KARACHI: Experts discussed paradigm shift in teaching English amidst a stock of skills or types of behaviour that learners habitually use.

They were speaking on the second day of the 37th Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (Spelt) International Conference 2021, which started from early morning on Sunday, and continued till evening. The moot had several interesting plenary sessions with experts joining in from Hawaii, Australia, Qatar, the UAE, Kazakhstan, the UK etc.

One of the day’s early sessions, moderated by Gul Jaffri, chair, Outreach Professional Council, Spelt, was with Dr Sara Katherine Hillman, assistant professor of Liberal Arts Program, Texas A&M University. The topic of her talk was ‘Re-conceptualising English language teaching as expanding communicative repertoires’.

Joining in from Qatar, Dr Hillman spoke about the multilingual shift that has taken place in teaching English to speakers of other languages, moving away from monolingual pedagogies to plurilingual and translingual ones. “This shift in the field challenges the traditional monolingual framework of English language teaching such as English-only classroom policies and the native ‘speakerism’ paradigm or a focus on one standard English, and it recognises the multilingual nature of languages learners and language classrooms,” she said.

While traditionally the field has encouraged teaching English in isolation of other languages that may be part of students’ repertoires, the multilingual shift views students’ ability to draw on multiple languages and cultures for effective communication as an asset rather than a deficit.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2021