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Socio-cultural perspectives of literacy practices and Language politics in Pakistan: ** Abstract ** This paper explores learners’ identity issues with reference to language teaching in Pakistan. Pakistan’s education policy with a colonial heritage offers multiple aspects of debate. This paper is an attempt to see socio-cultural perspectives of literacy practices and language acquisition in different setups of class, society and culture in Pakistan. The focus of paper is the teaching of multiple languages as medium of instruction which gives an insight into the social stratification along academic lines in the Pakistani society. This work will help in developing a better insight into the academic practices along social lines and can be used for the future reforms and academic liberation in Pakistan. ** Background ** Pakistan is a multilingual country where mono-lingualism is an exception; initially carved out of the British subcontinent in 1947, a land of 225 languages. This colonial legacy is still apparent in many aspects in Pakistan. Education system has strong colonial roots, which are evident especially in language teaching and learning practices in Pakistan. It is interesting to see that language teaching and medium choice by learners is not simply a choice practiced freely by the learners but it has social, and cultural reasons and outcomes too. English, Urdu, and regional languages offer different social and cultural insights into the social makeup of Pakistani society. ** Objective ** The objective of this paper is to see for the socio-cultural implications of multiple language policy for education in Pakistan. I am particularly interested in the gradual shift from regional languages at an earlier stage of schooling to a foreign language (i.e. English) at a higher level. This is important to find out the socio-cultural aspects of language learning and teaching in post-colonial Pakistan and their impact on the identity and learning efficiency of learners. ** Method ** This paper is based on document analysis relating to different language issues in the colonial and post-colonial Pakistan to find out the multiple aspect of language teaching in Pakistan. ** Implications ** English is taught as a major educational language in Pakistan along with a number of other regional/national languages in Pakistan. This paper will help in addressing the social and cultural impacts of language learning on learners’ identity in order to develop an efficient way of learning and teaching the languages in Pakistan at different level, which should be culturally and socially informed.
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