Teaching English language to the students, and engaging them in the learning tasks especially non-natives, is not an easy task for the teachers in public schools of Pakistan.Teachers of English generally use Grammar Translation Methods (GTM) to teach English which affects the language skills of the students like listening, reading, writing and speaking skills. Various other factors also come into play when English language is taught to non-natives like pedagogical skills of the teachers who are also non-native speakers of English. Keeping this in view, this study was planned to explore the current teaching practices of English language teachers and how they engage students in reading comprehension skills in the context of public schools in rural areas of Gilgit-Baltistan. Qualitative study approach of case study was used to explore and observe the teaching practices of the two English language teachers teaching at grade 6. Data was collected through interviews, classroom observations, document analysis, and field notes. Likewise, focus group discussions were also arranged with the students to look at teachers teaching practices from students’ perspectives. The cases of two English language teachers revealed that they were teaching reading comprehension using GTM. That practice was not helpful for the students to get engaged in the process of reading comprehension.The teachers were not engaging students with reading comprehension strategies such as skimming, scanning, questioning, guessing and meaning making. Participant teachers taught English as a subject, but not as a language. The findings of the interviews and observations imply that teachers of English require the teaching skills of language such as reading comprehension. English teachers need support to learn how to engage students in reading comprehension skills in order to make their teaching purposeful.
Social media has become a key term in new participatory political discourse. Previous studies argued that youth is least interested in democracies and politics; hence, this study aims to explore the role of social media in increasing political participation among male and female university students. Data was collected from a sample of 340 students, chosen from equal gender proportion of five universities with purposive sampling technique to conduct quantitative survey research. The findings of study revealed a positive relationship between political participation and social media usage of students. It also confirms that majority respondents were using social media for political information but the trend is more popular among the male students as compared to females. Male participants were more involved in discussing politics and posting political content on social media, while females were more active in actionable politics like casting vote. The study concludes that social media is playing a significant role in enhancing political participation among university students and predicts a better future of democracies in social media world as new technology provides the language that young voters understand. It also realized that measures are required to attract female students towards participatory politics in Pakistan. ______
The study was conducted by checking the effect of institutional investors (Ins.Invs) on information asymmetry (Inf.Asym) and stock market liquidity (ML) in Pakistan stock exchange (PSX). The aim of the study was to analyze the Ins.Invs, Inf.Asym, and ML on the basis of most populated non-financial sectors among the other sectors listed at PSX. The purposive sampling is base for the study and has selected four sectors, that is, textile, food, chemical and pharmaceutical and mineral plus cement sector as the sample of the study. The sample comprises of 280 sample firms which constitute 70 percent of the total population. The information of the sample firms has been gathered through reliable sources like annual reports of the sample firms, business recorder, yahoo finance and the official web sites of State Bank of Pakistan and PSX. The panel firm information regression was recommended for the firm information analysis. According to the results of this model; in textile sector, institutional shareholdings (IS) and growth shows insignificant effect on market liquidity while firm size and leverage have significantly affect the ML. Further, IS, growth and leverage have insignificant while size of the firm has significantly affect the information asymmetry. In food sector, institutional shareholdings and growth shows insignificant effect on market liquidity while firm size and leverage shows noteworthy effect on market liquidity. IS, growth and leverage have insignificant effect while firm size has significant effect on information asymmetry. In chemical sector, institutional shareholdings, leverage and growth shows insignificant effect on market liquidity while firm size shows noteworthy effect on ML. Furthermore, IS and growth have unimportant effect while firm size and growth has major effect on information asymmetry. In cement sector, institutional shareholdings, firm size and growth have notably affected the ML as well as the leverage has also considerably affected the ML that shows the significance of the variables of this study. Similarly, IS, growth and leverage have momentous effect while firm size has unimportant effect on information asymmetry.