My Own Story of Learning and Teaching English
In Nepal, as an EFL student, I was guided by various language teaching methods and approaches from my elementary school experience to master’s level education. When I was an elementary-level student, I was taught English through the grammar-translation method—teaching grammatical rules of the target language and then applying those rules by translating between the target language and the native language. But when I reached college, I continued to learn through various other teaching methods, including the audiolingual method, the direct method, the communicative method, and others. There was no consistency in the pedagogical approach: Some teachers were guided by the grammar-translation method, some by the direct method (i.e., "total immersion," which only uses target language for teaching target language), and some by a communicative approach (which focuses on interaction in target language teaching and developing communicative competence as the goal of study). The methods and activities that were embraced for teaching English did not do justice to us as they would not allow us dynamic use of our own mother tongue, nor were we able to leverage our previous linguistic repertoire and resources.
Upon completion of my master's degree, I started to teach English at the college level. I would often be confused as to what pedagogical method I should embrace for better facilitation. For a couple of years, by hook and by crook, I attempted to teach through an English-only, total-immersion approach. I did so, believing that if students are taught only in English they get more exposure to the language, and as a result, they end up learning English better. It is true that meaningful exposure plays a vital role in language learning. However, when the input is not comprehensible (Krashen,1988), it does not enhance students’ language learning. Now, I must confess that I did an injustice to the students as I neither used the students’ home language (Nepali, in which I am fluent) nor allowed them to use their existing linguistics repertoire. When I would ask them some oral questions in English, they would usually not be able to reply. After a couple of years, I realized that these students did not understand teaching in English only, as their level of proficiency in English was very low. When I failed to make them understand by teaching only in English, I did occasionally start to use the Nepali language in class. What is true is that I could not make my students understand without embedding natural use of Nepali language in class, whether instructing students for assignments or discussing cultural practices, or other discussions related to students’ socio-cultural issues. I found that the natural use of the Nepali language in class was useful for making the students understand what I taught, and I found this to be a more just to teaching English since it allows the students to properly leverage their previous linguistic resources and repertoires in their learning.
Recently, the issue of maintaining social justice in all areas of education has been hotly discussed. This issue is becoming more pressing in the countries where English is taught as ESL/EFL and used as English as a medium of instruction, as there can be a possibility of imposing English-only teaching. In Nepal, English courses are currently taught as ESL/EFL, and they are offered as compulsory courses up to the undergraduate level. English is used as a primary medium of instruction in some government and all private K-12 schools. But if we look at the pedagogical practices of teaching English or using EMI, we are still debating and perplexed. No clear strategic intervention or instructions have been offered by government sources regarding a recommended pedagogical approach to teaching. By teaching more than a decade in Nepal, I noticed that in Nepali-medium schools, English is mostly taught by translating into and out of Nepali, while in private English-medium schools and the recently-shifted English medium government schools, teachers, if not all, by great effort, strive to practice an English-only pedagogical approach in their teaching.
Some English-medium schools have even been punishing students for speaking their native language in the classroom and on school premises (Pandey, 2021). This outdated and cruel practice is against the constitutional provision of Nepal (2015), which has guaranteed children the right to receive an education in their mother tongue up to the secondary level. In the years 2014 to 2015, the government of Nepal decided to allow government-aided K-12 schools to use EMI, and following the decision, some of the schools immediately shifted to EMI for quality education and better English exposure (Baral, 2015; Phyak, 2018). The shifting of government K-12 schools into English medium has penalized students’ learning due to the lack of appropriate teaching instructions and resources in schools. In Baral’s (2015) study, one of the teachers expressed that “without necessary materials, it has been difficult to engage students in learning activities” (p. 49). In Nepal, the shift of medium of instruction has further complicated the task of educating multilingual students since their own existing linguistic resources are undervalued and underutilized for teaching-learning activities. The English-only, total-immersion approach and other haphazard, unspecified pragmatic approaches to pedagogy have provoked complications in teaching. Ignoring students’ prior linguistic and cultural knowledge does a clear injustice to students: an “epistemic injustice” (Fricker, 2007) in the classroom. Fricker argues that epistemic injustice occurs when the identity of someone as a knower is erased. A sink-or-swim, English-only, total-immersion monolingual approach severely challenges the learners’ epistemic access to literacy and academic skills. This antiquated approach fosters the “hegemony” (Grasmci, 1971) of the English language, and thus does injustice to multilingual students, as they cannot use their existing linguistic resources and prior knowledge in their learning. In such a situation, embracing translanguaging pedagogy, facilitating through the dynamic use of multiple languages, serves as a socially just pedagogy in the multilingual classroom both for teaching English as a compulsory subject and using it in an EMI class. Translanguaging pedagogy allows students to use their mother-language linguistic resources to make sense (Garcia, 2009a). Garcia & Leiva (2014) argue, “Translanguaging could be a mechanism for social justice, especially when teaching students from language minoritized communities” (p. 200). Indeed, it does justice to marginalized minority community students, for it allows the students to use their home languages as linguistic resources.