NETRUZ Champion Teacher: Khurshida Eshimova

Hello dear colleagues. I am Khurshida Eshimova. I am from Tashkent. I work at specialized school number 91, Tashkent. I have been working as an English teacher for 13 years. My students are learners of 5-11 grades. I start work at 8 a.m. I love my job and teaching in general.
This year (2021) was very prosperous for me as I got an international TESOL trainer and Uzbek national C1 certificates. I am keen on learning languages. Nowadays I can speak five languages including my native Uzbek language: English, Turkish, Russian, and a little Persian. I believe and apply a proverb in my life: “People can take away everything from you, but not your knowledge”. That is why I do suggest other students and teachers keep on learning as we live and learn whole our lives.

MY RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am interested in innovative ways of teaching English in this digital century, applying It and various apps into the learning process, managing big multilevel and multicultural classes, teaching adult learners as well.

ABSTRACT OF MY RESAERCH PROJECT

I have always been using various activities in English lessons. This makes my lessons alive and more interesting. Moreover, it makes the lessons colourful and student-centred as well. While choosing activities I pay attention to the level of my learners and the objectives of activities or tasks. I think the acceptance and interest of activities vary due to learners’ age and level. Surprisingly, some of my students do not want to participate in some activities. It is sometimes hard to make them stand up from their chairs. That is very strange when I consider the activity interesting, while some of my students find it boring or uninteresting that they do not even want to take part. Due to this reason, I started working on this research. My research focus was to observe the usage of activities in English classes and their effects on my students' motivation.

MY REFLECTION ON THE TRAINING AND EXPLORATORY ACTION RESEARCH

This is the first time I have been working on doing research on a particular topic. I worked with professionals where there was a friendly atmosphere. From the beginning of the training, it was interesting with lots of detailed information and practices along with thorough explanations. The organizer Elyanora led the project; she introduced us to all our mentors who are indeed skilled and experienced. Introductory topics and tasks gradually led and prepared all mentees to plan their own research. As the form of the meetings were online via Zoom, we were given a choice to choose the right and convenient for us. This was especially beneficial for teachers who work in educational organizations like public schools, colleges and universities. In every session, we could gain knowledge and experience about formulating our research. Moreover, we had chances to be a visitor in online sessions where international researchers shared their investigations. It was one of the most effective ways of motivating that Elyanora could achieve. Our mentors worked with us according to our research interests. While working on my action research I realized that I could look at the situation or my lesson from the point of learners and observers. Moreover, when I started searching for reasons for challenging situations in my lessons I stepped forward to the students’ site. I realized that we became closer with my students after those informal talks. I did not pay attention to that earlier before, unfortunately. Besides that, I could understand if we do reflections after each lesson, we will develop and practice our research skills.

I really appreciate and am thankful to NETRUZ, all the organizers, trainers and mentors of the project for giving us a chance to try something new at the same time interesting, self-developing and job-connected activity for our further professional career. I would love to continue researching and practising it in the future with other new topics. In conclusion, I can say surely that I am happy to be a member of the NETRUZ community!