Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
Back to chaos
The country’s politics is right back at square one: squabbling political parties trying to either save their assemblies or bizarrely break them all for the greater cause of getting more power. On the one hand is the PTI, which has made a tall claim but is yet the party is divided on this issue. There is also a sense that there would be Punjab Assembly members from the treasury side who might not look too favourably at quitting assembly.
This is also the PTI’s another narrative game. Pushing aside foreign conspiracy narrative we heard that Fawad Chaudhry held a meeting with the American Ambassador. People of the country who are living on a knife’s edge as they grapple with inflation, unemployment and poverty as PTI indulging in pettiest political whims.
We truly cannot afford this at this time. The economy is in too unstable a position to withstand any more pressure and while the games being played could bring some benefit to the individual parties and their leaders, they will in the end hurt the people of Pakistan.
MUNAWAR SIDDIQUI
Lahore
Women empowerment
Women are an important component of society. Let’s assist our women to accomplish their dreams and achieve their goals. Empowered women can transform our society and bring it on a progressive and bright track making it beneficial for our generations.
We need to take certain steps as a society to help women reach their true potential. 48.5 % of the population of Pakistan is female; that’s a huge chunk and if a segment that large is left backwards or downtrodden will be a major contributor to the downfall of any society. Starting with education, justice and health, women need assistance and support in many facets of life in different roles they play in our society.
Women are commendable in all roles given to them in life; be it as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives or teachers, we need to expand horizons for our women. Their role in workspaces of private and public sectors can bring significant betterment through their productivity, imaginativeness and new thought. Women need to be given more leadership roles as they can prove to be good decision-makers and analytical thinkers, they have also the mettle to be great multi-taskers.
We need to provide more job opportunities to women to offer them suitable career advancement choices. Investing in the entrepreneurial, executive, managerial and lead roles for women in organizations can mould the workspace into a positive, refined and evolved one. Good compensation, equal pay and promotion possibilities must not be a far-fetched dream but an immediate realisation of it.
MARYAM NAWAZ KAYANI
Islamabad
Delayed scholarships
With the appreciable initiative of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Ehsas Undergraduate Scholarship is funding a number of deserving undergraduate students of different universities across the country.
The prior allotment and disbursement of phase 1,2 were smooth and fair without causing inconvenience to the students but this time the disbursement of phase 3 is delayed and late since the awardees were nominated for the scholarship in June 2022 and the disbursement was about to be in Oct but it’s yet to be disbursed.
The concerned institution (HEC) should bring this issue into its notice and should disburse the amount soon so that the deserving students could be encouraged and incentivised to continue their higher studies.
SAMEER DASHTI
Islamabad
Defensive learning
We all can easily learn our first language as an infant but face a big problem in learning second language because we all face the fear of making mistakes because we show our students a model of spoken English on recorded tapes read by trained actors, this can give both student and teacher a very false idea of what is an actual norm for unscripted speech. By giving a learner a target which is not realistic, we are encouraging them not to risk making an utterance if they feel unsure of how to say it before they open their mouth.
There is a great deal of research in the field of first language acquisition (de Villiers and de Villiers 1979) shows quite clear that at some stages of learning mother tongue, children make guesses on the information they already have, for example most learners growing up and produce form ‘goed’ at some stage for ‘went’.
Now this viewed from the perspective of adult grammar can be called a mistake. However, it can also be regarded as an informed guess. This leads to the characteristics of hesitancy among learners to say anything in foreign language. This form of behaviour has been described by Earl Stevick 1976 as ‘‘defensive learning’’.
In Pakistan, we have many language schools where teachers are still following the old grammar translation method and usually deal language classes as other subjects. According to a research based on the people who took EF Standard English test during 2005 Pakistan ranks 48th on the list. Although language isn’t a set of facts to be learned but a medium of expressing thoughts, feelings and communicating with other people.
MUMAL SOOMRO
Via email
