Nargiza Babaniyazova
English language teacher at Nukus State Pedagogical Institute.
The British Council was founded to develop friendly relations and understanding between the British people and the rest of the world. In Uzbekistan, it works hard to foster cross-cultural dialogue and a great number of English language teachers in Uzbekistan know the British Council, for example, through working with students within the framework of the PreSETT project.
When I got a job at the Nukus State Pedagogical Institute as a teacher of English in 2014, I was sent to a training seminar to Tashkent for three days where I got a lot of information about the British Council and the PreSETT project. Then, a friend I had made at that seminar sent me an e-mail message eliciting applications for a professional development event for researchers. The British Council invited researchers from all the provinces of Uzbekistan to attend a new training seminar called Researcher Connect (RC). I was so excited! I was interested in research before, but unfortunately, I had no connections with international researchers and knew little about new methods of academic research. This, of course, was a major obstacle preventing me from publishing any papers in international journals. To my surprise, my application was approved and I joined Researcher Connect.
My first day there was really interesting! Actually I can say that was the happiest day in my life. The trainers' names were Jo Chaffer and Martin Penny. They are very positive and experienced trainers and great people to work with. During the two days of the workshop I was writing and reviewing an academic text that I wished to publish and by the end of the seminar it was ready. Later, in 2015, my paper appeared in the international journal Theoretical and Applied Science. This publication has motivated me to do more in this field.
I can simply say that the cooperation with the British Council has changed my life. After the seminar I began to communicate with researchers from different countries and collaborate with international scientific journals. Every day I receive invitations from different international journals which elicit manuscripts for future publications. One day I received an e-mail from the editorial team of Omniscriptum Publishing group. It was amazing because they said that my research could be of interest to a wider audience and they would like to publish it as a book and market it worldwide. What an unexpected proposal it was!
Now I am working hard on my PhD and already have nineteen publications, two of which were published in Moscow, one in France and one in Ukraine while others appeared in different journals of Uzbekistan.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the British Council for all the work they do to make teachers try more than they think is possible and of course, for the friendly atmosphere and efforts to foster understanding between the peoples of the world!