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

SECTION 4.4
Reading and Communicative Competence 
“In the process of trying to understand a written text the 
reader has to perform a number of simultaneous tasks: de-
code the message by recognizing the written signs, interpret 
the message by assigning meaning to the string of words, 
and finally, understand what the author’s intention was. In 
this process, there are at least three participants: the writer, 
the text, and the reader” (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, 
p.119).
INTRODUCTION
Teaching reading in Uzbekistan has been regarded as a structured pro-
cess. This process means that the text’s meaning is dependent upon know-
ing the structured relations within a text. The structured relations are asso-
ciated with anaphoric and cataphoric references, with the help of which a 
reader, as is believed within the GTM, easily interprets the text’s meaning. 
Generally, within the GTM, the relationship between the reader and the 
text is scrutinized. What is left out of analyses is the author, who can bring 
into a text different types of interpretations, worldviews, and discourses 
(i.e., meaning-in-use). As is seen within the CLT, the author is not passive, 
but active in constructing meanings in a text. What is written is not neutral, 
but reflects the author’s point of view, culture, ideology, and shared norms 
on things. 
GOALS
This section illustrates how one can teach sociolinguistic competence 
through reading. Reading texts does not leave you neutral, but to some 
extent affected by certain intersubjective interpretations of an author. 
By the end of this section, you will be able to...
A) understand how texts communicate an author’s worldview, culture, 
norms, ideology, and power relations; and,
B) realize that reading texts is not only understanding what is written 
and seen in texts, but what is hidden in those texts. The latter is character-
ized by a situation, within which an author’s worldview, his or her truth, 

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CHAPTER FOUR: PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF USING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
normative judgement, as well as ideology in a particular time and space are 
communicated throughout texts (sociolinguistic competence).
TASK IN CLASS
Topic: Assessing the educational system in Country Name.
Purpose: To understand how a certain type of assessment by the author 
became possible while interpreting the education system in Country Name. 
Focus: Interpreting the text “Country Name: An educational system in 
crisis”. 
Pre-work: None. Only sociolinguistic competence is needed.
Activity: Individual work, group discussion.
Needed facilities: Handouts, blackboard.