Introduction
Interest. Uzbek students of English at all levels love these short fully translated proverbs. They provide an ideal way to add meaning to classroom pronunciation, reading,
discussion, and writing exercises. Each English proverb is followed by its literal translation into Uzbek.
Source. The proverbs come from the most excellent book “English Proverbs, Uzbek Maqollar, Russian Poslovitsi” by K.M. Karamatova and H. S. Karamatov.
Handouts. The pages are intended to be used in classrooms as individual handouts. The texts have been sized to fit evenly on two sides of a single sheet of A4 paper, so no stapling or collating is required. Two students can share one handout. Students should return the handouts so they can be reused in the next class.
Group Reading. The same proverbs should be read outloud by all students from the 5
th grade through university, however the reading should change according to the class’s ability. For beginning students (at any age) the teacher should read the proverbs a phrase at a time (three or four words) and have all the students repeat each phrase.
For better students, read the whole proverb and have all the students repeat it. Students like to take turns reading the Uzbek translation.
Discussion. Ask students questions about the proverbs as you go along to check understanding,
to stimulate critical thinking, and to practice speaking.
Vocabulary. There are over 1,600 proverbs here. In all they contain about 1,600 different English words. A list of these words appears in the appendix.
As you read these proverbs help your students map the English word to the Uzbek translation. In each proverb draw an imaginary line between each English word and its Uzbek translation. In the first few pages each proverb is preceded by a word list.
Assign the students to learn the words in the proverbs for homework. Fifty words a week is about right.
Writing. Students love to copy these proverbs. They find it meaningful work. Begin assigning four proverbs and work up to ten or fifteen. Tell the students to pick proverbs they like. If all the students have the same handout, for variety tell half of the class to work on the front side of the page and half to work on the back side. It is much more efficient (cheaper) to give each student a different page of proverbs to work on.
As the students copy, walk around and ask individual students to read to you what they have written. Then have the students read and show their proverbs to each other. Students can easily check what they copy for accuracy by themselves. Students should keep what they write.
Alternate. Some days do group reading and vocabulary, other days do writing.