The Making of Benazir Income Support Program

The Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), introduced in 2008-09, is a unique cash support scheme for economically stressed families. Its uniqueness arises from several facets. The cash transfers are provided only to women aged over 18 years and have been ever married. It is unconditional and aimed at supplementing income as opposed to alleviating poverty. It was politically neutral, given that the facility to identify potential beneficiaries was extended to all parliamentarians, irrespective of party affiliation. A set of filters, applied electronically, ensured objectivity in beneficiary selection. Disbursement mechanism was automated to ensure minimal leakage. This paper outlines the process of the preparatory work that went into designing BISP – the conceptual debates, the beneficiary identification and disbursement procedures, etc. – involving a combination of high quality research with political decision making. It also addresses the debates surrounding BISP, cites independent empirical studies that show that the parliamentarian-based beneficiary selection mechanism was efficient and equitable and did indeed cover the deserving, and also responds to the variety of criticisms. ______

Improving the Teaching of Writing Narratives at Lower Secondary Level in Private School of Karachi

This study aims to improve the teaching of writing narratives in an English language classroom. By using a qualitative method and a collaborative action research, the study was conducted in a private school in Karachi, Pakistan. In this study, the primary research participant was an English language teacher who was teaching English language at lower secondary level. There were five students who were the secondary research participants of the study. Their work was analyzed to see whether there was any improvement in their written narratives that was taught by both researcher and the research participant. In our English language classrooms, teaching of writing is done in a very traditional manner where teachers focus to product rather than the process of the writing. Teachers do not pay attention on writing and rewriting in order to improve the children's work. Mostly, the first draft of children's work is considered as final draft. Children encounter problems while writing because they are not provided with opportunities to develop their writing skills and they are often asked to write about topics which are not relevant to their lives. Thus, writing is best learnt in a natural setting with topics that are pertinent to their lives. Teachers need to provide a variety of experiences to children while teaching writing skills. The purpose of the study was to improve a teacher's teaching of writing narratives and to guide him/her to introduce above motioned strategy to make a shift from product to process of writing and thus, transform students into independent writers. For this study, reflective journal, observations and interviews were used to collect data. The teaching of writing narratives was found to be a useful activity as it builds practical and theoretical knowledge of the research participant. It was found that children best learnt to write when they are asked to write about topics that are relevant to their lives. Another observation was that the use of scenario to motivate children to write is less effective because it limits their creativity and they end up producing similar kind of texts. The use of writing frameworks and the steps of PA facilitate the teaching and learning of writing skills in an English language classroom. Furthermore, this study is significant for ELT in the context of Pakistan where writing, in English, is regarded as the most difficult skill among other teaching language skills. The finding of this study will