4. Eap in Nepal

MADHAV KAFLE

4. EAP IN NEPAL

Practitioner Perspectives on Multilingual Pedagogy

INTRODUCTION For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, the language ecology in South Asia was multilingual (see Canagarajah & Liyanage, 2012; Pollock, 2006). The geopolitical situation of Nepal and its long sociocultural ties with India played a key role in the introduction of English education, and, even today, ecological factors contribute greatly to Nepalese English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Following colonization, multilingualism was labelled deficient and in the name of making pedagogies scientific, norms of the monolingual colonizer were implemented in education of a local elite needed to maintain the colony. Slowly, local knowledge was trivialized, labelled unscientific, backward, and invalid. English became a key aspect of divisions in Nepal between the elites and the masses that have been maintained intact in the post-colonial era (see Ramanathan, 2005a). As availability of English education grew during early 20th century, Indian universities extended their services to Nepal and shared their expertise in teaching English using the grammar translation method with textbooks imported from India and classics of Western literature (Uprety, 1996). More recently, the educational use of English has not only contributed to maintenance of socioeconomic divisions, but has also provided access to broader areas of knowledge. Even though English is not yet officially a second language, it is used extensively, both in and outside academia, and has made technical and scientific knowledge of many fields accessible. English has become cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991) sought after by both literate and non-literate Nepalese (see Giri, 2010; Uprety, 1996), and there has been a mushrooming of private schools, colleges, and media hubs devoted to its study and use. The Nepalese government has recently made English-language teaching mandatory in schools from Grade One (Government of Nepal Ministry of Education, 2009), indicative of the growing significance of the role of English in the education of the Nepalese population. With increasing globalization, higher education is being internationalized and research is flourishing in various themes. However, despite a growing body of international research on socially sensitive EAP pedagogies, teachers’ perceptions of EAP pedagogy in periphery countries such as Nepal have been given scant attention.

EAP in Nepal EAP is one of the murkiest terms in English Language Teaching (ELT) and can refer to a diverse set of practices (Carkin, 2005; Hamp-Lyons, 2011). In Nepal, a multilingual country with at least 121 languages (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013), EAP can be broadly described using two situations identified by Carkin (2005): EAP in multilingual settings where English is used as the language of instruction throughout the education system; and EAP used in teaching specialty subjects such as medicine, technology, engineering, and science, as texts in languages other than English can be scarce in those fields. Although English is used as the default medium of instruction (MOI) in many fields in higher education in Nepal, we need to understand the nature of English use in these contexts as this might be quite different from the way English is used in so-called norm-providing countries. Even though the Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) Journal, which publishes scholarship about English teaching in Nepal, was established in 1996, when browsing through its pages it becomes evident that there are not many articles that address generally the problems of EAP (see, however, Mishra, 1999). It is only recently that we can see discussions about specific challenges involved in EAP in NELTA Yahoo group discussions and in “Nelta Choutari,” a blog magazine run by Nepalese ELT teachers. Still, these online discussions cannot be generalized to the mass of teachers, even within Nepal, who might not have easy access to computers and the internet. Discussing how to match local needs and global demands might sound like a far cry in such a scenario. Recently, however, the need to strive for local scholarship has been voiced by a number of Nepalese ELT professionals (e.g. B. K. Sharma, 2013; S. Sharma, 2013), an encouraging sign that such discussions are timely. Although there is a relative dearth of literature regarding Nepalese EAP practices, the existing literature identifies several challenges faced in EAP classrooms in Nepal: large classes and lack of adequate teaching resources (Giri, 2010); disconnect between policy and practice (Kafle, 2013a); inadequacy of professional development (Gautam, 1998); and neglect of local needs (Kafle, 2013b; S. Sharma, 2013). Other problems include determination of the variety of English to be taught, selection of methodologies that best suit Nepalese contexts (Giri, 2010), and the often enormous gaps between the proficiency of learners coming from private schools and those from public or government schools. Thus, while scholars in developed countries might be busy debating the best model of teaching academic language and literacy, for many teachers in Nepal problems are centred on more fundamental issues. One of the major challenges has been the nature of knowledge construction in so-called periphery countries like Nepal, where anything Western seems to be accepted as of superior quality (see B. K. Sharma, 2013). Although this is not a problem restricted to language teaching per se, and can apply to many other disciplines, it is a problem far too important to be ignored. This chapter explores major challenges faced by EAP professionals in Nepal: the development of socially sensitive pedagogies, and negotiation of tensions that arise in this process.