Language Policies and Practices in ELT Classrooms

Résumé fourni par la source

Education language policy (ELP) is a growing but disputed global concern since it has been diversely created and practiced in schools, including English language teaching (ELT) classrooms. In Nepalʼs context, the schools at local government level have been creating varied ELP and mediums of instruction (MoI) and implementing them haphazardly. In this milieu, the chapter explores the creation, interpretation, and appropriation of ELP in basic schoolsʼ ELT classrooms having a multilingual environment. Adopting “LPP Onion” as the theoretical lens and “critical ethnography” as the research design, the study is situated in two basic schools (public and private) following convenient-purposive sampling, located in the Vyas municipality of Gandaki Province. The information accumulated through observations of two ELT classrooms, one focused group discussion with teachers, and five in-depth interviews with teachers and policymakers over six months was critically triangulated, interpreted, and analyzed. The study revealed two major findings: diverse ELT classrooms—conflicting ideologies, policies, practices, and pedagogical tensions; and discrepancies between public and private schools with EMI policy as the prime cause. The study recommends that policymakers and arbiters require ample interactions and critical ideological awareness rather than a random resolution of ELP in multilingual ELT classrooms.