Education in Uzbekistan/Modern Educational Technologies in Uzbekistan
Due to the achievement of independence currently work on reforming the entire education system has been focused on large-scale in the Republic of Uzbekistan. According to normative documents which regulate educational process special attention is paid to the intellectual development of the younger generation, continuous educational work is conducted on the planning and updating process of learning foreign languages by young people; individual psychological characteristics are taken into account of youth and its ability to assimilate foreign languages.
The first President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov signed a resolution "On measures on further improving system of studying foreign language" on 10 December 2012.The document was adopted to improve teaching foreign languages, training specialists with good language skills, introducing advanced technologies into education system, etc. According to resolution, foreign languages, predominantly English language, will be taught in all schools of Uzbekistan from first classes as game plays. From the second class, the alphabet, reading and grammar will be taught.
In our country created conditions for teaching foreign languages using modern pedagogical and communicative technologies. The creation of a new methodology of learning foreign languages at all stages of education with application of modern pedagogical and informative technology is the demand of time. This resolution is the theoretical basis of the work done in this direction. As a result of execution of this resolution the process of organizing a continuous study of foreign languages, is being improved, which gives the possibility of providing the youth with modern educational-methodical materials at all stages of learning. This document is a logical continuation of the law "On education" and "National program for personnel training".
Learning foreign languages is impossible to imagine without the use of multi-media learning tools. Of course, important tasks for the methodology of teaching foreign languages include providing opportunities to illustrate the actual process of communication in English, and creating an educational environment that provides real conditions for learning use of the target language and its culture. The most significant group of benefits is teaching the virtues of computer-based training. For example, teachers use the ability of computers to react instantly to input information to create simple training programs in the form of exercises. The technical advantage of teaching English with the help of multimedia technology is that sound cards allow users to record their speech and then compare it with the pronunciation of native speakers.
Graphics capabilities of computers can represent any type of activity in the form of pictures or animation. This is particularly important when learning new vocabulary, as images on the monitor allow students to associate English phrases directly with actions, rather than with phrases in their native language. Moreover, the media are an excellent means of interactive communication between different linguistic groups, which is particularly evident in the application of computer networks. This could be a local area network connecting several machines, or the Internet -a global network of millions of users.
Purposeful use of the Internet materials at foreign language classes of non-linguistic higher educational establishments gives an opportunity to effectively solve a number of didactic tasks. They are:
- improving reading skills;
-enlarging the vocabulary with the modern foreign words;- improving monological and dialogical speech skills, discussing the materials of the web;
- Forming stable motivation to foreign language activity while discussing the problems, interesting for everybody.
Educative innovations include making use of affordable and accessible technologies to expand access to education. It may also require other innovative process or service and rely on technology. The following educative innovations are very effective and widely used in teaching foreign languages:
Online and self-study courses. Hundreds of languages are available for self-study, from scores of publishers, for a range of costs, using a variety of methods. The course itself acts as a teacher has to choose a methodology, just as classroom teachers do.
Audio recordings and books. Audio recordings use native speakers, and one's strength is helping learners improve their accent. Some recordings have pauses for the learner to speak. Others are continuous so the learner speaks along with the recorded voice, similar to learning a song. Audio recordings for self-study use many of the methods used in classroom teaching, and have been produced on records, tapes, CDs, DVDs and websites.
Brainstorming. Brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its member(s).
Sandwich technique. In foreign language teaching, the sandwich technique is the oral insertion of unidiomatic translation in the mother tongue between an unknown phrase in the learned language and its repetition, in order to convey meaning as rapidly and completely as possible. Using technology in the classroom can allow teachers' to effectively organize and present lessons.
Multimedia presentations can make the material more meaningful and engaging. Over the past several decades, studies analyzing the relationship between technology and foreign language learning have tended to focus on several key issues, including motivation, reading and writing, research, and mobile-assisted language learning.
The most powerful source of the students' cognitive activity, developing their creativity, interests, skills and other mental characteristics is innovative technologies. Innovative educational technologies are, first of all, information and communications technologies, closely connected with computerized education application. In the work of the first President of Uzbekistan I.A. Karimov "High spirituality - invincible power" noted: "the Foundation of the future is created in schools, arguing otherwise it is the future of nation depending on how today our children take education and upbringing." Soul and minds of young people studying foreign languages and dream to see t he world and study abroad should be priority before various destructive ideas and ideologies.