The activities I created for LT 538, Design for Learning Language Pragmatics, are set in the context of teaching Urdu as a foreign language in the US to heritage language learners. Both activities bring nuances on the surface that highlight the 'change' languages undergo because of their social nature. For example, the first activity titled “Thank you or Shukriya?: Two Languages, One Identity shows the phenomenon of code-mixing and translanguaging. This activity creation expands on the contexts of a country, Pakistan, where Urdu is originally used and mixed with English in everyday context. The use of authentic materials for this activity reflects a unique variety of language that heavily blends two languages. Use of the word, thank you, is more common than Urdu word, Shukriya. This translanguaging practice has a negative public perception and gives rise to concerns among people to preserve the language in its ‘pure’ expression. The activity questions the fallacy of language purism and linguistic protectionism (Brunstad, 2003) and stresses that languages can blend and influence each other over time such as Urdu and English. This activity emphasizes that students do not need to make strict choices when communicating but in fact with bilingual capabilities, learners can blend languages and negotiate the use of languages.

The second activity from the LT 538 course with the same context is titled, The Role of Silence in Negotiation, An activity for Intermediate level learners of Urdu language. This activity is designed to teach silence as a paralinguistic and pragmatic feature of language, following The The intercultural, pragmatic, and interactional competence (IPIC) model (Sykes et al. 2020). This model with its four quadrants (knowledge, analysis, subjectivity, and awareness) shows not only the non-linear nature of languages but also is an example of language as a tool of negotiation that is used in a context. For example, silence itself is simply defined as “muteness” (Merriam-Webster) but it conveys several meanings with specific cultural contexts ranging from disagreement to resistance. The emotive and referential functions of silence in the activity show that language is not a static noun-like object, but rather something verb-like action that we co-create together. It is languaging we do. Both activities support the idea that language is an emergent process that we create instead of a performative product that we get at the end (Swain & Deters, 2007). Another important aspect of these activities from LT 538 is the stress on agency of learners that is “paramount as your students become capable of expressing their voice” (Brown and Lee, 2015, p. 459). It emphasizes that instead of giving learners ultimate best models and standards of language, learners must have their choice to take control of their own learning process ((Lippi-Green, 2012).

As a part of the course Language in the Context, LT 534, I wrote a comparative context analysis paper titled Bridging Language Divides and Promoting Multilingualism: A Comparative Study of ESL in Pakistan and Punjabi Heritage Homeschooling in the US. It dives deep into two language teaching and learning contexts, i.e. homeschooling Punjabi in the US and English as an ESL in Pakistan. Due to my interest in studying the decline of multilingualism in the world and especially in the language learning context of Pakistan, I decided to interview a former student from Pakistan who zoomed in her experience of learning English as a second language in the context where it is considered a “standard” but not taught as a language. As the participant reported, “AV aids are not used in the class” or “Class tests are still limited to MCQs, true-false, and give a short answer to the question type of questions” (Halima, 2023). These instructional methods impact not only the learning of language for learners, but also make the future of a language, ultimately causing language subordination and linguistic prejudice (Ortega, 2009; 2018). One of the examples of linguistic prejudice is the case of Punjabi, a regional language that is spoken by majority of people but is minoritized in education. The second context of this report probes into the consequences and reports that learners in the U.S. have limited language learning resources for Punjabi. This paper highlights that languages are dynamic systems, constantly evolving in response to social and environmental changes such as mixing Urdu with English; the second context of analysis also emphasizes the critical need for supporting multilingual education to counteract language subordination and promote linguistic diversity in the world. 

Bringing language standardization and linguistic prejudice more into light, I prepared a final report for the course, LT 544, Second Language acquisition, titled Language Policies and their Implications. This theoretical report discusses the role of language policies in shaping the social identity of learners. It presents three cases from different parts of the world including Sudan, East Timor, and Pakistan. Through this project, I explored languages policies in educational settings of these three countries that are causing the loss and marginalization of regional languages by creating linguistic hierarchies. For example, Sudan with its 136 languages is stuck with Arabic as an ultimate-solution language. East Timor’s language policies do not address the plurilingual identity of people by imposing Portuguese and Tetum as their official language. Pakistan on the other hand, with its multilingual and multicultural background, put all the stress on English in their language policies. By examining these three cases, the report highlights the need for inclusive language policies that recognize and support the dynamic nature of languages. It calls for a reevaluation of language policies to promote linguistic diversity and resist standardizing linguistic standardization and hegemony.