English Medium Problems in Pakistan: Why Students Still Struggle

Walk into any "English-medium" school from Lahore to Karachi to Peshawar, and you'll see the same scene: students copying English sentences from the board, reciting them aloud, and passing exams with flying colours. But ask a Class 8 student to describe their weekend in English without a script, and most will freeze. After 8–10 years of so-called English-medium education, why can't our students actually speak English?

This is the English-medium trap. We've labelled our schools English-medium, but we haven't actually built an English-learning environment. Let's break down honestly what's going wrong, and what teachers and parents can do about it.

The Label vs. The Reality

Most Pakistani schools call themselves English-medium because the textbooks are in English. That's it. The teaching, the explanations, the playground conversations, even the staff room chatter, all happen in Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, or Pashto. The result? Students memorise English without ever using it as a language.

A school I visited in Karachi proudly displayed "English-Medium Institution" on its gate. Inside the Class 6 classroom, the teacher was explaining Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice… entirely in Urdu. Students could define "mercy" in Urdu but couldn't form a single original sentence using the word.

What you can do:

• Set a rule: at least 60% of instruction time happens in English, even if you translate later.
• Create "English-only zones" — the library, morning assembly, or one corner of the classroom.
• Train teachers to use simpler English rather than switching to Urdu for every difficult concept.

Rote Learning Is Killing Real English

The biggest English medium problem in Pakistan is that we test memorisation, not communication. Students learn essays by heart titled "My Best Friend" or "A Visit to Hill Station" and reproduce them word-for-word. The Punjab and Sindh board curriculums still reward this approach in exams.

The outcome is predictable: a child who scores 85 in English can't write an original email, give directions to a tourist, or argue a point in class.

What actually works:

• Replace one essay-memorisation task per week with a spoken task — a 2-minute talk on "what I ate today" or "my favourite cricket match".
• Use open-ended questions in tests: "Write a letter to a friend you haven't met" instead of "Write a letter to your friend about your school."
• Reward fluency over grammar perfection in junior classes. Confidence first, accuracy later.

Teachers Are Set Up to Fail

Let's be honest: many English teachers in our schools were themselves taught English through rote. Expecting them to suddenly run communicative, conversation-based classrooms is unfair. Add to that 40–50 students per class, no audio-visual resources, and a syllabus that must be "completed" before exams — and you have a recipe for translation-based teaching.

A principal at a mid-tier school in Multan told me her English teachers spend nearly 6 hours every week just preparing worksheets, comprehension passages, and grammar exercises. That's time they could be spending on actual teaching.

Practical fixes:

• Give teachers ready-made, level-appropriate reading passages and speaking prompts so they don't reinvent the wheel weekly.
• Schedule short, weekly peer-teaching sessions where teachers practise English with each other.
• Use AI-based tools to generate differentiated worksheets in minutes instead of hours. Platforms like Campulse.io are designed for exactly this — Pakistani teachers can generate comprehension passages, vocabulary exercises, and oral assessment prompts aligned with their board syllabus in under a minute.

The Mother Tongue Isn't the Enemy

Here's an uncomfortable truth for many elite schools: banning Urdu in the classroom does not improve English. In fact, decades of research on ESL challenges, including studies in Pakistani contexts, show that students learn a second language better when their first language is respected and used strategically.

This is where bilingual education comes in. Instead of treating Urdu as a shameful crutch, use it as a bridge. A child who understands a concept in Urdu first can then express it in English with much more confidence.

Try this in your classroom:

• Introduce new vocabulary by giving the Urdu meaning once, then use only English for the rest of the lesson.
• Encourage students to think in Urdu but answer in English — the gap between the two is where real learning happens.
• For weak students, allow Urdu in rough drafts. Translate to English in the final version. This reduces fear of making mistakes.

We're Ignoring Listening and Speaking

Pakistani English education focuses almost entirely on reading and writing. Listening and speaking — the two skills that actually matter in a job interview, a university lecture abroad, or even a customer service call — are barely taught.

There's no listening section in most board exams. No oral component beyond a nervous, one-minute viva. So teachers don't teach them. Students don't practise them. And then we wonder why our graduates struggle in English-speaking workplaces.

What schools can do today:

• Add a weekly 15-minute "listening period" — play a short English podcast, news clip, or story and ask 3 questions afterwards.
• Introduce "Speaking Fridays" where each student speaks for 60 seconds on a random topic.
• Use simple debates, role-plays, and storytelling sessions. Even Class 3 students can do this with the right prompts.

The Confidence Gap Is Bigger Than the Skill Gap

After teaching hundreds of Pakistani students, I'm convinced the biggest barrier isn't grammar or vocabulary — it's fear. Fear of being laughed at. Fear of mispronouncing a word. Fear of being told "your English is weak."

We've created a culture where speaking imperfect English is worse than not speaking at all. So students stay silent. And silence means no practice. And no practice means no improvement.

Build confidence by:

• Banning peer mockery for English mistakes. Enforce it strictly.
• Praising effort publicly: "Ali tried a new word today!" matters more than correcting his tense.
• Letting students record themselves on phones and listen back — they're far less critical of themselves than of their classmates.

Moving Forward: A Realistic Plan

Fixing English education in Pakistan won't happen through a new policy or a fancier textbook. It will happen one classroom, one teacher, one confident student at a time.

Start small: pick one section above and try it for a month. Measure not just exam marks but how many students voluntarily speak English in class. That's your real metric.

And if you're a teacher drowning in worksheet preparation, marking, and lesson planning — remember, your energy is best spent teaching, not formatting. Tools like Campulse.io help Pakistani teachers reclaim those 10–15 hours every week by automating the boring stuff: generating board-aligned worksheets, comprehension exercises, oral assessment rubrics, and even differentiated activities for mixed-ability classrooms.

Try Campulse Today

If you're an educator, school leader, or parent who believes our students deserve better than the English-medium trap, we'd love to show you what's possible. Campulse.io is built specifically for schools in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and the Middle East — with our curriculums, our languages, and our classroom realities in mind.

👉 Book a free demo at campulse.io/demo and see how AI can give your English teachers their time, energy, and creativity back. Because the solution to better English isn't more pressure — it's better tools, smarter teaching, and a little more patience with our students.