Foreign Languages Week: Meet Chynara Ryskulova

September 11, 2013

“My name is Chynarkul Ryskulova. I am an associate professor of English at AUCA. I have been teaching English to Kyrgyz and Russian speaking students for 31 years after graduation from the Kyrgyz State University in 1982. I taught English Language at the Kyrgyz National University for 15 years and since 1998 I have been working for AUCA. I used to teach English Composition, African - American Literature, and Excellence in Teaching as a member of English Language Department. Currently I teach First Year Seminar and I am a Coordinator of Writing and Academic Resource Center of AUCA.

My research fields are Comparative Linguistics and Quality Assessment in Higher Education; I completed my dissertation on Kyrgyz postpositions and their semantic and functional counterparts in English and hold a degree of Candidate of Philology Science (PhD). As a Fulbright scholar I did research on Quality Assessment in higher education with the focus on student learning outcomes at Kent State University, USA during the academic year 2011-12.

I have extensive experience in intercultural communication, and have participated in various training programs in the U.S. and France. I had the opportunity to teach Kyrgyz Language to American students at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993 for an academic year. That year gave me an understanding of differences in teaching style between the U.S. and Kyrgyzstan; I also enriched my personal experience and appreciation of various values and traditions.

My next experience was at Texas A&M University, College Station, where I took courses in Curriculum Development and Teaching English as a Second Language for a semester. This semester gave me an understanding of the relationships between language development, culture and conceptual processes, and language teaching. 

As a visiting professor in the Global Learning Community at Ohio University (Athens) in 2001, I gained experience in problem and project-based learning.  Undergraduate students from several majors worked on interdisciplinary projects that required research and analysis of social, political, economic, and cultural issues in other countries.

I also participated in a TACIS program and took a course in English Language Teaching Methodology at the University of Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France which gave me the opportunity to compare approaches to teaching languages and language acquisition in three different classrooms: Kyrgyz, American, and French.

I remember how Kamilla Sharshekeeva was enthusiastic to start a new type of institution back in 1993 and she wanted to hire only best graduates from Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities to teach at the American University in Kyrgyzstan. So I was not eligible to teach there with my diploma from Kyrgyz State University even though I was one of the best professors at the National University and was awarded a grant to teach Kyrgyz language at the University of Maryland, USA and I worked in a team with Kamila to compile English –Kyrgyz dictionary published in 2005. After a year I was invited to teach Kyrgyz Language but I could not join AUK since I was working on my dissertation and the main reason was that I did not want to teach Kyrgyz Language since my major was English Language. Later in 1998 I was invited to teach English and offered a position of an Assistant to Vice-president. Since then for twelve years I worked in the Academic Affairs office of AUCA.   I was involved in all academic activities including licensing, attestation, and development of curricula, programs, faculty, and academic policies.

I do not see any differences between AUCA students and students of other universities but I see huge differences in the education system, in the classroom management, in student-teacher relationships and approaches to getting academic degrees. Otherwise students are the same everywhere; they do not like to do home assignments, they are late for the classes and they like “easy teachers” and easy courses. The only thing to mention is that our students are lucky to have opportunities to be at AUCA.

In order to become a successful student atAUCA you have to be ready to take onthe responsibility of constantly improving yourself.”

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