2009 Programs And Events
Teacher Enhances English Writing Skills in Uzbekistan (03/10/2009)
Dennis Johnson is on a mission to improve English-language writing in Uzbekistan.
He is teaching English composition to students at the Institute for English Language Teacher Education (IELTE) at the Uzbek State University of World Languages. Most of his students will become English teachers.
He is working with IELTE to revise its writing curriculum and introducing new composition teaching methods to his teaching colleagues.
He teaches composition seminars to other English teachers in the Uzbek Teachers of English Association. He meets with English instructors at other institutions around Tashkent, and he is taking his message on the road to universities in Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench, and cities in the Ferghana Valley, he said.
“I’ve just been working my tail off,” he said, using a common idiom in English for working very hard. “I decided to make teaching writing my mission of the year.”
Johnson, an enthusiastic man who has taught English to non-native speakers for more than 25 years, came to Uzbekistan on the English Language (EL) Fellow Program sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent. The program links advanced English instructors with one-year projects proposed by language institutions. IELTE has hosted two EL Fellows in the past, but Johnson is the first EL Fellow to come to Uzbekistan since 2005.
IELTE was founded in 2000-2001 as a joint project between the U.S. Embassy and the Uzbek State World Languages University, one of the largest universities in Uzbekistan. IELTE’s mission was to reform training for English teachers and bring its language-education practices in line with international standards. IELTE is the only four-year English-teacher training program in Central Asia in which all courses are taught in English, and it has become one of the most prestigious language programs in the country.
For the 2008-2009 academic year, IELTE requested an EL Fellow to help it develop a new syllabus for its writing component and to train students and teachers on writing methods. In student and teacher evaluations of IELTE’s program, writing had been identified as an area that needed improvement, said Saida Irgasheva, the curriculum and faculty development manager at IELTE.
“None of the universities and schools in Uzbekistan had or have writing as a separate course, or they always ignored it as a skill,” she said. “Our teachers didn’t have enough knowledge and skill on how to teach it, and especially how to provide feedback on students’ writing.”
Along with developing the new writing curricula, Johnson teaches writing classes to students in all four years of the program and works with other teachers to implement the methods. Irgasheva said he has been a great help in strengthening their program.
“Thanks to Dennis, now we have a very good 4-year curriculum on writing and very specific guidelines on research writing and evaluation of students’ work,” she said. “We are ‘infected’ with his work, and next year all IELTE teachers will teach one or two groups, so that we will have 13-15 specialists in this field.”
IELTE also plans to start personal- and professional-development courses for English teachers who want to strengthen their teaching of writing in universities, she added.
In the writing courses, Johnson’s students go through three drafts of each paper, editing each draft and having other students edit them as well. Rather than being graded on the quality of the first attempt, the focus is on improving toward a final draft. Teaching composition through student editing is the standard pedagogy in U.S. schools and universities, Johnson said.
“When you look at the first draft and the final draft together, there’s just no comparison,” Johnson said, adding that his fellow teachers have seen the value in teaching composition through the editing process. “They’ve been very easily convinced that this works.”
Along with his work at IELTE, Johnson has been leading writing seminars for other English teachers at universities across the country. The goal of the EL Fellow program is to help as many people as possible improve their English by building on the skills of English teachers, said Stephanie Fitzmaurice, the Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent. Learning English can open up any number of opportunities, she added.
“Those who can speak English are better able to take part in the global economy and the global discourse on a variety of subjects,” Fitzmaurice said. “Learning a foreign language can enable professionals in all spheres to share innovations across borders, such as in medicine or agriculture. Learning languages can also enhance trust and understanding between peoples of different countries.”
Along with the EL Fellow Program, the U.S. Embassy also brings English-language specialists to Uzbekistan to teach seminars and provide learning materials to education partners around the country, Fitzmaurice said.
IELTE has proposed hosting an EL Fellow for the 2009-2010 academic year, as well. The institute plans to develop an English for Special Purposes curriculum, in which students take English-language courses such as law, economics and history. The new curriculum would train students to teach these content-based courses in English at universities and institutes around the country, according to the project proposal.
The desire to strengthen its curricula in writing and English for Special Purposes are just two examples of why IELTE remains among the nation’s top institutions of higher education, Johnson said.
“I’m in a program in the forefront of the country, and they want to remain at the forefront,” he said. Along with being amazed at the warmth of his reception among the faculty at IELTE, Johnson said he has been impressed with the quality of his students.
“These students are bright; they’re really bright,” he said. As much as he has tried to help his students, though, his experience in Uzbekistan has been just as rewarding for him.
“I really enjoy getting out there and doing new things, experiencing new cultures,” Johnson said. “This has just been a marvelous opportunity for me. It has been endlessly fascinating.”