(Re)Creating Multilingual TESOL Classroom: Insights from Pakistani Undergraduate Education Reform Policy
摘要
The robust role of multilingualism has been recently highlighted in pedagogical and epistemological orientations toward language policy and planning particularly for reconceptualizing the power of multilingual TESOL as an advocacy and a policy goal as well as a pedagogical approach to support, develop and expand multilingual speakers’ linguistic repertoires while taking multilingual perspective on language competency and teaching. Accordingly, the present chapter reports on the English curriculum as part of Pakistan’s newly launched revamping project known as the HEC Undergraduate Education Policy 2020, which integrates culturally and linguistically responsive elements from regional languages. We examine the multilingual topics, activities and assignments as used in the new curriculum and explore them to answer three research questions. Analysis of the multilingual materials is supplemented by interviews with five syllabus designers and five English language teachers who have been part of the project. By using the Critical Language Policy (Tollefson, 1991) lens, and critically exploring the power of multilingual TESOL classrooms in the Pakistani context, the chapter shows how multilingual materials can potentially empower regional languages and creatively set multilingual ways of language learning by igniting EFL learners’ spatial repertoire (Canagarajah, 2018). Finally, the chapter highlights the potential of multilingual materials’ contribution to Language Policy and Planning goals at broader national level by repositioning the monolithic role of English and centering regional languages in higher education and other spheres of life.