Chinese as a Mandatory Foreign Language at a Higher Education Institution in Pakistan

Universities in Pakistan offer Chinese language courses to prepare students for ample employment-related opportunities in Pak-China projects, Chinese university scholarships, learner exchanges and mobility programmes. This article provides an interpretive policy analysis, focused on comparing the interpretations of policymakers and foreign language students concerning the aims and implementation of a mandatory Chinese language learning policy introduced at a major public engineering university in Pakistan. The findings reveal that while most aims stated in the policy artefacts match the stakeholders’ interpretations of the policy aims, the students’ interpretations differed slightly regarding policy implementation, mainly concerning the medium of instruction and class size, affecting student motivation and levels of learning. The article discusses to what extent such a policy entails implementation challenges.