Country info and advice - Pakistan
The following comments are from teachers who have taught, or are currently teaching, in Pakistan. If you are a teacher and have some advice to share, please add it here.
Most Pakistani students do not
take advantage of the resources that are available to them. There are 5 or 6 FM
radio channels available. FM89 is a channel that airs only English songs and the
DJs speak English all the time. They could read The Dawn
newspaper (Karachi), international experts of a variety of fields often write
for this newspaper. To improve pronunciation, they could listen to native
speakers from the BBC Telecast and Broadcast.
Best of Luck!
Pakistan is a country with a
flavor all its own. The largest city, Karachi, is fairly cosmopolitan and offers
a number of opportunities for people willing to work in this country. However,
the other cities and the hinterlands are where there is little competition and
anyone willing to do some private tutoring can have a great time. Opportunities
for teaching English are basically with schools, some university level is
available too, but the ideal thing to do is join a language teaching center or
do private tutoring. The amazing part about teaching here is to get to
understand what people want.... which is generally NOT pure ESOL or EFL or ESL
or ESP. What people generally crave are conversation classes... or discussions.
Professionals, on the other hand, generally demand grammar. Cost of living is
affordable, and the best part is the domestic help that is available to handle
all the mundane chores of housework.
A lot of Pakistani students
cannot follow English language properly in their classes, as a result most of
them fail in English language examinations. Teachers need to update their
standards by not only reading the text from the book in front of students but by
explaining their text with some common examples at the student's level. They
should give full confidence to students to ask, share their difficulties and
insist students speak english language during the class no matter how much they
know about the english. Students also need to watch/listen to english movies,
songs, debates, talk shows.
If your advice is about a specific school, please post it in our forum