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Siddiqova N.
ESL instructor Uzbekistan state world languages university
Uzbekistan, Tashkent
LANGUAGE POLICY PROPOSAL
Annotation: This article is about the proposal that focuses on improving teachers' knowledge in the school № 352, which is situated in Sergili, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In this article, the lesson and learning process, pupils' participations as well as textbooks are observed. Having taken into consideration teachers and students' needs and comments, I make a proposal in order to take action for some problems at school.
As language is the most important belonging of individuals to communicate in exchanging ideas, and sharing feelings, information, it plays a significant role on a daily life of people. These days, English is utilized as an international language for the field of business, tourism, education, political and economic relationship. According to Broughton (2003), English is an international language and most people use this language in the world. Obviously, English language is being learned broadly either for specific or general purpose in educational establishments from the nursery school up to high school and universities. Both all schoolteachers and university teachers have to attend mandatory in-service teacher-training courses in every four to five years. However, although these courses are mandatory, they are not able to meet the requirements of the new curricula (Huttova &Silova (2002). Besides that, practicing teachers should attend in teacher-training programs organized by Uzbekistan Teachers of English Association (UzTEA) the Regional English language Office of the American Embassy (RELO) and British Council. Unfortunately, not all teachers are not able to attend this course. According to the law in 2013 adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan, CEFR for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment is required but it is not mandatory. I think that it should be compulsory for all teachers in Uzbekistan to upgrade the teaching and linguist skills of practicing teachers.
I never underwent any practice or experience in language planning policy process, I considered that choosing one of issues existing in the educational sphere of Uzbekistan was quite complex. Specifically, this proposal focuses on improving teachers' knowledge in the school № 352, which is situated in Sergili, Tashkent. This school provides from 1st grade up to 11 th grade pupils with ESL teaching. There are 40 teachers who are working and 700 pupils studying in this school. The problem that needs to be tackled is organize a three- month teacher-training course. There are several reasons why I chose that issue: one of them is that, teachers face up to some issues in teaching, in terms of taking, designing
and assessing control work, teachers' lack of knowledge in using textbooks or some misunderstanding in syllabus. Especially, according to my observations at school, the textbooks that is made up for 10th and 11th grade pupils seem challenging for EFL teachers. When I asked their comments about textbooks, most of them complained about its difficulty, lack of grammar instructions, high range of academic words and the mess in the sequence of exercises. However, here, all complaints about the textbook would be the sign of the inexperience and lack of knowledge of teachers in teaching and language skills. Additionally, according to the Presidential decree № 1875, the analysis of the current system of organizing language learning shows that learning standards, curricula and textbooks do not fully meet the current requirements, particularly in the use of advanced information and media technologies. Education is mainly conducted in traditional methods.
Administrative setting
It shows that further development of a continuum of foreign languages learning at all levels of education; improving skills of teachers and provision of modern teaching materials are required. In this law, it is envisaged that university modules, especially in technical and international areas, will be offered in English and other foreign languages at higher education institutions. More precisely, 10th and 11th grade learners are considered as almost graduates and they have to apply for higher educational institutions and universities to gain a good job in their preference. That is why, every single learner have to learn English at B1+ level, surely, it requires huge knowledge and experience from teachers to achieve great progress in terms teaching and learning. Obviously, the implementation of this language-planning proposal is necessary to improve the quality of teaching and learning system.
Goals and objectives
To train teachers in order to enhance their experience in teaching and linguistic skills in target language;
-I- To make easy to use tenth and eleventh grade students with the help of teacher training courses;
-I- To make teachers able to use supplementary materials to clarify in grammar section.
There are some existing resources, which are necessary for implementation of this problem. For instance, teacher-training materials such as books, handouts are available in any cites or websites. However, teacher-trainers should be supported to print out available materials to use them for training. Hew and Bush (2007) states that computers, laptops, software and the internet can be examples of technological devices that could be integrated in the lesson. Therefore, the school should provide teachers with computers, projectors, speakers, whiteboard, electronic board and headphones to work on themselves. Insufficient resources make more complex to teach teachers. Therefore, they
need to be immediately implemented for teacher -training courses so that they could achieve good result.
Recommendations
❖ To organize special teacher-training course that focus on working with tenth and eleventh grade pupils' textbooks and appropriate methods in teaching twice in a week.
In this course, teachers will be able:
> To upgrade 4 skills in target language
> To apply interactive and CLT methods in practice;
> To use technology as far as possible during the lesson;
> To prepare pupils to pass in Olympiads and entrance exams as they are school graduates;
> To do and use supplementary materials to cover completely grammar
parts;
> To prepare an effective lesson plan for each lesson.
> To use differentiated instruction while preparing lesson plans in order to work with lower-level students.
It is true that the implementation of these recommendation is complicated, which requires the huge amount of time. Firstly, administers (school) have to find experts to organize teacher-training course. After that, teachers must be obliged to study in this course that takes approximately 3 months. During this period, teachers are taught to develop four skills in target language. Along with developing language skills, they are supposed to use different methods and learn to prepare an effective lesson plan, using differentiated instruction, and searching supplementary materials for each lesson. If they practice with experts in such assignments, they will have a successful and effective lesson with pupils. However, the aspects that teachers will learn should be planned properly in order to achieve success.
Target skills of current language policy proposal are to develop four skills of teachers'(listening, speaking, reading and writing) in target language, their methodological skills and psychological approach on teenager pupils. At the end of the course, teachers can conduct lessons successfully with well-prepared lesson plans. Besides, they will be able to use differentiated instruction while teaching mixed-level learners. Additionally, teachers will enrich their lessons through using supplementary materials and activities to teach a topic. Hopefully, they will not teach pupils in a traditional method while they can use several methods such as CLT or interactive methods to grab pupils' attention.
Assessments are demanded that measure the methodological knowledge and language skills of teachers. During the training, they should conduct several lessons in different topics based on their lesson plan, which they prepared. As a result, they can be assessed according to some criteria created by teacher trainers, and they can get feedback from trainers and teachers. To make sure, it gives a chance to make aware of their mistakes in teaching and working on those
mistakes. Tomlinson (2001) believes that formative assessment is Bnore important rather than summative ones. They approach to evaluate teachers individually instead of comparing to one another. It is clear that this type of formative assessment contributes to develop their methodological approach in teaching.
Moreover, teachers should be required to take an exam, which checks their four skills in target language as well as methodological knowledge. Based on their results, teachers are evaluated whether they can work with 10th and 11th grade students successfully or not. These type of assessments should be implemented at the end of the training as a summative assessment. The teachers should be given explanation about the summative assessment alongside its essential principles (reliability, validity, practicality, authenticity and washback). Brown (2010) asserts that there are five major criteria for "testing a test", and they are reliability, validity, practicality, authenticity and washback.
Actors
According to Cooper (1989) that there are three kinds of actors, namely, formal elites, influential and authorities. As my proposal is micro level language policy proposal, more clearly, actors who imply this course and solve that issue can be Ministry of Public Education, Ministry of Finance, School administration, teacher-trainers and teachers. They have different roles in the process of implementation. For instance, Ministry of Public Education function is looking into this language policy proposal, and informing and explaining other governmental organizations about the significance of organizing training courses. Ministry of Finance is responsible for providing financially to implement this language policy proposal. School administration should persuade Ministry of Finance to cover all needed expenses for implementing the current proposal by presenting and supporting their clear objectives. Besides, school administration should appoint training days for teachers. In training days, teachers do not need to conduct lessons in order to learn and prepare tasks completely. School should require both linguistic knowledge and teaching skills. However, School administration also should create atmosphere for their teachers and provide teachers with all necessary resources for conducting a successful lesson.
The head of English Methodology Union in the district where school is situated should appoint teacher trainers. They should create syllabus for a 3-month course to achieve progress in training and teaching teachers. Their responsibility is prepare well-knowledgeable and experienced teachers for the society.
Teachers should feel their responsibility in front of pupils, school and society. As they prepare each pupil as a future generation for developing society, they do not have right to make a mistake in teaching learners. Teachers should attend lessons regularly and perform the given assignments with great dedication so that they can be best and perfect in their field.
Timeline
Zhao and Baldauf (2008) classified planning timeline into five stages, namely, initiation, involvement, influence, intervention and implementation. However, this proposal is arranged for several phases. In the 1st stage, school administration should send written proposal for Ministry of Finance in order to be provided with funding. After that, Ministry of Education and school can imply collaboratively to appoint teacher trainer expert for three months by sending a written request for UzTEA (Uzbekistan Teachers of English Association). These phases is considered as initiations and involvement parts of proposal. When funding is covered, teacher trainings begin in this implementation stage. During the first month, teachers listen to lectures by trainers. The second month of the training continues as a practical stage. In this stage, teachers put into practice what they learned in the last month and observed by teacher trainers. In the third month, they have to submit some assignments and examination that measure their linguistic and methodological knowledge and they will be assessed based on a particular rubric. Having implemented all stages, the results should be submitted to the Ministry of Educationand Ministry of Finance to show that the funding was spent for beneficial and successful purpose.
Funding
This language policy proposal is vitally important to develop teaching and learning process in public schools. If Ministry of Finance covers all needs of this training, it will be better for both the budget of teacher-trainers and teachers. Teacher trainers can easily supply teachers with handouts and teaching materials and conduct lessons in depth because of the availability of the place and other essential materials. However, according to the decree adopted on December, 2012, firstly, a practicing room should be equipped with necessary modern technologies, such 10 or 12 computers, a printer, a projector, speakers, an electronic board, and white board. These resources cost approximately 60-mln sum. Secondly, the amount of expert trainer's salary (about 6 mln sum per month) should be set for 3 months. All needed expenses for the implementation process totally costs approximately 88 mln sum. In detail, if each computer costs about 5 mln sum while 20 mln sum should be allocated for the projector, speakers, electronic board and white board. 18 mln is given as a salary to the trainer.
Methods and Approaches
One cannot deny that lessons are conducted in traditional methods at public schools. Teachers are likely to use Grammar-Translation method or Audio-lingual method. Actually, they are less effective, because these methods do not focus on integrative skills. They have to transform their methods to have a successful lesson. Instead of traditional methods, they will learn to use interactive and CLT methods. Surely, teacher trainer also use such kind of methods to reteach teachers.
Cultural needs
Next thing that have to be mentioned is that cultural needs of the teachers. During the training, teachers level is identified, of course, the level of teachers will not be the same. Therefore, teacher trainers also need to use differentiated instructions in the process of learning. Higher-level teachers should help lower-level learners to reach the same levels as theirs. Then, training course will go on smoothly for all teachers. In terms of the age, they may be different aged teachers and teacher trainer should take into consideration these differences while training process. For example, teacher-trainer need to require to work much on themselves from young pre-service teachers than in-service teachers.
References:
1. Barni, M,. & Salvati, L.(2017) The Common Framework European Reference
2. Darling-Hammond, L. (2001) Standart setting in Teaching: Changes in Certification and Assessment. Washington DC: American Educational Research Association, 2001.
3. Brown.H.D. (2010). Language assessment principles and classroom practices. Pearson Education, 10 Bank Street, White Plains, NY 10606.
4. Cooper, R.L. (1989). Language planning and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Kaiser, DJ (2018). Growing Your Own Onion: Teachers as Writers of Language Planning and Policy Proposals. Draft Article.
6. Khasanova, D. (2007). Broadening the boundaries of the Expanding Circle: English in Uzbekistan. World Englishes, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 276-290.
7. Zhao, S. H., & Baldauf, R. B. Jr (2008). Prestige planning in Chinese script reform: Individual agency as a case. Paper presented to the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2008 Conference. Washington, DC, USA (March 29-April 1, 2008) (submitted to Language Problem and Language Planning)
