Dear FLE 324 members,
You can make your comments on the presentations in IATEFL Harrogate Online here. You need to write your comments in a word document and then copy-paste it to the blog. The maximum length is one page with 1.5 spaces.
In your comment, you need to point out the level of applicability, the usefulness of the ideas/suggestions offered to EFl learners/teachers in Turkey. You also need to comment on the challenges awaiting those in the EFL context in applying these suggestions.
You can add the following presentations to your list as well (these presentations are already uploaded in METUONLINE) :
1. Corpora games by Ken Lackman
2. Listening skills by Sheila Torn
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ReplyDelete“USING FREE SOURCES” by SUZAN ÖNİZ
ReplyDeleteEsranur Efeoğlu 1620012
Suzan Öniz’s workshop on free sources in EFL context gives good guidance for teachers who are in search of easily accessible, practical and cheap resources for English teaching. In order to establish an effective teaching environment, it is important to attract students’ attention by making use of various activities throughout the lesson. Regardless of students’ age and level of proficiency, pictures are always one of the best options of resources.
Öniz’s suggestions on using pictures mainly consist of jigsaw activities which requires students to use vocabulary, grammar patterns, phrases or whatever is the focus of the lesson for that day. She advises teachers to cut the pictures into small squares and use them in many different activities. The activities generally involve students engage in tasks and trying to match their pieces which can be quite enjoyable for language learning. These kinds of activities are not much favored in current EFL context in Turkey despite their effectiveness and cheapness, mainly because of the fact teacher do not know how to make use of internet and they find it is exhausting to prepare handmade activities. Yet these are not excuses for not using free sources, indeed. A reasonable disadvantage would be that these kinds of tasks probably cause noise in the classroom and make the classroom management difficult for especially novice teachers. Also, trying to make the task harder by cutting the picture into smaller pieces in order to add some ‘challenge’ into the activity may cause frustrations among some students who do not have much speaking competence. Nevertheless, a teacher can produce many variations by using just a single picture as Öniz demonstrates by including different activities in her workshop and it is undeniable that including jigsaw activities fosters a stress-free environment and lowers students’ affective filter.
"TRANSFORMATION STORIES" by Robert Hill
ReplyDeleteMelike Demir / 1548445
In his workshop Transformation Stories, Robert Hill explores the transformations in different genres like stories, films, novels, fairy tales etc and how this transformations help learners improve their language skills and world knowledge. He starts his session showing some illustrations from Puss in the Boots (Çizmeli Kedi, as we know it in Turkish) and talks about the monster in the story which is capable of transforming itself into a number of creatures and deceived by the cat, who turns into a rat and devoured by the cat in the end. Then, he asks the audience: “What kind of transformation is this?” After eliciting some answers, he explains that this kind of transformation is “shape shifting” and there are lots of legends, folk tales from many cultures. He gives the example of Zeus turning into animals to seduce women from Greek mythology and as a current example, he talks about the “Terminator” films in which the man turns from a hitman to a good man. He goes on giving other examples from The Ugly Duckling in which there is a transformation from “ugly to beautiful” and from Alice in Wonderland that presents a “growing and shrinking” girl. Hill says that “ They (stories) are all eternally fascinating because of this transformation.”Up to know, all these transformation examples show a physical change. The another kind of transformation kind is “not growing up stories” like Peter Pan and Dorian Gray in which there is a blockage to their change in process. After that, he directs a question: “Why illustrations?” And he lists:
• To attract reluctant readers
• To support comprehension
• To use for language activities
He adds a “BUT” and raise the below questions:
• Are they the right thing for stories?
• Do they limit the imagination, or encourage it?
Hill put forwards that as there are lots of different illustrations of the same story, they cannot stunt the imagination of the reader. He gives the example of Alice in Wonderland, of which he have numerous illustrations as Victorian Alice, modern Alice etc. (Of course we can say the same thing for the film version.) I totally agree with Hill and as language teachers, part of our job is to provide students with variety. When it comes to illustrations, then, we can bring different versions of a story or a film to class. Even if we can’t find them, we may want students to draw their own illustrations and talk about them in class. I think this would be a fun activity!
After covering transformation stories, Hill continues with the transformation in films, in Hollywood. He again give lots of examples like Cinderella in which pumpkin becomes a coach and the poor Cinderella turns into a princess and the old film Pygmalion in which a phonetics professor “picks up a girl from the gutter and changes her into a glamorous society butterfly” by changing her Cockney accent. I enjoyed this part very much as at the end he presents different activities that language teachers can easily apply in their classes. These are:
• Suggest a cast for a new film
• Invent another setting in different time and place
• Suggest a sound track
• Suggest changes to film script
I think these activities are very enjoyable for both students and teachers and they are easy to adopt to different classroom needs by creative teachers in Turkey. As Hill made very clear, we like transformation stories, Hollywood loves them , and benefiting from this rich source can make our lessons more enjoyable, meaningful and enlightening to students.
BETÜL SAN 162030
ReplyDeleteWHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘GRAMMAR’ BY DAVID WILLIS
The question whether grammar is teachable and learnable has been a discussion everywhere. I believe explicit grammar teaching is needed only where it hinders spoken or written communication.I think in other situations, grammar is not needed so much.
I also think that grammar is needed in such situations as to make sure both accuracy and fluency goes together.
Grammar is not an accurate sollution to deal with acquiring language. However, students should approach grammar as a helpful tool that may help them be correct most of the time.
Learning grammar speeds up the process of using language.
From what I gather from Dave Willis is that grammar certainly does have a role to play but should not occupy a big chunk of the class time.
BURCU KÖK
ReplyDelete1620194
TEACHING LANGUAGE SKILLS 324/2
SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10th APRIL 2010
Title: Authentic listening – challenges and practical solutions
Firstly, I want to explain why I chose this article among many of these articles. The reason is that listening is a very important component of learning L2, I believe. However, in Turkey, it used to be disregarded focusing on reading and writing more in the past but recently it has been taken into consideration as a crucial part of learning L2. In this article, Sheila Thorn focuses on listening as a listening training criticizing that it is just a way to introduce a new language. She divides the issue into five parts. First of all, she asks ‘What is the purpose of classroom listening practice?’ and then she lists the purposes of listening which are written orderly and really significant. These list consists of seven goals which are to train students to decode authentic listening input (i.e. word recognition), increase students’ confidence in their listening skills, give students practice in building, and revising, meaning in a safe environment, expose students to new language (structures and lexis), expose students to different accents and speeds of delivery, prepare them for independent learning, test students (i.e. the traditional listening comprehension approach). As for the second part, she gives answer to ‘What happens when we (i.e. native speakers or very competent non-native speakers) listen?’ She explains that we bring external knowledge to listening situation, we recognize sounds which make up words, phrases, etc which is decoding, we construct meaning as we go along, based on the words we recognize and also inference, we revise our understanding of the meaning as new information comes in. Third part is related to the dangers associated with our current approach. She gives importance to non-stressed function words can be in forming meaning, which I agree with her, criticizing the old method which suggests that the important thing is that a student is able to catch the main points of the authentic listening. In the fourth part, she points out the essentiality of raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English which are assimilation, elision, linking, ellipsis, general vowel reduction and weak forms unstressed words and chunks of speech unfamiliarity with accent. Lastly, she offers practical solutions related to word recognition, phonology, boosting students’ confidence. As a prospective teacher, I think this article is very useful for me because there are really good point that can be applicable in Turkey, in our classes.
Using Free Resources by Suzan Öniz
ReplyDeleteOn her workshop, Suzan Öniz offers various types of free activities. there is a common belief that all lessons are boring. Nearly all students approach every lesson in this perspective. And teachers always try to make their lesson more enjoyable, but they have great difficulty in finding such a colorful activities to make their lesson more effective and enjoyable. At this point, Öniz offers them a great variety of activities to make lessons more creative and effective. They are all effective, practical and easily accessible sources. There are activities for students in all age and proficiency levels. All teachers can find some resource suitable to their students profile. She makes a list of free resources which are the internet, posters, brouchers, newspaper, magazines.. what I realize is that they are all authentic materials and using authentic materials are very effective in the way that they make the topic more comprehensible and permanent. She also talks about how to use these materials in a classroom environment. Generally she offers to use group work for applying these activities. she mentions how to use a picture. She says any picture can be used by showing it partly, or cutting it out, or covering part of it and expecting students to make guesses. She gives some clues about how to make this activity more time saving and effective. To revise vocabulary, or to make some guesses, she also offers another activity: numbered jigsaw. This activity is really effective, I think. It refers to both students’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. Although this is a group work activity, firstly students are expected to work on themselves, they use their creativity and then they work collaborately. The picture grid is another activity she offers to revise vocabulary and grammar. It is like some kind of puzzle, so students also have fun while doing these activity and puzzles are really useful to activate their cognitive skills. She also talks about another lovely activity ‘odd one out’ I am also familiar with this activity and I think most of the students are familiar with it. This activity can be applied to whole class or small group. As it requires the justification of the answers, it is very useful to measure students’ comprehension. However, although all activities are invaluable for the teachers, not all teachers can access all of them easily. This may create a problem. However, they are very adaptable and according to conditions, the teacher can adapt any activity in the way s/he likes.
Using Free Resources by Suzan Öniz
ReplyDeleteI think she prepared very well activities to solve the general problem of the teacher and students.
Generally, students complain about English lesson which are not different from others, not depending on authentic materials etc. All of these, I mean not having variability in the activities and sources is enemy of both teachers and students because if there isn’t variability, students get bored very easily and teachers lose their motivation to teach.
When I analyzed her activities and sources, I really appreciated. She presents very different kinds of sources such as sites, posters, magazines, brochures and pictures and also she presents many different ways to describe how to use pictures in the classroom. For example; in one of her activities, she gives one picture for one group but the pictures cut for parts and numbers of cut parts depend on the numbers of the students in the groups. If teacher wants to make it more difficult then she can cut the pictures into more pieces. I think it is a wonderful way to make students speak because there will be information gaps between students and they will have to describe what they have in their pieces. It is also a good activity for vocabulary review because if teacher selects a picture related to the topic, then students have chance to review the vocabulary they have learned while trying to describe their pieces.
The cues on the task cards also is a wonderful activity to make students remember and review the word they have learned. In the activity teacher writes words and wants students to find the opposite of the words. Thanks to the activity, students learn both opposite of the word and remember the word itself.
In her odd one out activity she gives series of pictures to the students and asks them to find odd one and justify their answers. It is also a good way to revise the vocabulary and make students use language of justification.
All of these sources and activities are fine to make the lesson enjoyable but of course, there may be some challenges while applying these activities. Sometimes, teacher may not monitor whether each student in the groups speaks in English or not. She may not be sure if ever student attend in activity equally or not. Such kind of difficulties may occur while applying the activities.
SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10th APRIL 2010
ReplyDeleteTitle: Authentic listening – challenges and practical solutions
Thorn argues that “listening training rather than just listening texts to introduce new language” should be focus of listening classes. She introduces very practical strategies for teachers of English as a foreign language to train students how to listen. She suggests putting emphasis on indistinctly pronounced words to raise students’ awareness on these words. She offers different dictation styles. They are very useful and applicable in every level. Since students will be given time in these dictation activities, it will be a good way to use dictations to train our students step by step and they will not fell lost. She also offers strategies for phonology training. Using minimal pairs is one of the ways which increase awareness of how words mean different with the change of just one sound. Moreover teaching intonation patterns can be very useful for students since intonation signifies speakers’ intention such as whether s/he is asking a question or not. Intonation pattern may be a useful cue for students’ full comprehension of the listening passage. All of these strategies are easily applicable with a little bit more work of teacher. Finding authentic materials is not very hard but just designing activities can be challenging at first.
Emine EREN
ReplyDelete“What do we mean by Grammar?” By Dave Willis
Dave Willis’ video shows us there is two types of grammar which are grammar 1 and grammar2. If you use the grammar without knowing all the rules appropriately which is grammar2, you can then learn the rules. The most important aspect of learning a language is not knowing all the grammar rules without using it but using the language. As I remember, he gives a child as an example. He says that the child uses the language, and he can easily communicate and uses all the grammatical patterns in a right way, but he does not know any grammar rules. In that aspect does that child not know the language? Actually the answer is no. Because he uses the language efficiently and he knows grammar2 and it would be easy for him to learn grammar 1. In Turkey our problem n language learning is that the teachers are generally stuck to the rules of grammar, grammar1. They give the rules, and give simple examples of them such as “I go to school” for simple present tense and then expects students to use that rules in communication. There may be some reasons, of course, behind that problem; firstly the exams can be taken into consideration. The only measurement of proficiency is done on grammar rules strictly and some vocabulary and reading. There is such kind of belief in Turkey that if the students are not competent in grammar, they would fail. On the contrary we see in Dave Willis’ video not sticking to only rules in grammar, first giving the sentences or complex and diverse examples and making them use of it and exploring the language and then lastly giving the rules if necessary should be preferred. In my opinion if we can achieve this in Turkey, our conscious of language learning and success in that area would increase.
Sheila Thorn
ReplyDeleteTitle: Authentic listening – challenges and practical solutions
I have chosen this article because I think it stresses the importance of authentic listening in EFL classes and it offers quite significant and beneficial information touching on both to the problems related to listening sessions and possible solutions for these matters. Thorns divide the article into five parts as follows;
Part 1: What is the purpose of classroom listening practice?
Part 2: What happens when we listen?
Part 3: Dangers associated with our current approach
Part 4: Raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English
Part 5: Practical solutions
She starts with the quotation which is really meaningful and I liked very much: “Michael Rost makes the distinction between learning the L2 through listening and learning to listen in the L2”
Then she talks about the importance of listening to learn a second language. Some of the purposes she listed are training students to decode authentic listening input, increasing students’ confidence in their listening skills- which I find quite important as t motivates students in a high degree- exposing students to new language and the one of the last importance testing students.
Secondly, she talks on what happens when native or very competent non-native speakers listen and then she lists again the results under four different titles. I think this part is more related with advance learners and does not have much to the with any beginner or elementary level learners as the items are much more related to deepening the exist knowledge.
In the next part, she talks about the dangers of the current approaches that teachers use when they teach listening skills. She criticizes the cliché sentences like “Don’t worry! You don’t need to understand every word’ or ‘You can work out the meaning just by focusing on the key, stressed content words.’ which are uttered to help them feel easy. She points out the importance of understanding not only key, stressed forms but also some unstressed but important structures which have big role in understanding the overall meaning clearly. I find this suggestion applicable to some extend but as I said before I support the classical method which asks students not to push them to understand every single detail although they sometimes might be important. On the following, Thorn talks about the causes of the problems that L2 learners complain mostly when they do listening.
At the end of the article, she introduces some practical solutions for achieving a good listening atmosphere. These solutions are quite useful and the number of them can also be increased aby some alternative solutions.
Burcu Deryan
ReplyDelete1619980
SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10th APRIL 2010
Title: Authentic listening – challenges and practical solutions
First of all, I chose this article about the authentic listening-challenges and practical solutions since authentic listening is considerably ignored in state schools in Turkey while it is significant factor in learning and also acquiring the language. Moreover, I have found the quotation interesting and right: “Michael Rost makes the distinction between learning the L2 through listening and learning to listen in the L2.” I agree with this sentence because students are exposed to the listening texts in their course books that are heavily scripted and do not involve authentic spoken language which students find difficult and is needed to communicate effectively.
Sheila Thorn divides the issue in her article into 5 parts which are what is the purpose of classroom listening practice, what happens when we listen, dangers associated with our current approach, raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English, practical solutions respectively.
In the first part, she enlists the purposes of classroom listening practice which are really useful and applicable for the learners. The list consist of 7 purposes which are to train students to decode authentic listening input (i.e. word recognition), to increase students’ confidence in their listening skills, to give students practice in building, and revising, meaning in a safe environment, to expose students to new language (structures and lexis), to expose students to different accents and speeds of delivery, to prepare them for independent learning, to test students (i.e. the traditional listening comprehension approach). Thus, we can expose the learners to both ample authentic and meaningful inputs as well as motivate them.
Secondly, she mention what happens when we listen to native or very competent nonnative speakers and then she tells that we bring external knowledge to the listening situation, we recognise sounds which make up words, phrases, etc (decoding), we construct meaning as we go along, based on the words we recognise and also inference, and then we revise our understanding of the meaning as new information comes in. I think this part is more appropriate for upper or advanced level learners rather than beginner or elementary level ones since it may need to analyse and deep thinking abstract items. It will be more meaningful and beneficial for the learners.
The third part includes dangers associated with our current approach by criticising the old method in which teachers say “Don’t worry! You don’t need to understand every word’ or ‘You can work out the meaning just by focusing on the key, stressed content words.” Instead, she emphasizes the importance of the non-stressed function words that can be in forming meaning.
In the next part she explains why we should raise awareness of the challenging features of spoken English which are assimilation, elision, linking, ellipsis, general vowel reduction and weak forms, unstressed words and chunks of speech, unfamiliarity with accent.
In the last part, she presents practical solutions related to the word recognition, phonology and boosting your students’ confidence in order to achieve effective listening for the learners. I think those practical solutions are effective and useful as well as applicable for almost every level learner in Turkey.
USING FREE RESOURCES
ReplyDeleteA Workshop by A. Suzan Öniz, PhD
In her presentation, Suzan Öniz gives teachers clues about a variety of classroom activities that can be really effective when applied in the classroom. Such practical, easily accessible and interesting activities are really important for teachers to take the attention of the students in the classroom activities. In that sense, she especially emphasizes the use of pictures, brochures and the poster in the classroom and implies that these materials are easily reachable by the students and the teachers as well. These materials are authentic; hence students can learn more effectively and what they do becomes more meaningful while they are engaged in the activities supported by such real life materials. These activities are especially efficient for young learners because they are more challenged by abstract thinking. Therefore, teachers should think about this characteristic of the young learners in advance and use such materials to make the language sound more meaningful to students. Also, we can use such materials in a variety of ways to achieve our goals. We can engage our students in a picture ordering activity in pairs. In that way, their skills of working collaboratively improves and also sequence of events get more understandable for them with the use of pictures. Another example is that we can start our lesson by showing a picture of a person, an animal or an object to our class and want them to make guesses about the picture. In this way, we could arouse the interest of our students. Lastly, as speaking activity, we can give our students cards on which a picture exists and then want them to talk about it with their peers. As seen, we can adapt these pictures to different activities and lessons become more pleasurable for the students with the aid of them.
When it comes to implementing such activities involving use of a variety of pictures, I am really concerned about the crowded classrooms. In such classes, we may not be able to use such authentic materials so effectively because it gets more difficult to monitor the students when the number is so high. Also, there are still some schools that do not posses any technological materials such as computers and projectors in our country. Teachers may not be able distribute such materials in copies every time. Nevertheless, if possible using such materials can be really effective in the learning process and as teachers we should be prepared for the anticipated problems of these materials in advance to make the best of time that is allocated for teaching our students.
In English teaching, it is quite important for a learning process to be permanent. In order to make the teaching more permanent for students, the teachers should use their teaching and practising skill as much as possible. While doing that, a teacher should be practical as well as informative. So, the activites, exercises, anything that is used in the teaching process by the teacher should be as ‘free’ as possible as Suzan Oniz names it. By using such elements throughout the course also ensures the lively and enjoyable environment in the classroom, which is different from following the course just with the ordinary coursebook. She suggests some alternative free resources to be used in ELT. The first one is the Internet. Although there are still schools and other places which don’t have any connection to Internet, we know that, nowadays, internet is quite easily accesible. When we search for the ELT subject, there are really many useful websites which can be benefited effectively in English teaching. In her workshop, she provided us with many convenient websites selected from the others. I, especially, liked the ones whose adresses are ‘www.usingenglish.com’ and ‘bradleys-english-school.com.’ The latter one could particularly work quite well with the young learners. The students can also use these online sources as extensive learning materials while they are out of the classroom.
ReplyDeleteApart from the Internet which is an interactive, online source, Oniz suggests ‘anything around us’ as free resources to be used in our English classes. She suggests the use of pictures in the teaching. In this activity, the students guess what can be the picture, the teacher shows it partly and wants the students to speak. With this activity, the learning process is both entertaining and instructive for the students. They can learn or revise the things they learned while enjoying it. I, especially, like the ‘picture grid’ activity as I believe that the teacher should give a purpose to the students to do an activity. And if we give the purpose to complete a picture by doing the exercises, the learning would be much more meaningful in students’ minds. It also has no costs, no preparation process. We can use this giving-purpose-to-do-the-activity in all kinds of activities in our classroom. However, such activities would work well with groups, in these cases, the classroom would be noisy, and thus, it would be difficult to cope with. But, still, it would be worth to make the learning process more permanent and meaningful. The big job is the teacher’s in such cases. The teacher can integrate everything by using ‘free resources’. To sum up, I totally agree with what Oniz suggests.
USING FREE RESOURCES
ReplyDeleteSUZAN ÖNİZ
In her workshop Suzan Öniz, guides the prospective and experienced teachers to find ways to improve their instructional skills. Firstly, internet is a widely used source in our day. Hence, she offers some activities which require use of internet. And in our days internet is cheap and easily accessible resource. However in public schools, it would be problematic to find computers for each student but if the teacher prepares the activities beforehand, it would be really useful. What I like most with the workshop of Öniz is the idea of using pictures as a classroom activity. The applicability of the most of the ideas is really high in a classroom environment, because, the activities would be suitable for every proficiency level. She also explained in her workshop, how to make the activities easier or more difficult according to students’ proficiency level. This is also a good aspect because as prospective teachers, making the activities suitable for the proficiency level of the students is an issue with which we generally have difficulty.
Furthermore, I believe that it would be easier to make the learning more lasting with the help of these activities. Since, online sources or pictures are the best ways to attract the attention of the students. Regardless of their proficiency level or their ages we can apply the ideas of Öniz in classes. Even in the same classroom there would be students whose proficiency level is different from each other. Therefore, it is important to implement such kind of activities that closes the level difference between students.
Lastly, it is important to mention that although there are some points that would not work in a classroom environment because of the lack of technological devices etc., Öniz’s ideas are applicable and lead the teachers to improve themselves as well as being helpful to the students. Besides helping to the students learn the topic properly, these activities makes the learning much more permanent I think.
Kübra ŞIK
1620806
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMargit Szesztay’s Talk about Creativity in Classrooms
ReplyDeleteMargit Szesztay talks about “how she's training teachers to be more creative in the classroom and how to foster a richer learning experience”.
She makes emphasis on “creativity” and states that she does not see creativity as doing something very special in the classroom but she says that creativity is much related “how the teachers do things in the class”. According to her, a teacher should be really present in the class, fully enthusiastic about her lesson and s/he should perceive everything unique. I think she has a point here by saying that the teacher should be enthusiastic. It is very important to love your job as a teacher so that you can expect your students to love your lesson and struggle for learning the language. As language teachers we should let our students to see the light in our eyes, in order to let the light outside in their eyes. She thinks that one of the important components of creativity is feeling the excitement that you had on your first of teaching every time you enter the class, even after 20 or 25 years of experience. This shows that being an experienced teacher is not always a sign for being creative or enthusiastic. What we need is to motivate our students through motivating ourselves.
Another aspect of creativity she mentions is its liberating effect in the classroom. Creativity makes students feel free and let them make mistakes without any hesitation which improves their self confidence and which facilitates learning process through active involvement. When teachers adopt creativity in their class, it leads to a good flow of thoughts and feelings and, in this way; students can be good speakers and communicators. The thing that I liked most is her point saying that teacher not only make learning memorable by students s/he also should broaden the horizons of students. It is very important because an individual lacking the ability to think critically might face lots of problems in life related to many different things. The process of creativity is “changing”. This is certainly true because without any change we cannot expect any creativity, any facilitation or any development which may enhance the learning in classrooms. She suggests using a lot of visuals in classroom in order to be creative because visuals help much for a good learning. As creative teachers we should care our students’ choices but we should also push them towards new things s that they can discover something new.
However, being a creative teacher and using creativity in the classes bring some problems as well. It brings more responsibility and being open minded for all the time in order to use time, materials, sources and environment effectively.
I think being creative and using creativity in the classroom is really a good way to enhance the learning in the classroom. If we want our students to be actively involved in the process and to be critical thinkers we should do something in order to let them have those characteristics. As she said, being creative does not mean doing something special but the way we do things. So, being creative is not much problem in Türkiye’s EFL classes if we consider this aspect. The thing we need is a bit enthusiasm and a bit sacrifice then everything will automatically happen in the way we want.
MEHMET DURMAZ / 1620004
In her presentation "Twitting for language Education", Erice discuss the use of twitter for foreign language education purposes. After giving the definition of twitter, she gives some examples of the use of twitter in her own class. From the examples, I can see that some of the students really have fun from tweeting for English lesson. She also offers some tasks that can be applied to twitter. These tasks include; Learning diary, news report, completing the sentence, fill in the blanks, word of the day, describe an object, talk about a celebrity, sentence correction etc. Among these tasks I particularly find completing the sentence and word of the day tasks applicable and beneficial. In completing the sentence task, the students can be asked to complete an incomplete sentence, and the teacher can comment on their grammar mistakes. Word of the day task, on the other hand, can contribute to the students' vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteUse of twitter in Turkey seems applicable to me, since especially the young population of Turkey is fond of using such kind of websies. So by using such kind of sites for educational purposes, the teachers can easily reach the students, and she/he can quickly monitor and evaluate the students entries. Actually I think that using twitter for english teaching is not much different from using a blog.
Besides these advantages, using twitter for English teaching purposes has also some disadvantages. In the presentation it is not quite clear that whether the students use the same twitter account for both English lesson and their own individual purposes. If so the students may feel uncomfortable in this platform, and they may think that their privacy is blocked.
Finally I think that making the students get a special account for only the purposes of English class may hinder the disadvantages, and the communicative and enjoyable side of the twitter can be emphasized more easily.
In SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL session, she argues authentic listening supported by challenges and practical solutions. In her session, she comes up with a pretty different perspective by sharing the quote which states the distinction between learning the L2 through listening and learning to listen in the L2. As in the real life class environment case, the teachers have a huge tendency to practise the first way learning the L2 through listening. In this case, I also agree that many sees listening just as a tool to achieve success in L2 learning. However, what is missing in this approach to listening is that most of them unfortunately ignore the reality of four basic skills of a language: reading, writing, speaking and finally listening. I also agree that a common failure in listening while learning foreign language is totally result from, as Thorn states, the teachers’ ignorance the reality questioning what happens when we listen. As Thorn suggested, while we listening, we bring our knowledge about the listening situation which includes the place, the speaker, the subject matter, which is the real reason behind the importance of providing the students with enough background in advance in order to get them make sense of the listening task. Secondly, there are some main misunderstandings about “decoding”. For instance, although it is somehow automatic for us, the students waste lots of their time while recognising the words and phrases. Therefore, there is very little time left for the next stage, constructing meaning, as also stated by Thorn. In the session, some dangers related to our current approach are also dealt with, which I found very well-defined and useful as it is important to know exactly what is wrong to make it all right at all. As uttered in the session, the problem with our students is that they often seize on a word they think they’ve recognised as being close enough to the one they’ve heard and are very unwilling to give this word up, despite later incoming input which indicates they have guessed wrong. For instance, once the students write ‘smells’ instead of ‘smiles’, they never give up the word “smells” although it is clear that their guessing is wrong. When we have a look at the practical solutions part of Thorn’s session, I find them pretty appropriate to our class environment in Turkey and they are also totally to the point. The first training is word recognition including Gap-fill, weak forms and unstressed words, contractions, unfamiliar lexis and Dictation of short authentic extracts .Working on phonology is also suggested as a training, which I find the most applicable and effective approach to the learning how to listen or let’s say learning listening. Minimal pairs phoneme distinction is a point that will increase the students’ success in listening when applied. Intonation patterns and sentence stress are also main keys to the listening success for the students as intonation makes the meaning much more clear. All in all, Thorn successfully points out the problems related to the listening in the classroom environment from both the teachers’ perspective and the students’ wrong tendencies. I also find the suggestions as practical solutions to the defined problems very applicable and promising for prospective teachers,us.
ReplyDeleteUSING FREE RESOURCES
ReplyDeleteby A. SUZAN ÖNİZ
In this workshop, Suzan Öniz firstly makes the list of free resources. First one is “the internet”. She provides a website for teachers to use. Then she goes on with “free posters”, “newspapers” etc. Then she gives some ideas about how to use pictures in classroom. She divides the types of activities as pair work and whole class activities. Then she lists the ideas.
After she lists the ideas, she also provides guidelines about the activities. She gives ideas about how we could make the activity easier or harder for the students. For example, in the preparation part, she says that the teacher cuts the pictures into 3-4. Everybody has a part of the picture and they say “I have this, I have that”. This activity can be used for both vocabulary teaching and speaking. In addition, this activity can be used for all level. If you choose a picture which includes basic objects, it becomes appropriate for lower level. However if you choose more complex one, it can be used for higher level of learners. The guideline she gives to make the activity easier or harder is also a practical solution. I really liked that idea. In the “in class part” she explains the activity in detail. As we see it is an excellent activity. It also doesn’t require a perfect classroom setting, which has highly-technological devices. It can be used in every kind of classrooms. Second activity she provides is “numbered jigsaw”. I think this is also good activity for grammar practice. Students use “may/could/must” according to certainty of their guesses. The last activity is “odd one out” activity. The students can practice vocabulary and the language of justification.
To sum up, I really liked the activities she provided. They all are useful and appropriate for all levels. The activities are very practical, as well. You don’t need any complex devices to implement these activities. Besides, the activities have variety. I am sure the students have fun with these activities. I plan to use these activities in my classroom in the future.
PINAR GACAN
ReplyDelete1620079
In Suzan Öniz’s workshop of Free Resources, she suggests some alternative and enjoyable ways for teaching language in a classroom. Firstly, she gives us some free sources for English teachers and then examples of activities that can be used in classroom environment. The web based sources for English teachers are from Inged website. The suggested websites in Inged are for the teachers who still want improve themselves on their subject area and who are willing to bring some new insight to their classroom environment and who devote himself/herself to his/her job. Furthermore, there are also numerous web sites for different kinds of activities in Inged website to use in the classroom actively. Some free sources she has proposed are internet, free poster & brochures, newspaper, magazine pictures around us, jigsaw picture activity, numbered jigsaws. Then, she explains these activities further with their applicability in classes. They can be adapted according to the level of the students, age of them and accessibility to the materials. The activities can be applied with pair work, group work, and whole class. I think all of them are good, interesting and enjoyable activities for adult learners. These are authentic materials and engaging for the students. In addition, the activities can be arranged according to the level of students. Using websites and tempting the students to benefit from them is a bit challenging in Turkey because the students don’t have computers or internet connections to access these resources. Even some teachers who are working in villages don’t have internet connections. However, this doesn’t mean that these teachers should be deprived of these web-based materials. Instead of web-materials, the teachers can benefit from the pictures materials around them and use them interestingly in their classes.
Although these are unique and attractive for the students, the activities should be conducted according to the aim of the lesson. The students may not take the lesson serious and don’t obey the rules during these activities in Turkey because they aren’t used to it and if they aren’t learning grammar, the lesson is nothing. In addition, if the aim of such a course is speaking, the students may start to speak in Turkish. This is especially important for Turkish State schools. As the students don’t have the competent of speaking at the early or even in later stages, they immediately shift to Turkish instead of trying to explain something in English. They may also create a lot of noise during the lesson. In order for the teacher to apply these activities successfully in the class, she/he should make the aim of the lesson clear, come to the lesson prepared and give clear instruction to the students in order to prevent noise and confusion.
Duygu Çandarlı
ReplyDelete1549070 FLE 324 / 2
What do we mean by grammar? Dave Willis
In his presentation, Willis claims that grammar does not mean being able to tell the rules, but it means knowing the language. He strengthens his claim by categorizing grammar as grammar 1 and 2 with the examples, by exemplifying the (un)teachability of grammar with the help phrasal and two part verbs. At the end, he asks some thought-provoking questions for teachers and suggests some useful implications.
Teachers say that “students know the grammar, but they cannot use it”. According to Willis, this is grammar 1 and just telling about English, which is nonsense. Willis states that “by the age of five, children know most of the grammar of their mother tongue”. It is grammar 2 and means being able to use the language, which we need for EFL context in Turkey, too.
Willis maintains that the use of language can contradict with the rules that are taught. For instance, the sentence “at eight o’clock, I’m usually having my dinner” seems to be wrong according to the rules, but it can be used. Also, he states that students can use the phrasal verbs or two part verbs correctly. However, they do not really understand the grammar behind that. If students are given meaningful and comprehensible input, they can draw conclusions from it and go beyond that level, which is also compatible with Krashen’s theories. EFL teachers should enable students to raise their language awareness with sufficient input as grammar comes second after knowing the language itself. While he is in favour of acquiring the language unconsciously, he does not deny the role of formal instruction in class. As a useful implication, he suggests teaching some simple and straightforward elements that do not contradict with the rules. Also, correcting learners’ errors is vital to prevent fossilization, which is a very beneficial aspect of EFL for me, too. As an other significant implication, he advises teachers to provide texts and encourage learners to look at it critically with a group, which is not done very often in a Turkish EFL context. He also thinks that the texts should be authentic or simplified texts that can be summarized with simplification. Moreover, he recommends not using texts which are specifically designed to explain a certain grammatical rule, which is very reasonable because if the texts are so, teachers again focus on just form not meaning. Lastly, teachers should act like a guide in order to enable students to discover, experiment with the language and learn it in an indirect way by providing sufficient examples.
All in all, I find Willis’ ideas and implications very valuable and useful for Turkish EFL context. I believe that many new young EFL teachers can apply them in a classroom setting while experienced teachers should change their habit of using grammar translation method. Currently, grammar has the greatest role in Turkey because it is easy to teach and assess within this exam-oriented structure. Only for people who prepare for LYS exam for university entrance, explicit teaching can be done, but for the others Willis’s implications can be used through teacher expertise and enthusiasm. Grammar should have a supplementary role in Turkish EFL context in order to enable students to acquire the language, raise their language awareness and use it creatively.
“What do we mean by Grammar?” By Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteTeaching grammar is a controversial issue in our field. It is a common misunderstanding that you can’t speak a language unless you know the grammar. I think that’s why in Turkey most English teachers stick to teaching grammar rules. Willis says it should be ‘you do not know the grammar of a language unless you can speak it’. In addition teaching grammar rules does not always work. Some rules have different aspects and implications if you give the rule in the first part and say this is how it works, you limit them. For example, you can tell the rules for present progressive, which limits their creativity and using other implications. The sentence ‘I am usually having breakfast’ may seem incorrect but it is used in the language. There is nothing like that you cannot use phrasal verbs unless you know their grammar. Grammar is not the starting point. The actual version is you don’t know the grammar of phrasal unless you can use them. I believe this is ‘knowing the language’ not the grammar rules as Willis explains as grammar 2. In other words, grammar consists in performance not in the knowledge of the rules. Willis explains some implications on English Language Teaching in the last part of his presentation. He says that we must give them much text as more and more input, get learners to look at texts critically. While working with the texts they can work in groups because working in groups activates their critical faculty. We as teachers should not give them text which is specifically designed to illustrate particular grammar rules. It is the learner who is at the centre of the things. The teacher is the person who helps the learner to come up with and develop grammar. All we can do is to encourage them.
Rüveyda GÜNDÜZ
ReplyDelete1620129
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY GRAMMAR?
DAVE WILLIS
Grammar is a very well-known term as mentioned in the presentation. People think that they know what grammar means. However; there are some basic misconceptions about the term “grammar”. Firstly, teachers think that their students know the grammar but they can not use it. Actually, it is not the case most of the time. Students are able to use grammar while speaking because they can form very complex sentences even they are not taught. However; they can not explain the rules of the structures in a language. Also, people think that we can not speak a language without knowing the grammar of it. I don’t think so because grammar structures develop as we speak a language. What I mean is not that grammar is not necessary for speaking a language but it is not of utmost importance. There are some suggestions the author made for teachers to help learners during the language learning process. They are very useful. Firstly, teachers should give students the chance to create rules themselves not teach directly. Secondly, students should be informed that a language is not just a pile of rules. Teachers generally want students not to make any errors. Instead, they should help students to explore how to use a language by putting some rational restrictions. Moreover; learners should have a chance to use language both productively and receptively in order to explore the grammar of a language, so teachers should provide students with appropriate input. Also, teachers should try to increase learners’ awareness of a language by giving them a chance to analyze, identify and explore the language.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteUSING FREE RESOURCES
ReplyDeleteSUZAN ÖNİZ
Suzan öniz suggests some alternative ways of language teaching. First, she mentions some free resources and how they are used in the classroom. she propose that there are internet, free poster & brochures, newspaper, magazine pictures around us, jigsaw picture activity, numbered jigsaws as a free sources.
The most important of them is internet. She suggests a useful website for teachers and they can use this web site for their teaching activities. She suggests many ways for classroom activities. For example; how the classroom is divided according to the activities and how group and whole class activities should be organized according to the activities. Then, she shows how to apply these methods and resources in the classroom activities. In class part, she shows how the jigsaws, pictures and other resources can be used for the teaching activities.
The degree of the activities are suitable to the learners level and they starts with easier ones and then they are getting difficult. ı think this idea is very beneficial, because most of the classrooms, the level of the students are not the same, so this should be regarded. ı liked the activities especially using the pictures and jigsaws are very creative for students. Odd one out activity is also well organized and it can be applied and used in the classes. ı liked the activities, for most of them there is no need to have many materials. The activities and the resources are very creative for students, ı think. Instead of just using the black board, the web and internet resources can be used and the students will be motivated with the help of these resources to the topic. Most of them can be applicable, but some technological devices may a problem for some schools. in turkey, there is a dersane sector and the families and managers direct their all money and effort to these sectors. Instead of giving such enormous money to private courses, the technological materials such as internet and web, can be supplied to the schools, because ı know that there are not even computers in many schools in Turkey.
USING FREE RESOURCES
ReplyDeleteA Workshop by A. Suzan Öniz, PhD
In the presentation, Susan Öniz suggests very practical and economical materials for teaching English. She says we are in technological era therefore we should make use of technology as much as we could. She does not find the school books efficient for language teaching. According to her we should take attention of students with variety of materials such as internet, free poster & brochures, newspaper, magazine pictures around us, jigsaw picture activity, numbered jigsaws. All of them are free on the internet and students have the opportunity to study at home. She says that materials can be adjusted for all levels of learners. She finds pictures useful even for advanced learners. I really like her suggestions because she proposes authentic materials. Using authentic materials in EFL classrooms facilitates learning quickly as students can associate the topic with their real life. This kind of teaching is permanent and more concrete for students. In the future I am considering using free online resources as much as I can in order to make my lessons enjoyable and original.
Susan Öniz suggests using free sources on the internet but this is not possible in Turkey. Many schools lacks of internet connection, computer, projection. Teachers may not be able distribute such materials in copies every time. Thus implementation of these activities will be difficult in our country. Crowded classes are the other problem for these activities. Although there are many deficiencies in our classrooms as teachers we can find other ways. Bringing a picture to the class is not difficult in a simple way.
Learning a new language is enjoyable and we can make it more enjoyable with untraditional activities. Teachers can adapt every material to their students. If teachers use technology and resources around them, students will be more enthusiastic and successful in language learning.
What do we mean by Grammar? Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn his presentation, Willis touches upon the issue of grammar, which is maybe the most controversial aspect of language, in Turkey, too. People tend to reduce grammar just to some rules to be applied to form sentences. The easiest way to teach grammar is to provide the rules and expect learners to apply them in the given context, at this point. However, this is not the case. Grammar teaching is more complicated than most people think and it needs to be dealt with care. Willis provides us with two different definitions of grammar. 1st definition is providing the rules for the learners to apply them; the 2nd one is letting the learners to be creative. Most of the teachers in Turkey apply to the first kind of teaching grammar because it is easier and saves teachers from spending too much time on teaching. However, when the fist way is used, students will memorize the rules and they will not be able to apply the rules when given a context. The important point in teaching grammar is to teach the students how to apply the rules in a given context. At this point, we need to use the second way and let the students discover the language and grammar rules themselves. When we teach grammar inductively, students will own the rules and they will try to apply the rules in given contexts because the aim of the grammar teaching should be to let the students make their choices between the rules. Grammar is a very important and indispensable part of language teaching. Because of this reason, we cannot give it aside and deal with the other parts of language.
In his presentation, Willis argues that we need to give meaningful contexts to learners to facilitate learning. I totally agree with him at this point because when we provide them with meaningful context, they will have the chance to grasp the meaning out of the context. For example, when we are teaching infinitives, we can provide the learners with a text that is full of infinitives and which are easy to be grasped by the learners. We need to give learners autonomy however; we need to deal with the errors carefully. One point should not be forgotten. Errors are signs of development. When students make errors, we should not penalize or humiliate them. We should never forget the fact that errors do not occur because the learners are not intelligent.
Grammar teaching in Turkey is generally realized by the first way of teaching. However, there is no reason for the second way not to be applied. However, to be successful, we need to revise the course books and include the necessary materials in the course books. Also, we need to train the teachers how to teach grammar learn-centrally. The teachers should be taught to accept the learners with errors and let them be creative. The curriculum should be in line with the teaching method and it should be easy to follow.
Sahura Ertuğrul 1620046
ReplyDeleteWhat do we mean by grammar? By Dave Willis
In Dave Willis’ presentation, I saw the questions wandering in my mind for several years. When I first began to learn English, I thought that I needed to know (memorize) some rules. However, in high school I realized an interesting and important thing. The rules suck because if you memorize something, you need time to remember and use it. However, I met a friend who can speak, read, listen and write easily without studying any rules. I was shocked. How could she succeed without any rules when I was studying really hard and did not show any success in using language except the tests? Yes, she did not memorize any rules but she listened to English songs, read English journals and had a pen friend in messenger. When I asked her how you answered this question, she just said I heard it or I just felt it. In time, I realized the triviality of the rules, especially in the acquisition course last semester. In that course, while looking at the mistaken sentences, I saw that the sentences we called as wrong was called as acceptable by the native speakers. Therefore, since almost five years I have thought about what grammar is, and how we should learn and teach it. I think to some extent some basic rules should be taught because with the help of these rules, the learner can be exposed to comprehensible and ample input and their acquisition may be accelerated. As far as I see in the education system. English teaching is based on the grammar rules and vocabulary teaching. In Foreign Language class in the high school, our four hours main course was totally on the grammar rules. Therefore, there are some challenges waiting for English teachers to let learners acquire language by using not by the rules. As Mr. Willis stated, to be able to speak a language does not mean to speak about this language. For example, I am a Turkish native speaker and when somebody asks about a rule in Turkish, I am sometimes stuck to answer because that rule is in my mind someway and I do not know how it can be shaped. English is exactly like that as all languages. The language acquisition system is not solved totally and all things we know are just the assumptions. Therefore; the only certain thing in language teaching and learning is to follow the natural order to acquire a language. Mr. Willis suggests a way like this. As prospective English teachers, we should develop ourselves as a good guiders and scaffolders, and let learners be good self learners and make learners motivated to use the target language. We should follow technology and improvements in linguistics.
I find this presentation really helpful. It is valuable at least in terms of that this topic becomes the topic of the teaching methodology debates and it shows that the system becomes to change and the acquisition begins to gain importance rather than memorization of the certain rules and vocabularies. I hope that Turkish education system will be benefited from these improvements with the help of prospective teachers.