme, which makes a child’s journey into school easier.

“We cannot deny the importance of English as a language and as a tool for success and higher education because our system of higher education is offered in English,” he said.

“This is a reality. But the other reality is that when a child comes to school, he or she has a strong connection to his or her mother tongue. Generally, our school systems are based on the belief that a child joining a school knows nothing, and it is their duty to teach them.

What our programme does is ease the child’s school journey by offering early childhood education to a child in his or her own mother tongue. Then, there is a properly designed transition from the mother tongue to English happening from class three to class seven. After that, the medium of instruction shifts to English in class eight. By then, the student has proficiency in the mother tongue, the national language and the foreign language,” he explained.

The day also included interesting sessions about ‘Teacher Feedback vs Peer Feedback: What Works for Pakistani English Learners’ and ‘AI and the Social-politics of Second Language Learning’, workshops about ‘Teaching Grammar that Gets Texts Talking’ and ‘When Grammar is Fun’, and afternoon plenary address by senior educationist, SPELT’s founding member and managing director of the Teachers’ Development Centre, Abbas Husain, about the “Decolonised Classroom”.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2025