A Study of Pakistan’s Various Reform Policies Regarding Islamic Seminaries

ABSTRACT: Pakistan is an Islamic country based on Islamic ideology where society has an emotional attachment with religion, hence an expanded network of Dini Modaris [traditional institutions of Islamic learning] is prevailing in urban as well as in rural areas of the country; where the teaching- learning process remains continue in a traditional way. While on other hand, at the same time, modern education system is followed by government and non-government run institutions. These two different systems with different ideologies and pedagogical techniques have produced two different social classes with different world views about the way Pakistan should be managed. This situation of education system is worrying. In an Islamic welfare state, ideally speaking, serious efforts are required to be done in order to eliminate the gulf between the two systems entirely having antagonistic approaches. In such perspective, this paper is aimed to study the efforts and practical steps, taken for the reforms and development of Dini Modaris by various governments of Pakistan as per their policies.

Enhancing the Writing Skills of Grade Seven Students in a Private School in Karachi

This action research, in the qualitative research paradigm, is an effort to help the students of grade VII to develop English writing skills in a private school in Karachi. Six students with their English language teacher participated in the study. Through purposive sampling the participants were selected from different levels of learners. The study was conducted in six weeks, working five days every week. Activities and materials for teaching writing skills were prepared according to the emerging needs of the students. Data were collected through two different diagnostic tests comprising: multiple choice questions and a short essay question. In addition, interviews, classroom observations, documents’ analysis and field notes were also employed as data collection tools. The analysis of the learners’ work revealed that learners had difficulty in vocabulary knowledge to support their writing, getting frequent feedback on their work, approaching different strategies to learn writing skills, verb tense agreement for sentence construction, and reading for writing. It was found that teaching strategies such as differentiated instruction strategies, scaffolding instructions, collaboration with competitors, reading-integrated writing, and use of written, oral and peer feedback provided better opportunities for the learners to enhance their writing skills. These approaches also helped me and the teacher to improve our teaching styles. The study offers valuable methodological contributions for future researchers in the field. The findings of this research will also be helpful for teachers who are involved in teaching English writing skills.