NETRUZ Champion Teacher: Yana Kuchkarova

My name is Yana Kuchkarova. I work as an EFL senior teacher at Namangan State University, Uzbekistan.

My research interests: extended reading, integrating content in language teaching taking into consideration students` beliefs

The abstract of my research project:

My exploratory action research was targeted at identifying the effect of students' beliefs about the content that is supposed to be taught on the achievement of good results.

English language learning is a long process and keeping learners satisfied and engaged in their tasks is not so much easy. Most of us can recall the moments when we did not want to read what we were given because we found the content boring, not appealing or sometimes even useless for us. So, I noticed the same trend in the attitude of my learners at the Access Micro-scholarship program. In one of the small talks of my learners, they were saying to each other that they don’t like so much the books I chose for them for extended reading and would prefer to read something different. I wanted to find out what they would read eagerly. I organized a survey and informal discussions with my students to know about their reading interests and preferences took an online language proficiency test. This study would present my findings on how to engage Uzbek students in extended reading based on their reading interests and preferences.

Reflection on training and exploratory action research:

Teachers tend to teach in a way they learn and often ignore the fact that learners learn differently. Assuming that learners would like the same thing as the teacher does, one of the biggest mistakes a teacher may make while preparing materials is to provide learners with the readings the teacher herself/himself enjoys reading not considering students’ preferences. What’s more, some teachers remain unnoticed of this issue for quite a long time. The NETRUZ Exploratory Action Research Project was the reason for me to reveal the problem and lead to resolve it to make my classes more effective for my learners. Through the project, I learned that considering learners’ preferences and beliefs is important and may lead to better learning outcomes as was observed in my case.