Empowering Language Teachers and Learners in Uzbekistan: Opening Doors through Formal English Reading and Writing Development

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On World Teachers' Day 2014, the heads of UNESCO/ ILO/ UNICEF/ UNDP and Education International affirmed that "an education system is only as good as its teachers" [1]. A 2015 UNESCO report [2] on the relationship between the teaching profession and Art. 26 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights [3], the right to education, reported that teachers often lack the resources and training to give the high standard of teaching required for good learning outcomes. Uzbekistan, a lower-middle income country, has insufficient resources for the education sector to fully capitalise on learner and teacher development, with knock-on effects on its economic workforce.A working knowledge of English is an important facet of a professional education. However, a 2010 OSCE report [4] found that only 1% of students, teachers, professors and public servants in Uzbekistan used English in their professional lives or read articles in English, a finding potentially explained by low levels of English proficiency. Thus, providing a program to improve English formal reading and writing abilities will bring benefits to Uzbek students, language teachers, and, via a trickledown effect, the country as a whole. This will give students the skills to successfully study online/abroad bringing back valuable knowledge to benefit the country, give teachers access to international professional journals to improve their teaching and share their own practices and research, and allow Uzbek citizens to more effectively communicate with the rest of the world.My PhD research focused on the development of formal reading and writing skills of non-native English speaking students. Also, I have been a teacher of formal English in Uzbekistan for 4 years and in the UK for 6 years, and have seen how certain skills and practices could be beneficially transposed from the UK to the Uzbek context. My goal is to create two inter-related educational tools, which aim to initiate and perpetuate high-quality teaching and learning of formal English in Uzbekistan via a bottom-up approach. The tools will be based on my PhD findings and teaching experience that 1) exposure to formal writing styles in English and the use of model essays with extensive feedback, and 2) training teachers on navigating English language knowledge networks and engendering sensitivity to and knowledge of English formal writing styles, are both beneficial to language learners' outcomes.My first aim is to create an interactive model essay website (package 1) containing a corpus of formal student writing in English from the Uzbek context, via my close links with the Uzbekistan Teachers of English Association (UzTEA). The texts will be sorted thematically, digitised, reviewed and annotated with extensive feedback on issues such as text organisation, appropriacy of language, etc. These will interactively allow students and teachers to notice and attempt to correct errors and provide detailed feedback on the correction they choose. The materials will be a valuable pedagogical tool.The second aim is a self-perpetuating workshop on improving formal reading and writing skills (package 2). The 3-day workshop package, in a modular format, will provide instruction to English teachers on aspects of teaching formal reading and writing felt lacking in the Uzbek context. Development of the workshop package will be based on my PhD findings and a brief needs analysis in the form of an online questionnaire. The materials will be constructed via a co-production process, in Uzbekistan, with teachers from varying educational sectors. The workshop package will be implemented by effectively running it with a group of teachers and will thereby also serve as a model for those teachers of how to run the workshop. All resources will be made available online. Attendees will be encouraged to run a similar workshop in their home institutions, thus, initiating a domino effect that can will cascade through the country.