Qo‘chqorova Zulfizar a teacher of English language and literature department, fsu abstract

Literature review
For many years, there has been ongoing discussion about the usefulness of homework in education. Various stakeholders such as students, educators, parents, and school leaders have differing views on the amount and purpose of homework. One challenge in evaluating homework effectiveness is the difficulty in managing and tracking all the factors that influence homework assignments and completion.Conducting a thorough homework study requires sampling many teachers and students. These studies typically use self-reports or surveys from these two groups, leading to doubts about the reliability and accuracy of the collected information. Prior research also focused heavily on the use of homework in English, science, social studies, and particularly mathematics, with minimal available data on the influence of homework on student learning in foreign language education.
The general consensus from the review of numerous studies and analyses was that there was no clear conclusion on the effectiveness of homework as a teaching tool. The impact of homework varied across different grade levels and subjects, but it was not found to be detrimental to student learning and success. This, along with pressure from parents and the public, has resulted in teachers continuing to assign homework to students. In fact, in two studies conducted by the same researcher, it was found that 96% of foreign language teachers gave homework on a regular basis.
Homework can serve various purposes, as identified by Cooper (1994). Most teachers assign homework for instructional reasons, such as practice, preparation, extension, integration, and creative assignments. Additionally, they may also have non-instructional purposes like serving as a means of communication between parents and children, fulfilling directives, punishment, and community relations . While most homework fulfills more than one purpose, practice homework reinforces previously learned material, preparation assignments introduce upcoming lessons, and extension homework requires applying previously learned knowledge to new situations. Integration homework involves using various skills or concepts to produce a single product, such as a book report or project.
Foreign language educators have emphasized the importance of homework in foreign language learning and have expressed concerns about the difficulty of assigning homework with various block scheduling formats. However, there was a notable lack of research on foreign language homework. Therefore, the author integrated homework data collection into a study on end-of-course performance by French I students who were taught on one of three schedules: alternating day block schedule, 4 x 4 semester block schedule, or a traditional 6- or 7-period per day schedule.
Determining if in-class homework was a part of the intended out-of-class assignment or an extra task was challenging. Some teachers preferred to allocate time for students to start their homework in class to ensure understanding, while others seemed to resort to in-class homework to fill time in longer class periods. Nonetheless, it appeared that in-class homework was potentially detracting from instructional time.Ultimately, it is notable that although the data did reveal a variance in the time allocated for foreign language homework, both in and out of class, these differences were not statistically significant. Despite variations in both in-class instructional time and homework expectations, there was no noteworthy contrast in the academic performance of students across any of the scheduling groups on the final exam.
The study's findings indicate that the quantity of homework did not significantly impact students' test scores, competency test results, or grades assigned by teachers. As homework time increased, student grades remained the same or even decreased in some instances. This challenges Cooper's prior research, which suggested that increased homework time positively influenced student grades. This discrepancy may be due to the use of student grades as a measure of performance, which may have been influenced by including a grade for homework completion rather than accuracy.
This study has reaffirmed the challenges faced by researchers in conducting homework studies due to the difficulty in controlling or documenting all the variables affecting homework assignment and completion. These difficulties are compounded by the heavy reliance on self-reports from teachers and students, leading to questionable accuracy of the reported information. In this particular study, there was no way to verify the accuracy of the information provided by teachers in response to a questionnaire.