Reconceptualizing language teaching: an in-service teacher education course in uzbekistan

IN CLASS – DAY 1
1.1. The teacher divides a class into four (or more) groups – depends on 
the size of your class. Each group will be responsible for obtaining 
different types of data. Three of the groups will be given a task of 
asking people hello and how are you? After they have asked partic-
ipants the questions and wrote down their responses, the learners 
will categorize people’s answers based on three categories – age 
(group 1), gender (group 2), or nationality (group 3). This task could
be conducted either in Uzbek and/or Russian/English to investi-
gate the language variation. 
1.2. Group 4 will be given the task of looking into authentic materi-
als (e.g., movies), in which proficient English speakers will answer 
the questions hello and how are you. If there is a highly proficient 
English speaker on the University campus, he or she can also be 
questioned. Sometimes these speakers come from English domi-
nant speaking countries. 
3
1.3. The teacher asks each group to bring the results of their survey to 
the class the following session. 
IN CLASS – DAY 2
2.2. Each group will present their results on the screen. A comparative 
analysis will be carried out to understand language variations in 
the context of different categories (i.e., age, gender, and nation-
ality) from Grice’s maxims perspectives. For example, the maxim 
of quality – whether Russian speaking people in comparison to 
Uzbek speaking people were more open while answering, and/or 
3
We do not use the phrase native speaker in this text because it is fraught with contro-
versy. Instead, we use the phrase proficient speaker of English to denote anyone who is 
often perceived as a ‘native speaker’ or one who comes from English dominant speaking 
countries. 

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CHAPTER FOUR: PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF USING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
told the truth about their inner state (i.e., the hearer’s assessment of 
the speaker’s utterance as being true in accordance with generally 
accepted social norms, rules, traditions). The maxim of quantity – 
whether different categories of people use long/short sentences; 
one, two or three moves to answer the questions. These results will 
be compared to the answers taken from the authentic materials in 
English or from a proficient speaker of English.
CONCLUSION
These activities have demonstrated how different non-linguistic fac-
tors such as age, gender, and nationality affect the way people order their 
speaking; and how these non-linguistic factors make people choose a 
certain type of grammar, semantics, syntax, stylistics while speaking. Thus, 
learning language should not only be limited to memorizing the linguis-
tic rules; it should also take into consideration how people appropriately 
speak in real-life situations.
REFERENCES
1. Arnold, J., Dörnyei, Z. and Pugliese, C. (2015). The principled commu-
nicative approach: Seven criteria for success
. Helbling Language.
2. Celce-Murcia, M,. & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in lan-
guage teaching: A guide for language teachers
. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
3. Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan, 
(Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, pp. 41-58. NY: Academic 
Press.
4. Arnold, J., Dörnyei, Z. and Pugliese, C. (2015). The principled commu-
nicative approach: Seven criteria for success
. Helbling Language.

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RECONCEPTUALIZING LANGUAGE TEACHING