Language Policy, Planning, and Practice: A South Asian Perspective (review)

This excellent book is a compilation of selected papers presented at a 2001 conference at the Aga Khan University. It is conveniently divided into four sections, the first two of which are devoted to issues related to language policy and planning in South Asia. Of great importance is Zobaida Jalal Khan’s ‘Language policy in Pakistan’. As the Pakistani Minister of Education, she argues for the crucial need to further the implementation of Urdu as the national language.

Tariq Rahman, in ‘English teaching institutions in Pakistan’, notes that English is the mother tongue of a few Pakistanis, a second language for many affluent ones, and a foreign language for all of the other educated.

Sabiha Mansoor’s ‘The medium of instruction dilemma: Implications for language planning in higher education’ focuses on the role of English in Pakistani academe. One conclusion offered is that the pass percentage of university students in English is an ‘abysmally poor’ 18–20% (65).

In ‘Language policy in Malaysia—empowerment or disenfranchisement?’, Maya Khemlani David tries to explain why 99% of the undergraduates at the University of Malaya do not mix with each other. The answer is due to different languages and ethnic groups. One fact noted is that Malays (61% of the total population) seldom speak English at home, compared with Chinese (28%) and Indians.

Ryhana Raheem and Hemamala Ratwatte, in ‘Invisible strategies, visible results: Investigating language policy in Sri Lanka’, present a history of the official and unplanned language policies from colonial times to the present in Sri Lanka. The authors note that the trend of discouraging English in the 1960s and 1970s has been sharply reversed in recent times.

Gopa Boswas’s ‘Language policy in Southeast Asia: A case study of India’ can be summed up nicely in the words of D. P. Pattanayak: ‘In India it is not a question of English or Indian languages but English and Indian languages’ (110).

Razia Sultana Khan’s ‘Language planning in Bangladesh: A case study’ is a pessimistic state-of-the-art survey of poor EFL teaching in Bangladesh. One reason why little progress has been made is the fact that most teachers receive no training in language teaching (118).

Section 3 contains nine essays on language and educational matters. I examine three with ramifications for the international community, and then I list the others.

Ghazala Bhatti’s ‘From learning by rote to teaching for meaning’ is a vague attempt to demonstrate that language teaching is more an art than a science.

Nasreen Hussain and Perviz Husain, in ‘Improving students’ writing skills through interactive written feedback’, suggest that teacher feedback is a motivating factor in student progress, although I doubt the effectiveness of one practice, viz. letting student peers edit other students’ work (203).

Aliya Tahir’s ‘Business English: Role and implications in Pakistan’ discusses the growing need for English in Pakistan’s businesses as a part of the globalization process. One statistic presented is that 75% of the world’s mail is in English, as is 80% of all the information stored in computer data banks.

I believe most linguists will be less interested in the three essays in the last section, which deal with TEFL via email (Fatima Zia Dar), web page designing projects (Sadia Yasser Ali), and instructional technology (Zafar Syed).

The other essays are: Shahid Siddiqui, ‘Professional development: Going beyond skills’; Qaisera A. Sheikh, ‘Appraisal and its role in the professional development of teaching practitioners’; Saamina Amin Qadir, ‘How collaborative was collaborative research? Analysis of a Pakistani setting’; Nasreen M. Ahsan, ‘Tertiary teachers’ perceptions and attitudes about pedagogic training’; Kaleem Taza...