Abstract
Abstract
The English language plays a pivotal role in the Pakistani education system as a compulsory course and medium of instruction. The National Curriculum of English Language 2006, still operational, is designed to build communicative competence of learners by incorporating listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. But there is still a gap in the curriculum objectives, especially in the acquisition of listening and speaking skills. In this paper, the NCEL is critically examined to determine how such objectives are being fulfilled in listening and speaking. The study is based on the interpretivist paradigm and qualitative case study approach. The data were gathered by reviewing the documents with the help of a semi-structured curriculum review checklist that included eight indicators and six open-ended questions. The checklist was based on previous studies and tailored to the purpose of the study. Patterns and gaps in the curriculum were identified using the thematic analysis. The results show that the NCEL exhibits significant imbalances. Although the contextual activities partially cover speaking skills, they are not systematically tested. More importantly, there are no listening skills at all and no standards or benchmarks. This exclusion weakens the process of the formation of communicative competence, since listening is the basis of language acquisition. Also, a lack of summative assessment of speaking supports a system that is exam oriented and focuses on reading and writing. The paper also concludes that NCEL needs to be revised in order to promote balanced development of skills. It suggests the inclusion of listening skills, authentic communicative activities, and revision of assessment activities in supporting holistic language acquisition.