Embracing Multilingualism in ELT at the Undergraduate Level in Pakistan
I still remember the unease I felt in my first undergraduate English class. A student from Saraikistan, I spoke Saraiki at home, Urdu in public spaces, and English in the classroom. Yet whenever a hint of Saraiki slipped into my English, whether in accent or idiom, I felt an involuntary shame. The unwritten rule was clear: in the English classroom, your mother tongue was a sign of backwardness, something to conceal. To succeed, you had to sound as close as possible to the imagined “standard” English — often British, sometimes American, but never Pakistani.
That moment has stayed with me. It revealed how higher education in Pakistan, particularly in English teaching, often conditions students to distrust their linguistic identities. Instead of drawing on the richness of Saraiki, Sindhi, Pashto, Punjabi, Brahui, or Gilgiti, students are trained to suppress these voices. This silencing is not only unjust; it impoverishes education itself.
Multilingualism as a Resource, Not a Barrier
Research in applied linguistics suggests that students’ mother tongues are not obstacles to learning but vital resources. Jim Cummins’ (1979) theory of linguistic interdependence demonstrates that skills developed in a first language can transfer positively to a second language. In other words, a Saraiki speaker’s ability to analyze poetry in their mother tongue strengthens their ability to engage critically in English. To deny this connection is to waste cognitive and cultural capital.
Similarly, Ofelia García’s (2011) concept of translanguaging emphasizes how bilingual and multilingual speakers fluidly draw on their full linguistic repertoires to make meaning. A student who first discusses a philosophical concept in Pashto and then expresses it in English is not being “deficient”; they are engaging in a higher-order cognitive process that deepens understanding. Yet our classrooms rarely acknowledge this. Instead, they enforce artificial linguistic boundaries that strip learning of authenticity.
From Imitation to Imagination
In my own journey, I found liberation when I began to integrate my linguistic identity into my English assignments. Once, when analyzing Khawja Ghulam Fareed’s poetry, I resisted the temptation to force his metaphors into neat Western categories. Instead, I wrote in English while preserving the cadence of Sindhi imagery. The result was an essay that felt genuinely mine — an instance where English was not a cage but a canvas.
That experience taught me a crucial lesson: to decolonise English teaching at the undergraduate level is not to reject English but to reposition it. English should no longer stand as a master’s tongue demanding imitation but as a medium open to the imaginative influence of Pakistan’s diverse languages. This shift transforms English from a mark of elitism into a space of dialogue.
Practical Steps for a Multilingual Pedagogy
To translate this philosophy into practice, English classrooms in Pakistan could adopt several approaches:
- Bilingual Assignments: Encourage students to analyze a poem, proverb, or folk tale in their mother tongue and then reflect on it in English. This validates local knowledge while enriching English expression.
- Code-Switching as Pedagogy: Allow students to first explain complex concepts in Urdu, Saraiki, or Pashto before reframing them in English. This supports comprehension and confidence.
- Peer Exchange: Create space where students share idioms or metaphors from their native languages and explore how their meanings shift when expressed in English.
- Teacher Training: Equip instructors to appreciate originality of thought over conformity to “proper” English form. This requires moving beyond the deficit model of local languages.
Such measures not only strengthen English competence but also cultivate intellectual sovereignty. They teach students that knowledge can emerge from within their own cultural and linguistic realities, not only from imported templates.
From Shame to Sovereignty
Looking back, I see that my discomfort in that first classroom was less about English itself and more about the hierarchy it represented. To truly empower students, English language teaching in Pakistan must move from imitation to imagination, from silencing to expression. Multilingualism is not a threat to English; it is the soil in which a richer, more authentic English can grow.
When a Saraiki student shares a folk tale in English, or a Pashto speaker integrates a proverb into an essay, the classroom is no longer a site of linguistic shame. It becomes a site of intellectual sovereignty, where students learn not only the language of others but also the value of their own voices. That, I believe, is the true path to decolonising education in Pakistan.
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Brinkman, I. (2024). Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, 1986. History of Humanities, 9(2), 353–359.
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