By Taj Nabi Khan
ISLAMABAD, Aug 31 (APP): Since the dawn of 21st century, the teaching of language has undergone drastic changes due to technological transformation and changing paradigms of classroom teaching.
To cope with modern day challenges and to build capacity of Pakistan English Language Teaching (ELT) ,Professional Association for English Language Teachers of Pakistan PakTESOL under the auspices of ELT Forum has launched an online webinar series .
For professional development of Pakistani ELT Community to enhance their skills and understanding about the emerging trends and latest practices in language teaching classrooms to cope with the modern-day challenges the Pak TESOL webinars are being attended by thousands of participants from public and private sector Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs), schools and colleges.
Internationally recognized ELTexperts are invited as resource persons from around the globe to deliver lectures and conduct sessions on diverse topics pertaining to English Language Teaching in Pakistan. They share their experiences with the participants of the sessions online.
PakTESOL(Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages) was formed in December 2019 as a joint venture of Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad and Regional English Language Office, Public Affairs Section, US Embassy, Islamabad.
The association was primarily conceived to mobilize and strengthen the Pakistani ELT community by holding professional dialogue, improving their capacity and coping with the 21st century challenges of ELT classrooms.
The professional association believes in working at the grassroots level in different regions of the country to promote long-term growth and sustainability by improving the expertise of its members.
The PakTESOL Project Director Dr Muhammad Kamal Khan told APP that PakTESOL was established after thorough consultation with the ELT practitioners from different parts of the country. The association emerged as the International English Language Teachers’ Forum to enhance professional capabilities of the teachers.
He said it was decided to engage the community in a range of activities: presentations, workshops, and symposia on best practices in English Language Teaching (ELT) to professionally develop Pakistani English language teachers, students and researchers. The professional association would mobilize the Pakistani English language teaching community from across the country and from a cross-section of instructional and institutional levels to initiate and sustain meaningful professional dialogues, he added.
The professional development for Pakistani English Language Teachers webinar series focuses on the emerging trends in English Language Teaching.
The topics were more creatively envisioned to train the language teaching practitioners of the country on modern lines such as ‘Virtual Schooling: A New Normal’, ‘Integrating Drama into the Pakistani ELT Classroom’, ‘Using corpora to inform grammar teaching in the ELT classroom’, ‘How can we adapt Project Based Learning (PBL) in Pakistan’, ‘Re-thinking Grammar Instructions in the ELT classrooms etc.
Dr Akifa Imtiaz, the Project Coordinator said, “Pakistan ELT Forum/PakTESOL is a special project which was essentially designed to create an important opportunity for the ELT practitioners by mobilizing them across the country, and improving their professional skills and strengthening their mutual ties so that they can, ultimately, face the modern-day challenges of the ELT classroom in the country and worldwide.”
Pro Vice-Chancellor, Sindh University Campus, Thatta, Dr Rafique A. Memon told the news agency that PakTESOL covers a large spectrum of geographical area with a wide range of language related innovative topics.
He said since the association was offering free-of-charge webinars which were open to everyone, it has attracted thousands of participants’ teachers and students in a very short time.
“PakTESOL was doing a wonderful job for professional development of language practitioners in Pakistan”, he added.
Dr Rabia, Assistant Professor, COMSATS University, Abbottabad Campus said that during the new normal after the Covid-19 scenario, the webinars series has introduced the participants with modern teaching trends, language teaching/learning tools, apps, websites while addressing the issues in Pakistani context.
The association should also arrange short training and online certificate courses, she suggested.
Dr Munir Khattak, Assistant Professor, Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences, Utheal, Balochistan said the webinar series were playing an effective role in professional development of language practitioners.
He said the professional experiences of the resource persons and their expert views were being proved instrumental and a great source of learning in opening up of new vistas of knowledge for the participants in language teaching and learning, adding that almost the whole ELT community of the country was engaged in the activity-based sessions of the online webinars.
Dr Ameer Sultan, Assistant Professor, International Islamic University, Islamabad, said the Facebook live-webinar series of multicultural expert linguists was a productive exercise both for language teachers and students as they also got online answers to their posted questions.
He said, “The participants have got a common platform for holding a professional dialogue.”
A large number of participants had shown their interest by participating in the webinars due to the diverse nature of the topics, he added.
