Background: Pakistan inherits a multilingual heritage. Along with Urdu, 70 different languages are spoken. The 1973 Constitution officially recognizes Urdu as Pakistan's only national language. Purpose: Until today, the adoption and promotion of Urdu as a medium of educational instruction has remained a point of controversy. Existing research…

Pakistan, one of the eight countries comprising South Asia, has more than 212.2 million people, making it the world's fifth most populous country after China, India, USA, and Indonesia. It has also the world's second-largest Muslim population. Eberhard et al. (Ethnologue: languages of the world, SIL International, 2020) report 77 languages used by…

This paper explores language ideology, policies and the role of English in Pakistan and China, two countries in which English plays different roles in education. Owing to globalization and communication development, the role of the English language is changing; thus, there is need to change the policies and ideologies surrounding English…

This study examines the language practices in educational settings in Pakistan, taking the multilingual groupings in society into account. In Pakistan, each province is linked to the single or multiple identities of its people and the languages spoken by the majority. The national language Urdu is limited to educational settings and its function…

Increasing societal and linguistic diversity poses significant challenges to formative categories of language policies. We make this point via an examination of Singapore's management of its most linguistically diverse ethnic group, the Indians. While heterogeneity has always been Singapore's defining feature, the nature and scale of recent…

In this article, we apply Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation to three international settings: Taiwan, Pakistan, and mainland China. Our guiding question was how different languages (indigenous languages, Chinese, and English) were positioned differently as resources in these contexts. For our analysis, we used Lo Bianco's (2001) elaboration…

This article discusses the language planning problems that India faces. The distribution and usage of the various languages are outlined. There is considerable linguistic heterogeneity, with 80 languages currently being used as media of instruction at least at an elementary level, and 14 languages being used at the secondary level. Since language…

This is a summary in outline form of the English literature teaching situation in Pakistan. As a legacy of British rule, officially all instruction is in English, but a great deal is carried on in Urdu or provincial languages. Attachment to English language and literature is still strong among the educated elite. This contrasts with the attitudes…

This profile of the English language teaching situation in Bangladesh discusses the role of English in the community and within the educational system. The amount of time devoted to English is discussed, as well as the syllabus used, the teaching staff, teacher training, and teaching materials. English instruction outside the educational system is…

Pakistan, as a multilingual country, faces numerous problems in language planning in higher education. There are concerns about the limited role of regional languages, lack of required materials in Urdu, and student difficulties in English. The research reported here is a nationwide survey of 2136 students, 121 Subject and English teachers of…

After Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji is the second largest island nation in the South-west Pacific and the hub of the region. Nearly all Fiji Islanders have either Fijian or Fiji Hindi as their first language, in roughly equal numbers, while the former colonial language, English, with very few native speakers, has retained an important role,…