Factors Affecting Pakistani

English Language Learners

MARIA ZAHID 2k17/Eng/157
PARSA 2k17/Eng/89
SURRIYA 2k17/Eng/130
SAIMA 2k17/Eng/101
 
INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
UNIVERSITY OF SINDH
JAMSHORO
2020
 Introduction
• English has got the status of official language in
Pakistan. Although Urdu is the national
language of Pakistan but we cannot overlook
the significance of English. English is taught
and learnt in Pakistan as the second important
language for different integrative or
instrumental purposes and widely spoken in
Pakistan.
• Teaching and learning of English language is not effective
and admiring in Pakistan because of different factors that
affect Pakistani English language learners. The purpose of
this project is to draw attention to those factors both
external and internal that affects students’ learning of
English language in Pakistan. We worked in a group and
studied some previous research papers then determined
the major factors that are affecting Pakistani learners in
English language learning on tertiary level. After that we
identified some gaps in previous studies and recommend
more work on the topic.
• There are many studies that showed factors
affecting English language learning and also
disused reasons that poorly impact Pakistani
students’ learning. Saptawulan Hening
Nariswariatmojo-2011) classified two
significant factors named as internal and
external factors that affect the learning
process.
 Throughout our literature review we found
following factors.
• Internal factor • External factors
• Aptitude • Curriculum
• Attitude
•
• Instruction
Personality
• experience • Culture and status
• Cognition • Access to native
• Age speakers
• Gender
• Motivation
• First language
• Anxiety
 Literature Review
• Number of studies has been conducted on Factors which affect
students’ Language learning and Language learning processes in
Pakistan by many scholars. Previously Humera Nawaz,
Muhammad Amin, Ijaz Ahmed Tatla (Department of English,
university of Sargodha) studied on factors affecting students’
motivation level to learn English as second language in Pakistani
university context.The main purposes of this study is to explore
major factors that affect students motivation level while learning
English as second language in Public university. Research is
conducted using mixed methods conventionally using questioners
and interviews as main medium. The ground work Showed that
despite English is taught is compulsory subject to students from
primary to tertiary level there are many reasons that discourage
students to learn English appropriately.
• This article prompted the great work of Lambert (1972) and Gardner arguing
that INTEGRATIVNESS AS A FCATOR is THE PSYCHOLOGICAL interest and
likeness of an individual to learn a language and helps to communicate inter-
culturally.

• Likewise descriptions of ideas such as learners’ attitudes towards Natives and

L2 community are widely be separated from Natives.

• Furthermore this article showed discussed arguing that L2 learners idealize

natives and want to mimic which must be stopped. Hence self should the
intense environment pressured classrooms, teacher oriented workshop de-
motivate learners intensively. The pressure to use only one code i.e. ENGLISH
TO COMMUNICATE, results anxiety in students and de-motivating them to
English. The very consequences of such are that inaccuracies occur in students’
communications patterns and they remain at averaged and even below level of
English. Hence does not uphold a scholarly level even till tertiary level.
 Results also show list fourteen of factors affecting positively as well as
negatively students’ motivation thorough qualitative data, these are;
• NTEGRYAIVNESS
• Instrumentality (for promotions to jobs)
• instrumentality(prevention from bad Marks)
• English anxiety
• Fear of assimilation
• Family and teacher impacts and others.

This work showed lack of teaching methodology, use of outdated and

irrelevant published books, imperialism given by English and idea of
Native like fluency are merely ignored. For example this factor of being
native like or outdated books and many others could be taken and
elaborated more.
• Another study on factores affecting Pakistani
learners is conducted by Abdur Rehman Tariq, Hafiz
Ahmad Bilal,Muhmamad Afzal
Sandhu,AnserIqbal,Umer Hayat with title Difficulties
In learning English as Second language in rural areas
of Pakistan.The study looked to search factors
affecting learning of English ESL of students
belonging to secondary level and rural areas of
Sargodha. They mainly divided them into external
and internal causes and looked more deeply at
family factors that influence most.
• Analysis and finding clearly show that most students
responded in negative.70%told that their parents did
not help them in learning ESL. None of factors like
family peers seemed to be helpful rather were
against the L2 learning. Parents are of ideology that
English is aristocracies’ language and abound their
children usually from learning it.
• Hence a lot of work needs to b conducted in ESL
context of Pakistan where as this work provide a little
or no information about real situation.
• Moreover Tanzeela Anbreen said in his article “The
influence of English as a second language learning on
Pakistani University students identity” that learning
English as a second language impact on students
identity. She says that identity and students behavior
can change when students move to secondary education
to tertiary education in ESL context. In this research she
conceptualizes identity in two different ways. That is
Essentialist and non-essentialist. Essentialist view is
linked to a person’ self, while non-essentialist view takes
identity in a changing perspective. Its mean identity has
never ending. It keeps changing.
• She says in his article that identity can be change due to six
major reasons. Those are:
• 1. Students’ response to increase self confidence due to ESL
• 2. Impact of school and University ESL context on students’
identity.
• 3. Students attitude change in responding to family opinions.
• 4. Feeling of becoming distant from family members when
conversing in English with them.
• 5. Impact of ESL in responding to University class fellows and
teachers in meetings, greetings, helping in learning/teaching.
• 6. Impact of ESL on Learner’s high school friends as perceived
them. (Anbreen 2014)
• Another factor that affect Pakistani English Learners are discussed by Nasir
Ahmed and Sarfaraz Ahmed in his article “The nature of difficulties in learning
English by the students at secondary school level in Pakistan” that students find
difficulties in tense, active and passive voices, direct and indirect narration,
conjunction, prepositions, article and construction of sentences. In this research
they collect data from both provisional and federal government schools in
N.W.F.P and then compare it. They make an objective English language test which
was developed by the researchers to find out the difficulties in learning English
by the provisional and federal school students in NWFP.

• The findings of the study shows that, the students of provisional

government schools faced more difficulties in learning verb forms,
narrations, conjunction, prepositions, article, sentences arrangements
and reading comprehension. But in learning voices both types of
schools system faced same difficulties.
• In 2018, SadiaAsif, Rahat Bashir and ShabanaZafar researched
on the factors affecting the use of English language in English-
only classrooms: student's perspectives in Pakistan. They study
on factors affecting the use of English language in English-only
classrooms from perspective of Pakistani students was carried
out by (Asif, Bashir, & Zafar, 2018). Finding of their study
reveals that "most of the students like to communicate in
English and be part of the English-only environment; however
they acknowledged some key factors that prevented them
from speaking English in the classrooms. Fundamental factors
included linguistics, individual, social, psychological and
institutional which was largely based upon their beliefs,
assumptions, needs, and desires".
• Park's (1998) carried out his study He examined various
factors affecting the oral communication. Under the social
factors he describes peer pressure, social norms and values,
and cultural communication patterns. Institutional factors
included teacher characteristics, classroom setting, topics,
unequal turn distribution and class size. The psychological
factors included lack of confidence in using English with other
Korean and fear of making mistakes due to fear of being
judged. Finally, the linguistic factors were translating habits,
lack of listening comprehension, and limited linguistic
resources. An overview of these three studies (Hwang, 1993;
Park, 1998; Tomizawa, 1990), shows that the same categories
of the factors affected the communication patterns of
students in Pakistan. (Asif, Bashir, & Zafar, 2018)
• NasreenBhatti, ShumailaMemon and HabibullahPathan in
2016 investigated on language anxiety to get the perception of
Pakistani English language learner on language anxiety.The
study on language anxiety according to the perception of
Pakistani English language learners was done by (Bhatti,
Memon, & Pathan, 2016). According to their study, "for
Pakistani learners, English language learning has always been
challenging. Most of the learners recognize their failure of
English by their inability to speak in English in English language
classroom which result in feeling of stress, uneasiness,
nervousness and their fear of being evaluated negatively".
• (Bhatti, Memon, & Pathan, 2016) identified that "the
communicative apprehension is the most anxiety provoking
factor it may be because in language class, Communicative tasks
are the most challenging for EFL learners. Moreover, the results
indicate that the other factor which makes foreign language
classroom a highly anxiety-evoking place is its consistent
evaluative nature. The EFL learner is continuously evaluated by
the teachers and by his peers. The study found that the anxiety
in EFL learner is also due to their feelings of low proficiency,
nervousness or lack of confidence. The main cause of these
difficulties arousing from language anxiety was lack of practicing
particularly speaking skill in different social context"
 Recommendation:
• These factors need to be identified, worked so as to improve teaching
learning practices of English in Pakistani universities bring social and
linguistic aspects of English in front.

• The educators and policy makers need to develop such policies which
could enhance students’ identity, so that students could identify
themselves as a good Muslims, good Pakistani and a peaceful member
of global communities.

• Teachers need to taught tenses, active and passive voices, direct and
indirect narration, conjunction, prepositions, article, and sentence
arrangements in systematic and logical manner.

• The teacher should improve their teachings techniques by preparing

systematic materials.
Thank you