Conceptualization Processes in English as a Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from Uzbek-Speaking Learners

This article presents an in-depth investigation of the conceptualization processes that emerge as Uzbek-speaking learners acquire English as a second language (L2), examined through the theoretical lenses of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA). Drawing on empirical data collected from 120 Uzbek-speaking university students across institutions in Surxondaryo, Tashkent, and Bukhara, and employing three complementary instruments — a Written Elicitation Task (WET), a Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT), and a Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) — the study reveals that the agglutinative morphology, SOV syntactic structure, and the absence of grammatical aspect and definiteness marking in Uzbek systematically and profoundly influence learners' conceptualization strategies in English. The article proposes a novel metacognition-based pedagogical framework designed to address these conceptual gaps.