English immersion at middle-tier private schools in Karachi, Pakistan: a case study of students’ additive v. subtractive language learning experience

Abstract

This article seeks to locate Pakistan’s middle-tier English-medium private schools in the global educational discourse on immersion and submersion. Using qualitative and quantitative data from a case study conducted in Karachi, it highlights the effects of English-medium education on native speakers of the national language, Urdu, among the new middle class. The study findings illustrate the immersive nature of schooling and the importance placed on the English language by key stakeholders, such as administrators, English teachers, and parents, so much so that the majority of surveyed students prefer to do their pleasure reading in English instead of their high-status home language, Urdu. This heritage loss, acutely expressed by Urdu teachers in particular, shows that the students’ initial additive learning experience becomes subtractive due to the extended, unabated exposure to schooling in the English language and the increasing incorporation of English at home by Urdu-speaking parents at the behest of school officials. This research is important because earlier studies have focused on ‘Urdu imperialism’ over the minoritized regional languages in government or low-fee private schools whereas this study demonstrates the erosion of Urdu, the lingua franca across Pakistan, among the new middle class in the face of English’s linguistic imperialism.

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