International conference: English language teacher society celebrates 27 years by asking the right questions

Experts ask why people choose the profession, in a bid to encourage introspection.

KARACHI: The Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) celebrated its 27th year of success in leading teachers forward with a three-day international conference held at Habib Public School.

The theme was “building bridges” with the help of English Language Teaching (ELT). The conference was held in the school’s gymnasium where ELT professionals and experts participated from the country and outside.

The experts included Ameena Saiyid, who heads the Oxford University Press, Prof. Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhry, Mashood Rizvi for the British Council in Sindh and Balochistan, Peter Grundy from the University of Vienna and Ray Brown, an English language adviser for the British Council.

Saiyid talked about improving the reading and educational culture for students. She said that students are only concerned about their textbooks but they should not ignore supplementary books because they also help a lot in obtaining knowledge.

The ELT experts talked on a wide collection of topics including taking a proactive approach, the teacher as a quadrilateral, Pakistani English. They stressed that there should be research-based publications in Pakistan.

The chief guest was Prof. Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhry, a recipient of the Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Sitara-i-Imtiaz and Tamgha-i-Imtiaz awards for his contribution to research in education. He described his personal struggle to learn English and its importance in today’s world.

“We have more or less 50 million students in our schools but there are only half a million teachers to educate them,” he said. “And we don’t even know, how many of them know English correctly.” Pakistan will be the fourth most populous country in the next 11 years, according to research but we are still not taking about the education problem seriously, he added.

The session ended with a session by Peter Grundy from the University of Vienna and Durham University in the UK.

He asked four questions, on why the participants wanted to be teachers, when
they began thinking about pursuing this career, how they saw themselves as teachers and how could they play a role in the betterment of education.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2011.