Teachers’ Perception regarding the Effect of Curriculum and Examination System on Pakistani College Students’ English Language Performance

A successful curriculum and examination system involves all the stakeholders to create its ownership. Curriculum for schools and colleges in Pakistan is generally planned without consulting the end users i.e. teachers, who therefore, cannot deliver effectively. To find out teachers’ perspective in this regard, focused group discussions with two groups of teachers, one male and the other female were conducted. One curriculum officer responsible for designing and implementation of English curriculum was also interviewed to get the government viewpoint on curriculum designing. Findings revealed that college teachers’ didn’t consider the curriculum and examination system useful for English language learning and teaching in Pakistani colleges. They claimed that the prevailing system has failed to address practical problems and difficulties faced by the teachers in the implementation of the curriculum at the college level. The generalizations that can be drawn from the study are that it is crucial to take into account teachers’ points of view in the development of curriculum and the examination system. Teachers’ involvement will create ownership and they will play their active role in teaching English with more devotion and commitment. This will lead to significant improvement in the ELT provision at college level in Pakistan. Keywords: Curriculum, English Language Teachers, Language Learnin

An Asynchronous Replication Model to Improve Data Available into a Heterogeneous System

Data replication is an important technique for high level data availability, especially applied for distributed systems. To enhance the data access and data reliability, data replication is one of the most important aspects. This paper is proposed a asynchronous replication model. This model also supports heterogeneous system which is currently a very promising system. In our proposed model the main server and replication servers are loosely coupled. Since the structure is loosely coupled and asynchronous model thus there is less dependency on each server. Moreover the proposed model is supporting heterogeneous system, so it will be highly cost minimizing solution for efficient data replication. Keywords: Data replication, Data Persistency, Asynchronous, Heterogeneous Replication

Pakistani Students' and Teachers' Beliefs about English Language Learning at School Level: An Analytical Study

Beliefs whether they are of the learner or the teacher are very crucial in language learning. For the learner they are important in defining his behavior towards learning and for teachers they delineate the ways of teaching. A possible conformity or clash in the beliefs of the two can have an important effect on overall learning process and outcomes. This study seeks to document Pakistani teachers' and students' beliefs regarding learning and teaching English at school level and find out the possible similarities and differences among them. Data was collected through a closed questionnaire and interviews. The framework developed by Lightbown & Spada (1993) was used for the questionnaire and the same was reworded for interviews. The results indicate that beliefs regarding learning English held by teachers and students match in four respects, while differ in six categories. The study finally looks at what implications these beliefs have for teaching English in Pakistani schools. Keywords: Beliefs, Language Learning, English Language Teaching in Pakistan

Distributed Hash Tables in P2P Network: Detection and Prevention of Threats and Vulnerability

Currently the peer-to-peer search focuses on efficient hash lookup systems which can be use in building more complex distributed systems. These system works well when their algorithms are executed in right direction but generally they don’t consider how to handle misbehaving nodes. In our paper we considers different sorts of security problems which are inherent in peer-to peer systems based on distributed hash lookup systems. We examine different types of problems that this kind of systems might face, taking examples from existing systems. Here we propose some design principles for detecting as well preventing those problems. Keywords- Distributed hash lookup systems, verifiable system invariants, verifiable key assignment, Server selection in routing

Teachers’ Perception regarding the Effect of Curriculum and Examination System on Pakistani College Students’ English Language Performance

A successful curriculum and examination system involves all the stakeholders to create its ownership. Curriculum for schools and colleges in Pakistan is generally planned without consulting the end users i.e. teachers, who therefore, cannot deliver effectively. To find out teachers’ perspective in this regard, focused group discussions with two groups of teachers, one male and the other female were conducted. One curriculum officer responsible for designing and implementation of English curriculum was also interviewed to get the government viewpoint on curriculum designing. Findings revealed that college teachers’ didn’t consider the curriculum and examination system useful for English language learning and teaching in Pakistani colleges. They claimed that the prevailing system has failed to address practical problems and difficulties faced by the teachers in the implementation of the curriculum at the college level. The generalizations that can be drawn from the study are that it is crucial to take into account teachers’ points of view in the development of curriculum and the examination system. Teachers’ involvement will create ownership and they will play their active role in teaching English with more devotion and commitment. This will lead to significant improvement in the ELT provision at college level in Pakistan. Keywords: Curriculum, English Language Teachers, Language Learnin

Learner Centeredness Based Methodology- A Motivation Enhancer in the Development of Cohesiveness in Emotive Writing at the Undergraduate Level in Pakistani Universities

For non-native learners of a language the most challenging task seems to express themselves powerfully and appropriately both in oral and written forms. This lack of command is often frustrating, hence demotivating. Lowering of motivation level, in turn, hinders the development of communication skills, more so in case of written expressions. This was borne out by personal experience of the researchers while teaching English as a second language at tertiary level in the universities of Pakistan. It is also felt that the teaching methodology used at this level, which is generally teacher-centered, is to partly blame for lack of proficiency in English in Pakistan because it denies the learners opportunity to practice communication skills. Learner-centred approach, instead, does the exactly opposite, providing ample chances to the learners to communicate, which in turn, enhance their motivation level to learn. Thus, the challenge in ELT in Pakistan can be tackled by bring about a paradigm shift in teaching methodology. This paper aims to experiment the learner-centeredness approach as a means of enhancing motivation to see whether the shift in the methodology can offer a solution to the long-standing issue. For the purpose of this study,50 students at FAST-NU Lahore Campus were chosen for experimental study following learner-centered activities. Their feedback was obtained through a questionnaire after the experimental teaching. The study demonstrated clearly that the learner-centered methodology was effective in enhancing the level of motivation for learning English. The learners’ opinions showed that their writing improved a great deal and they felt confident in expressing themselves as a consequence of practice they received. The study on the basis of its finding recommends that the learner-centered approach should be applied at large scale to bring about a qualitative change in ELT provision in Pakistan. However, for this purpose the teachers have to be trained to understand the theoretical underpinning of this approach and should be equipped with a repertoire of techniques to implement this rather new paradigm. For this purpose, large scale training program needs to be implemented to achieve fruitful results. Key Words: Motivation Enhancer, Learner Centeredness, Emotive Writing, Cohesiveness

Implementing Sociocultural Approach in Teaching English as a Second Language in Pakistan: Challenges and Remedies

It has long been established that teaching of English in Pakistan, especially at school and college level, does not provide the learners with communicative competency generally, thus, the majority of our learners cannot speak English effectively. Sociocultural theory offers a radical perspective of teaching English as a second language, turning this whole teaching-learning process into a collaborative endeavor. This study aims at experimenting this innovative approach in our context to see if this approach is practical or not, and what are the challenges and their remedies in doing so. To carry out this study, experimental research was employed including pre and post-test design. The data collected quantitatively at first, was evaluated qualitatively, later. The findings of the study clearly demonstrate that speaking skill of learners improved significantly when English was taught under the sociocultural guidelines making the learners to reach to their maximum potential by learning and developing collaboratively. However, there were certain challenges in implementing sociocultural language teaching which need to be overcome to make this teaching learning process more effective and constructive. The study suggests that English language teaching approaches, textbooks and examination system should be language oriented and speaking skill enhancement supportive to enable the learners to perform as confident and efficient English speakers. Keywords: sociocultural, implementation, challenges, remedie

Alleviation of cadmium toxicity and growth enhancement of helianthusannuus and triticum aestivum seedlings through bacterial inoculation

Two Cd-resistant bacterial growth strains MA-9 (Aeromonas) and MA19 (affinities uncertain), which were isolated from ICI effluents, were used to inoculate seeds ifTriticum aestivum (wheat) and Helianthus annuus (sunflower). Both inoculated and non-inoculated seeds were germinated and grown under different concentrations (0, 1, 2 and 3 mM) of CdCl2 for 10 days. Under Cd-stress conditions, bacteria-inoculated plants had better germination and growth than non-inoculated treatments. Bacterial growth enhancement if seedlings was associated with reduced Cd uptake