To the Headmistress
Govt. High School
Madam
I have an urgent piece of work at home. Therefore I cannot come to school. Kindly grant me leave for two days.
Yours Obediently
X.Y.Z.
This was the lesson my younger sister cramming when I was taking my breakfast this morning. She is in 5th grade and goes to a coaching center for extra help in studies also. Both at school and at coaching center the teaching system of English is same. They make them cram the lesson. Initially there are no rules of the language but simple cramming of big and small chunks of language in the form of vocabulary items like names of colours, simple sentences, and afterwards stories, applications, letters and essays. Initially stories etc. are simpler having a few sentences and simple structures. Afterwards things start gonna complex and lengthy. And this goes upto B.A. i.e. 14 grade.
I still remember the good old days, when I was a school boy and used to cram things just like my younger sister was doing. Initially it was just cramming for me but in later grades 7, to onwards I remember myself trying to do some 'creative' work. I used to add a few sentences in essays like My Best Teacher, or stories. It was an intentional effort to get more marks as compared to other class fellows, but afterwards this creativity somehow expanded and now at this stage of my life I am able to write a blog post in English.
English Language Teaching System in Pakistan just makes you cram the rules and the vocabulary. It just pushes you to the sea of language now if you are a good learner you may learn to survive in this world, you may start getting points on your own. Otherwise you won't be able to write sentences or essays other than you crammed during your education. We produce crammers or if they are lucky enough good writers. We need English for writing mostly and our system of teaching is thus writing oriented.
But things are gonna change now. Our govt. educational system produces writers still but there is an urge to learn spoken English. So there are numberless institutes which offer spoken English classes. They provide a low quality version of communicative language teaching methodology but they somehow are trying to cope with the problem.
But we need to redefine our needs of English and our system of education as well.
