NETRUZ Champion Teacher: Lazokat Dadabayeva

My name is Lazokat Dadabayeva. I work as an EFL teacher at Namangan State University, Uzbekistan.  My research interest for this project was to explore the issue of giving instructions in the classroom.

Abstract of my EAR project

There have been many successes and failures in giving instruction. Most of us can recall an experience where the facilitator delivered instructions, but we were misunderstood about what we were expected to do. And, as teachers, most of us have had experiences of giving instructions that were unclear or incomprehensible to our learners. This chapter explores some challenges such as students’ misunderstanding of taking instruction in the classrooms and some errors of giving instruction by the teacher. I was found of this research question after observing my classes by my colleague. Through thematic analyzes and taking some actions with my 29 students in one of my classes at Namangan State University, the Practical English department and several effective strategies were found to overcome the mentioned challenges.

My reflection on the training and exploratory action research

Giving instructions has a direct effect on learning; a lesson or activity becomes useless when students do not understand what they are supposed to do. Every teacher is more likely to come across such kinds of challenges in the classroom. However, NETRUZ Exploratory Action Research Project was a huge help to observe our classes and analyze the root problems and find effective solutions.

I wanted to improve the way of giving instructions for classroom activities. After observing on my own and talking with my colleague I found from my instructions that they should be simple and clear in English with eye contact and should be used for modelling, showing and acting. I used to feel a lot of flaws in myself but I never looked for ways to overcome them. However, the NETRUZ project taught me step by step how to find and solve these problems. The project taught me to work on articles again, to find other teachers' solutions and to apply them in my own lessons. Most importantly, I learned that I should be interested in my students’ opinions. I followed many teachers through Netruz and asked them to follow me. Believe me, all this was an invincible obstacle in the past.

To sum up I want to express my gratitude to the NETRUZ! I did all this and solved my classroom issue with my experienced mentors. The NETRUZ has been very helpful to me and I want to participate again in the future, to become a NETRUZ mentor to help other teachers solve their classroom issues.