An Ethnographic Study of Novice English Language Teachers’ Challenges Faced While Teaching English as Foreign Language in Pakistan

The study deals with the challenges that newly appointed L2 teachers encounter while teaching English in Public Sector University. There are a few ethnographical studies done in Pakistan that explore the challenges novice teachers face and the strategies they use to cope with these challenges while teaching in university classroom. The present study has taken place in University of Sindh Jamshoro. Qualitative research design has been used, the data collection instruments were classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The participants were in-service L2 novice teachers; 5 teachers were observed while teaching in classroom, and two of them were interviewed. Purposive sampling was used in order to select the participants for this study. The data was analyzed through thematic data analysis. It was found that the novice teachers begin to face the challenges from the day of their employment due to absence of formal instructions on the first day of joining. Their challenges included cultural shock, large classes, level and educational background of the learners, outdated course, infrastructure, lack of resources and assessment.