Bilingual Teaching Practices at Pakistani Schools: Examination of Strategies and Implications

Abstract

The present paper aims to explore bilingual practices like code-mixing and code-switching in Pakistani schools by analyzing the linguistic patterns used by the teachers in their conversations in the classroom of compulsory subjects: Urdu and islaymiat. Data is collected from Army Public School Rawalpindi through observations by taking audio recordings of ten lectures of both subjects, five of each subject. The data was analyzed from the perspective of linguistic and functional practices of code-mixing. Findings revealed that the majority of the teachers and students are observed to be involved in bilingual practices in the classroom settings to clarify, provide descriptions, reiterate make general instructions, etc. This study will be helpful for future researchers, in understanding the various functions and practices related to code-mixing in the sphere of academic teaching/learning process.