ENGLISH AS A PREFERRED FOREIGN LANGUAGE: STUDENTS' AND PARENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN UZBEKISTAN

This article examines students’ and parents’ attitudes towards foreign language education in Uzbekistan, with particular attention to the growing preference for English alongside the continuing importance of Russian. Drawing on the empirical component of the author’s 2020 Master's research, the study uses a mixed-method design comprising an online questionnaire completed by 150 upper-secondary students and 20 semi-structured interviews with parents, a student, teachers and school administrators. The findings indicate a strong social orientation toward foreign-language learning: 60% of questionnaire respondents reported being very interested in learning foreign languages, while only 1% reported no interest. English was the most preferred foreign language (85%), followed by Russian (78%); German, Korean and Chinese were selected considerably less frequently. The data suggest that students associate English primarily with future educational and economic opportunities, while Russian retains perceived prestige and practical value in social and professional life. Parents also strongly favored English: interview evidence showed that some parents resisted school arrangements requiring their children to study French or another foreign language because they preferred English. At the same time, language preferences were connected to instrumental pressures, particularly university entrance examinations and the widespread use of extracurricular language courses. The article argues that foreign-language preferences should be understood not simply as individual choices but as language ideologies shaped by educational policy, perceived economic opportunity, examination structures and the multilingual sociolinguistic environment of Uzbekistan. The study further shows that grassroots preferences can reinforce, but can also diverge from, formal language policy.