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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Sessions Presented by Oniz
ReplyDeleteIdeas for creating activities using free resources - Suzan Oniz
In this session, Suzan Oniz represents some useful web-sites to use them in our lessons as teachers. She starts with a web-site address, namely http://www.inged.org.tr which includes lots of web-site addresses to create materials for our students to become a more creative English teacher For example, there are some web-sites for vocabulary teaching and practicing, also some others for creating videos for our students. I think they are really applicable, we can refer to those web-sites while teaching different topic in our lessons. Based on the topic, we can make our own videos, our quizzes and worksheets. Since we are English teachers in Turkey, with the help of the materials in that kind of sites we can create our own context that is relevant for Turkey or related to Turkey. Also among these sites, there are some addresses including different games for learners. As learners, they can also make use of the web-site either by the help of teacher or by themselves. After representing many useful web-sites for creative activities then she represents some useful activities to use them in our classes. Especially, she emphasizes using the pictures as materials in our classes both for individual and group (pair) work. For example, I really liked the activity called numbered jigsaw. It is a very creative one and very useful to revise any kind of vocabulary items. First you need a picture then you divide this picture into different similar parts and numbered all these parts. For each part you give cues to your students and the students try to make use of all these cues at the same time they try to bring all the parts of the picture together. In my opinion, this is a very creative and enjoyable activity. As English teachers, in Turkey, we have crowded classes and as a group activity we can revise vocabulary in our classes with numbered jigsaw activity. In Oniz presentation, there are also other types of activities in most of which we use pictures. They also help us to be creative in our classes.
What do we mean by Grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn his presentation, Willis makes two definitions of grammar; grammar1 and grammar2. He states that grammar1 is being able to tell the rules and grammar2 is being able to use the language. Namely, Willis tells that knowing just the rule is not enough to know a language. If one is to know a language then s/he should be able to use the language. In the presentation, it says the teachers should not restrict learners with simple rules. Instead, they should let learners use their creativity and recognize some grammatical rules themselves. For example, in the presentation Willis gives an example of how to presents “to” and give the learners a chance to realize the usage of infinitive themselves. At the last part of the presentation, some useful ideas are given to the teachers. In my opinion the ideas presented by Willis are very useful and applicable to EFL context in Turkey. I think the ideas in the presentation can change the view about grammar teaching in Turkey. Still in our country, the teacher tells the rules and wants the learners to use the language. I think what Willis tells in his presentation should be applied to our classes for us to be able to use the language. We can create opportunities for our students to be exposed to real language. It is not impossible. We can offer them some authentic materials and by the help of these materials the learners can build their language. I think there is not a big challenge in applying what Willis tells. However, you should change the traditional teaching of grammar and try to help learners be more autonomous and free in using the language.
I preferred to make my other video comment on a different presentation rather than sessions in IATEFL conference. Here is the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62axpsDtm0&feature=related
In this video, the teacher gives some useful tips for pronunciation and teaching techniques. They are interesting, useful and easy to use. According to him, the teacher shouldn’t pronounce the sentence word by word while writing the sentence on the board in a lesson. Because if she or he does, then the students have problem in making a sentence and pronouncing the words. I think he is right because they should hear the whole sentence as if they are speaking. Other thing that he recommends teachers is not to complete the sentence instead of the students. The teacher should wait for them to complete the sentence or ask help from other students. Otherwise, they don’t do anything but teacher does the learning. We should give them time to express themselves. They should talk in order to learn. He suggests that we should record ourselves while teaching in a class with the help of a camera so that we can see our problems. This is an important point for a person to see himself in action because in this way he or she can see his or her mistakes and can solve his or her own problems about teaching. There is no need to reach to the top success for a teacher but every time he or she must know how to see the problems.
What Do We Mean by Grammar by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteI am really impressed so much with his presentation about grammar. He talked about the things that I never thought about. He pointed that the grammar that we taught students explicitly I mean by giving rules kills their creativity. He gave some striking examples which shows that the grammar that we teach them might not be always true and in a harmony with all the usages in real language. I really like his examples about present tense versus present continuous tense. For the exceptions he tries to give a grammatical explanation even I cannot understand. So he makes a difference between grammar 1 and grammar 2 which he named himself. I agree with him. Those two grammars are really different from each other and in Turkey we generally tend to teach grammar 1 which completely kills their language learning process. In Turkey there is that belief that without learning the grammar of that language you cannot learn and speak that language. He however turns that thought upside down and says that you do not know the grammar of a language unless you can use it. I like this suggestion. He suggests to the teachers that as teachers we should be aware of the limitations of formal instruction and try to raise their awareness about the different usages of the same form in different context so that they can explore the usages I mean where and how to use a form by themselves. If teacher do so then his proposal that ‘’you do not know the grammar of a language unless you can speak that language’’. He also proposes that teachers should create meaningful context to help them grasp what is going on which I completely agree with. Another suggestion is that we should give them opportunities to use the language and do not penalize their errors because errors are kind of signs of development. So his suggestions seem so applicable to me because they are not so hard to apply in Turkey. There is nothing extra or there is nothing related to money. All we need to do is create meaningful context and wait them to explore the rules by using the language. The only problem awaiting teacher who apply those suggestions in their classes might be the time. Time is so limited and there is a curriculum for Turkish teachers to follow, they are not independent. That is why it might create a problem but apart from that I cannot see ant obstacle for those suggestions to be applied in Turkey. Their applicability level is so appropriate and they are so useful both for teacher and students.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAvalon to Shakespeare: Language Learning and Teaching in Virtual World by Joe Pereira
ReplyDeleteThis presentation informs us about teaching and learning language via Second Life, and the Avalon Project which is a European Union project that aims the best teaching practice in virtual world, Second Life.
The presentation starts with the introduction of the tools that are used in language teaching from chalkboards and whiteboards to distance education and facebook, and to online games. After explaining the benefits of the games in language learning, Pereira skips to description of what is virtual world. Later on, he mentions the use of Second life as a virtual world in language education. He says that Seconds Life gives students the opportunity to choose who they want to be and what they want to do; and it provides students with learning in the context with simulations. Also, he adds that Second life can be a good application of socio- constructivism by making students engage in actions and giving them the opportunity of learning by doing. According to him, Second life can be helpful for shy students who are not happy with who they really are because it provides them with choosing another identity.
Then Pereira introduces the AVALON Project. It aims to develop the best teaching practice in the virtual world. It gives courses in the Avalon Island in Second life for teachers who want to teach in Second life, and then gives certificates to them. Pereira, further, explains his own project in Second life, the Shakespeare Quest: a quest in which students try to find Shakespeare’s lost play with the given instructions and clues. Through this task, students become familiar with past tense.
I really find this presentation useful. It is really interesting, and I really would like to use Second Life. However, in Turkey, the lacking of technological equipments hinders the application of this project. Also, it is not easy to use Second Life because it is complicated and it requires special training, so the teachers who want to should be an expert of it.
2. Useful Exploitation of Pop Songs in the Classroom by Stephanie Davis
ReplyDeleteThis presentation is about the effective use of pop songs in language classrooms. Stephanie Davis starts with answering the question of why pop songs are useful. She explains that pop songs are fun and motivating, they build a bridge between school language and real life language, they are authentic materials and students are familiar with them. Then, she notes that any song whose level is appropriate and with which students are familiar can be used for everybody, not just for teenagers. Later on, she gives some suggestions about the activities that can be uses with pop songs such as jigsaw listening, wrong words gap fill exercise. However, the key point here is that we should give a linguistic aim and a language focus such as past tense, superlatives or phrasal verbs or we can ask the word categories.
In most cases, songs are used just as a time filler activity in language classes. However, if we can manage to apply the suggestions of Stephanie in our classroom, pop songs can serve as a great motivating language learning activity for our students. That’s why I find this presentation is really useful.
Among IATEFL presentations, I chose Stephanie Davies’ “Useful Exploitation Pop Songs in the Classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe link fort he video is below :
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-10/useful-exploitation-pop-songs-classroom
As we all know, songs are great resource for EFL teachers. We can use songs with any level and age of students. In contrast to popular belief that songs are only appropriate for young learners and bored teenagers, it is clear that even adults enjoy listening songs in the classroom. The presenter also suggests that songs are for everybody, not just for kids.
The presenter explains the case by directing several questions :
Why do we use songs ? When, why, who, when , which…
I have already written my ideas regarding “who”. Anyone from very young children to serious adults will appreciate using well chosen songs from time to time. The second question is “ Why do we use songs ?”.We use songs because they are enjoyable. Listening to music is often connected with relaxing. Thirdly, the song may help us practice grammar and vocabulary. Student love songs as they are motivating and inject fun in the classroom. They build a bridge between “school English” and real world. They are auuthentic sources of real English which are more accessible to students.
Additionaly, songs are alternative ways for audio text . They help the children and the teacher for developing listening and comprehension skills, introducing new grammar, vocabulary or reviewing problem areas, leading into a new topic, providing springboard to generate opinions and providing a model for work on pronunciation.
Thirdly, she mentions which songs to use. Updated songs are good idea, but the teacher should be careful about lyrics (content, length , difficulty level etc.). On the other hand, classics seems to be better alternative, as we all grow up listening to them.Classics are appropriate, because they are likely to be heard by anyone.
Lastly, we should think on how to use songs in our lessons. There are various activities that we can use as the presenter mentioned during the presentation. At the beginning of the presentation, the presenter give the example of the Beatles’ Hello Goodbye song. The lyrics have many opposite words in it and she used the song when teaching opposite words. Another type of an activity is gap fill exercises. The teacher can take out specific words from lyrics, and may replace them with other words. Wrong words is also a good technique : the teacher takes out some words, put other words in their places ( maybe synonyms , opposites , minimal pairs, hyponyms etc. )
MERVE BAKKAL 1691609
What do we mean by Grammar? By Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn Turkey, when it is asked how the grammar is taught, the answer is generally that it is taught with the rules. There are certain strict rules for teaching and learning grammar for Turkish foreign language learners, namely, there is a traditional thought in their mind that we can’t learn the English unless we know the grammatical rules. Besides, if an English teacher doesn’t give the rules, s/he is not an expert on teaching English for most of Turkish people.
As Willis said, the strict dependence on grammatical rules is not the right way of learning foreign languages because it kills the creativity of learners. They always feel limited with the rules which are in fact not appropriate for all parts of the language. L2 learners who learn the grammar with the rules can’t use the language in the right way generally because they are stuck in the circle of nonsensical rules, so they always wait to be given some rules while learning every aspect of the language. According to Willis, there are two types of learning the grammar: In grammar 1, as I mentioned above, learners know and try to use the grammar with the given rules before, but in grammar 2, they acquire the grammar with the help of authentic materials, namely, they are exposed to the grammar rules implicitly. They take direct input of grammar by extracting from the context. As Willis said, they use the grammar, not the rules given explicitly before. I think that grammar2 is certainly applicable to our system, but it takes a long time unfortunately because it is difficult to vanish the prejudice about the learning grammar without rules.
Lastly, Willis gives some advice to EFL teachers to be successful in teaching it without rules that we should encourage our students to learn the grammar by themselves and give them authentic materials that they can use in daily life. We should wait them for their extracting the grammatical points from the context on their own and by understanding them to use the language. We shouldn’t kill their creativity and make them limited with the series of meaningless rules, namely we should let them raise their awareness about all aspect of the grammar.
Consequently, I think Willis’ grammar 2 is close to the best way of acquiring grammar in the right way, so maybe we throw away our traditional thoughts and dependence on the rules and we try our best to enable our students to acquire the language permanently.
“What do we mean by Grammar?” By Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteThis was a very impressive presentation, including very different points of view and a different analysis of what grammar is. Does it mean to know grammar? Is it knowing the rules of a language, but being unable to use them accurately or is it the ability to use the language even without being able to tell what the rules are? I think, if you can not use a rule correctly it is non-sense to say that you know the rule.
“You can’t speak a language unless you know grammar.” is a common expression by those who favor focusing on grammar in language class. Here again the question emerges: “What does it mean to know grammar?” Willis makes a difference between grammar 1 and grammar 2 which are different from each other. In Turkey most teachers teach grammar 1 which completely kills their language learning process. In Turkey there is that belief that without learning the grammar of that language you cannot learn and speak that language. However this is a very ridiculous belief, I think. Grammar is being able to speak the language! Then Dave Willis comment makes sense to me: “You can’t speak a language, unless you speak the language.”
While teaching simple present tense and progressive we tell our students if they see the word “now” they should use progressive and if there are words of frequency they should use present simple. However this may lead the students to ungrammatical use of language in some cases. The examples related to the usage of present simple and progressive are striking. His suggestion is that teachers should create meaningful context in order to help students realize different usages of grammatical structures.
Another important point in teaching languages is related to error correction. Teachers should be as gentle as possible and try not to punish them for formulating inaccurate pieces of language. In our country, teachers still tend to penalize their students for making errors, but this does not seem to be much helpful for students because punishment affects motivation in the negative direction.
I need to say that this was a fascinating session and I agree with Willis’ ideas. His ideas can be implemented in language teaching in Turkey. If teachers manage to use their time efficiently and let students explore the language then they will learn grammar, which actually means that they will be able to use the language.
Zeynep Çiçek
I really liked the points that Sabriye Gür touched upon in her presentation. She clearly showed the importance of Text-based Approach in writing to make the students more aware about the role of lexis while producing and giving meaning to their texts. With the help of a sample paragraph about “doing sports”, she analyzed what type of problems students have in the writing process. She found out that they used simple repetitions and certain word forms excessively; there was ineffective use of synonyms and antonyms; they lacked the ability to say the things in their own words; they mostly thought in their L1 and wrote with its effect; and lastly they undervalued the power of lexical relations in writing. For all these reasons, students’ writings turn into failure because they think that catching the grammatical cohesion will automatically bring the lexical cohesion. However this is not the case as we know. Gür highlights that teachers should know the significance of teaching the textual functions of lexical items instead of only teaching more vocabulary. She also suggests a useful methodology in order to achieve this aim. Text-based Approach has also high level of applicability because it can really help to create more meaningful texts. Its components are: text, analysis, practice, text creation. She also offers some helpful awareness raising activities like discussing, completing, or finding some functions. Then she also shows another sample in which all these criteria were taken into consideration while writing it. This was also a good example in terms of illustrating the effectiveness of these ideas. Through some evaluation charts, we can also see the improvements of students. To sum up, by using such an approach and teaching and emphasizing the thematic words and its combinations, we can, as prospective English teachers, make our students’ writing more meaningful and less boring and repetitive. This presentation promotes precious ideas about this issue. Hence it contributed me a lot how to teach writing in an effective way.
ReplyDeleteYağmur Sağ 1548841
ReplyDeleteCOMMENTS ON SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10TH APRIL 2010
The presentation includes the purpose of the classroom listening practice, what happens when we listen, dangers associated with our current approach, raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English, and practical solutions, which I found very effective and applicable in Turkey as well.
Firstly, she talks about some purposes of the classroom listening practice (i.e. to train students to decode authentic listening input). They are useful goals for training students in listening practices. These purposes should also be applicable in Turkey, because the EFL students here really need improvement in listening. They have difficulty in understanding the listening texts, because the sound system of English (intonation, pronunciation, stress) is different from Turkish, and they find English speakers very fast and hard to understand.
Secondly, the presenter explains what happens when we listen, which will help the English language teachers be aware of the procedures and challenges that are faced while their students do listening activities, which are also the same situation for Turkish learners.
Thirdly, she talks about dangers associated with our current approach that is finding the key word and trying to understand the topic, or meaning intended in the text. However, this may lead to misunderstandings. This approach is also widely used in Turkey, and we also need for a return to bottom-up processing that requires to focus on every part of the text.
Fourthly, she mentions the importance of raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English, like assimilation, elision, linking, etc. These should also be worked on in Turkey, because the students have the most difficulty in those aspects, which they need to be trained on.
Finally, she gives some practical solutions, like gap-filling activities, dictation of short authentic texts, working on minimal pairs phoneme discrimination, etc. She also gives some activities that will help in raising the students’ confidence like corrections made by students. I think that all of them can and should be applied in Turkey.
As a conclusion, I found this presentation very useful, effective, and I strongly recommend that we as English language teachers in Turkey should take them into consideration and apply the techniques that she mentions to our classes.
Derya Erice (Twitting for Education)
ReplyDeleteDerya Erice, in her presentation “Twitting for Education”, suggests using Twitter for English Language Teaching purposes.
I found this idea really interesting and useful. Firstly, it would immediately take students attention and make them more involved. Twitter has been extremely popular all over the world recently. Integrating such a popular networking site to the lesson would make students really interested. Also, they would be able to see each others tweets, and this would give them more input and practice opportunity. If the teacher gives not only practicing tasks, but also more genuine tasks such as expressing ideas on an interesting discussion topic, students will be eager to check each other’s tweets.
Applications of this in EFL context may be introducing the word of the day, wanting students to make sentences with vocabulary items, commenting on a discussion topic, on a video or on a short story/article, suggesting students online materials by providing their links and also doing standard exercises like filling in the blanks activities etc. Besides the academic activities, students will use Twitter for blogging about their personal lives and for interacting with each other. This will keep them interested in the site and make the academic activities more enjoyable. Another advantage is that it gives the opportunity to give feedback fast and easily. When students post something, teachers can immediately give feedback and make corrections. Also, students can interact with teacher easily when they need clarification on a task.
Also in Turkey, it’d be a useful method, I think. Social networking sites are very popular in Turkey. Especially young people are really interested in them. So, why not use this interest of them for academic purposes? They’d enjoy using the site. Also, in Turkey, mostly traditional methods of teaching are used in schools. Introducing Twitter as a part of the lesson would provide a refreshing, enjoyable activity for the students who are used to traditional classes and homeworks.
However, there may be some challenges of this technique. Firstly, it is sure to take quite a lot of time. Evaluating students’ assignments, giving them feedback, responding to students’ questions needs spending lots of time on this site and checking it frequently. Another problem might be that all students might not have easy access to internet. So, it’d be better to check if everyone has internet connection.
On the whole, I like the idea, and I may think of using it in future, especially if Twitter continues to be so popular as today.:)
Zülal Kızmaz
After listening Dave Willis, I realized that I agree with him in all the points that he suggested on the issue of grammar. His classification is very nice and very far away from the traditional understanding of the grammar. First of all, he is completely true in saying by teaching the rules explicitly and giving them oversimplifications. He distinguishes three different grammars and after reading, what he said I realized that all I have learned in primary and high school classes is the Grammar 1 that he talked about. Learners just take what we say to them as teachers and this may hinder their developing a grammar that actually works and blunt their creativity and causes the students to be over-dependent on the teacher. This point that he makes sound just like Krashen he also states that by emphasizing rules too much we may harm learner’s language acquisition device and push them into using the general learning strategies that are used in domains very different from language.
ReplyDeleteHe does not curse the grammar instruction completely though. He says we can usefully correct the students and prevent fossilization. We can also provide some guidelines to students by using grammar.
Lastly, in giving a few recommendations he states that language is not a list of formulas or dos and don’ts but rather it is a system of meaning. I also agree with him in the issue of providing students receiving input and producing language in meaningful contexts. We also should stimulate learners into thinking the regularities of the language sharpening their natural learning capacity. In addition, rewarding achievements and avoiding punishment for errors is a good point. Because the errors are the signs of development and if they do not hinder communication we should implicitly and gently correct those
What Do We Mean by Grammar by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteHis presentation is really impressive. Seeing the things from such a point of view are really useful for us – prospective teachers. It seems that his opinions about teaching grammar will change the current teaching system totally. His separating grammar into two is quiet logical, because we actually have felt the same situation while learning English, in my opinion. For example, we were able to give a specific rule, while we could not use the language properly, which proved that knowing just the rule does not mean that we know that language. If we cannot use that language properly, it does not mean anything to know the rules or not, in my opinion. This point is actually where we stuck in Turkey. What we are taught in our second language during our education life is just the rules. These rules are the ones which limits our horizons. Maybe just because of that reason, the creativity of the many students was cut off and they cannot complete their language learning process. Let alone the improper instructors, most of the students also ask for specific rules. Otherwise, they do not believe that they can learn a language. They are just dependent on “formulas” and the teachers who do not comply this demand are “bad and poor” in their eyes. According to Dave Willis, we as prospective teachers should know that we should not restrict our students with simple rules. They will learn better and be able to use the language if they are allowed to recognize some grammatical rules themselves. We should just create the context and the necessary environment for them. As our Instructor, Işıl Günseli Kaçar said, “Teacher should be a bit lazy in classroom, while s/he must be very hardworking and devoted to prepare that condition.” At this point, Dave’s suggestions are quite beneficial for us. We can try to provide Dave’s suggestions to our students to increase their comprehension and learning. We can provide opportunities in which they can be subject to real language. It is not a difficult task, so I believe that each enthusiastic teacher may achieve this goal. We can start building confidence in our students so that they can believe that they can learn if they want with our help. When they get more autonomous in using the language, they will see that the traditional methods are in fact all nonsense.
Dilara Arpacı
1619832
Making Student Presentations Effective and Beneficial for Everyone!
ReplyDeleteRaynaud, Marianne
Raynaud gives important to oral presentations of the students. She wants students to improve their oral skills. In order to achieve that she gives assignments related to oral skills to her students. For example; students are required to introduce their families to the class. They can submit their assignments as electronic files. Teachers can see how students manage to perform certain oral assignments in an authentic ELT classroom. They will receive material they can immediately use with their students in electronic file. This approach is also can be used in Turkey. It can be effective. However; internet and computer use is not very widespread in Turkey. Every student may not have access to these opportunities. So, it may be a problem.
There may be some challenges in applying these strategies. In Turkey, especially in public primary and high schools students are not familiar with presentations. Most of them do not have oral skills. For that reason, they may not understand what and how they should do. Teachers should give clear instructions. Instructions should be detailed with guidelines concerning vocabulary and structures. For example; in introducing family assignments, Raynaud gives a guideline about the content of the presentation. Another ting the teacher should do before presentations is the language training prior to their performances like oral exercises. Raynaud gives a handout which includes the structures students will use. Speaking in front of others may be another problem for students. Models can be shown to solve this problem before presentations.
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.
Useful Exploitation of Pop Songs in the Classroom by Stephanie Davis
ReplyDeleteI want to comment on this presentation because I think songs are interesting and motivating for students in language classes. First of all, she starts the presentation with a common misunderstanding: songs are useful for kids. However she corrects this belief because songs can be used for any age and level group in order to teach a language. Songs are enjoying and motivating; therefore teachers should make them beneficial tools in classrooms. For instance they can be used for practicing grammar and vocabulary, and the students relate the school English to the real world because the songs are authentic and real world materials. Moreover these songs are very helpful in improving listening skills and pronunciation. As long as we make sure that the lyrics of the songs are suitable for the students level we can use them in classrooms. Besides while they are listening to the songs we can give them a focus for instance a gap filling activity or wrong words, and this would raise the consciousness. Generally songs are used as time fillers but she suggests using them as a beneficial classroom tools. I think, she explains the benefits and effectiveness of the songs and taking into consideration of her words we can use songs effectively in our language classrooms and this will be very motivating and enjoying for our students.
SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10th APRIL 2010
ReplyDeleteTitle: Authentic listening – challenges and practical solutions
I chose this presentation because it is about one of the most problematic area of language: listening in which I also have great difficulty :(Firstly she gives some introductory information about listening such as the definition and the purpose of listening. Then she explains all the necessary points to be known by language learners. Besides she mentions some common misunderstandings. I benefited a lot from this presentation because I learned many things about how to teach listening and increase students’ success to the maximum level. When I saw “What happens when we listen?” part, I was really surprised because I didn’t realize that we do so many things during listening. In that part, I learned that we bring external knowledge to the listening situation, decode, construct meaning and revise our understanding of the meaning as new information comes in. Conducting so many things at the same time is not an easy job and this is what makes listening so difficult for students, I think. In addition, Thorn points out a common misunderstanding that I also have. The faulty point is that we think that students don’t have to understand every single word. However, with a clear example she explains that even the things that we don’t take as words can make a great difference in the meaning of the whole thing. The example also shows how important the non-stressed function words can be in determining meaning. Since I learned this fact, I won’t say to my students “Don’t worry, you don’t have to understand everything!” After stating common mistakes in listening, she gives some practical suggestions which are really useful for teachers to utilize in their teaching. Her suggestions are really new for me because I don’t even think that knowing the weak forms or unstressed words will make a difference in success in listening. Furthermore, I also didn’t know that giving some training on phonology to students can increase students’ success in listening. Now I learned that it really does and so I will try to integrate some phonology training into my future teaching. Moreover, she mentions some techniques for boosting confidence in students are really significant and interesting for me. In my opinion, the use of such confidence increasing techniques is really necessary when teaching such a problematic area as listening. When it comes to the applicability of her suggestions in Turkey, I can say without hesitation that they are applicable in every country and in every context. They can be applied in any context because they don’t require any extra material or any special ability to implement them. So, they can be easily applied also in Turkey. Therefore her suggestions are significant and beneficial for us as prospective teachers. To conclude, I can say that I learned a lot from this presentation and so I find it really useful, beneficial and invaluable.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTuğba Özcan – 1436559
ReplyDeleteCOMMENT ON IATEFL SESSION 10th APRIL 2010
Stephanei Davis- Useful Exploitation on Pop Songs in the Classroom
Using pop songs in English language courses has been used for a long time, which has been considered a useful tool for teaching English. I had some problematic experiences in high school. One of my English teachers was very fond of using pop songs in her classes. Although I very grateful to her in terms of what she had managed to put in me, I should say her style was so monotonous that we, as students, were reluctant to participate listening pop song activities. As far as I remember all the time, we were given a paper on which there is written the lyrics of the song with some missing words. In addition, we were supposed to find out the words and fill in the blanks. After listening Stephanie Davis’s presentation, I understand why I was unhappy with the procedure of those listening song activities. The presentation has showed to me that there can be different purposes and different variations o listening songs.
In the presentation, she starts with providing some questions concerning the usage of pop songs: the questions are: why, when, who, which and how. First, listening pop songs in the classroom relaxes the students. It injects a kind of fun into the classroom. Listening is enjoyable for students. Moreover, it is a tool to practice grammar and vocabulary. The most essential point is the fact that it is a bridge between “school” English and the real English. Stephaine has told a story about a student who is at the age of 6. The student was so happy that she could sing an English song while traveling with her family. On the way, there was an English song on the radio that she had practiced previously in one of her English classes. The family was surprised to see that her little child can sing an English song. the main topic is that the child was so motivated with this event. Seeing that she can use English out of the classroom is a motivating impulse for the children. So, we, as language teacher s, need to consider its effect.
There are several ways as any other audio text can be used in the classroom such as lead in to a new topic and introduction to grammar or vocabulary. Pronunciation can also be developed by using songs in the classroom. Students are willing to sing and they can memorize and improve their pronunciation skills. When we consider which age is suitable for those kinds of listening activities, we see that all levels and all ages are suitable. There is a misbelief that pop song listening activities are good for only for kids. However, Stephanei proposes that pop songs can be used for all age levels. How we conduct those activities is a big question in the minds of English teachers. She offers some ways as gap-fill exercises, jig-saw reading and wrong words. I think, gap-fill exercises are most well known type. She suggests giving a stereotype word as “potato” instead of just leaving blanks. The basic point in listening activities is to provide a purpose and focus; for example, comparatives, superlatives. Focusing on word category is also a good way instead of asking the exact words. I like the idea of applying the jigsaw reading technique to listening activities. It will enhance the participation of students.
The most fascinating idea of Stephanei is the idea of “wrong words”. She proposes two ways. First, some of the words are changed for words that mean something similar. The word fits very well into the context of the song but sound completely different. For example, using excellent for perfect. Second, some words sound very similar to actual word but mean completely different. I believe that this kind of activities alert students and they need to engage their brains while listening.
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ReplyDeleteSessions Presented by Oniz
ReplyDeleteIdeas for creating activities using free resources - Suzan Oniz
In Turkey, it is not hard to find materials or useful websites but nobody can deny that it is expensive. What Oniz has done is completely useful for us, the future teachers. She just gives useful websites and they are free to use.
Head of foreign language departments spend so much money on materials. However, with Oniz’s documents provides us various activities that could be applied to our classes. They are activities that trigger students’ creativity and critical thinking skills. Students also make use of the websites on their own, without the help of the teacher. They could create their own activity. Their productive skills improve and they learn how and they have a chance to use the computer and the internet, which are very important in our era to get in touch with the technology. In addition, there are also games, videos and quizzes. Therefore, after the teacher does his/her job, s/he also has a chance to evaluate the students using the same website. But the teachers should keep in my mind that there could be some problems with computer in any time. So, it is necessary to be prepared for such troubles.
I liked the Picture Grid activity. With some picture such as Machu Pichu, The garden of Babel, the temple of Zeus or Big Ben, students also learn some cultural places while they are studying their main topic. Their visual intelligence develops, they memorize easily. Even they do not remember the subject, thanks to the pictures; they could recall what they have learned without any problem. Such activities broaden their horizon and open them new windows to look around. Moreover, this activity helps students to work in groups which improve their collaborative skills and team work.
All in all, it is for students benefit to use these websites. There are a lot of activities and they are easy to apply. They help our students not to be repetitive, they provide them both fun and learning, they also teach technology and they are free.
UGUR UZER
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ReplyDeleteDeniz Yıldızoğlu, Activities to Incorporate Culture into the EFL Classroom
ReplyDeleteHow many of us does not know sensitive meatball? Or translation and ayran? It is interesting to know that when Turks do not understand anything about the subject, they compare themselves with French people while English people use Greek’s. On the other hand, people whose mother tongue is Spanish use Chinese. You could see the whole list here: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=314165. What I mean is that, when learning a language, it is important to learn it with a culture. What Yıldızoğlu is trying to do in her article Activities to Incorporate Culture into the EFL Classroom is to adapt the proper activities into our language classrooms to get a better benefit from children. While learning the target language via activities related to the culture, she emphasizes that it also develops students’s emphatic skills and their respect towards different cultures. Apart from the idioms I mentioned above, Yıldızoğlu also expresses that body language, gestures and requests are also the part of the cultural learning. In addition, subjects like superstitions could be also added. Through these activities, students may have fun and learn easily the target language. In my opinion, their long term memory does not have any difficulty to store that language information combined with cultural activities. One of the problems that teachers may encounter is that students at first could have difficulty to comprehend the customs. Our culture is different from Spain’s, and Spain’s culture is different from Scotland. Although Yıldızoğlu did not mention in her article, I think religion may be a problem for classes. A country’s traditions and customs are mostly built on its religion. Since our religion and west part of the world’s religion is not the same, students could find it difficult to adapt themselves into the activities. Anyway, these problems could be overcome. Since the activities have more benefit than their probable harm. Lastly, I like the idea using the body language. Because some people in the world shake their head to say Yes and nod their heads to say No. However, some people shake their head to say No and nod their head to say Yes. This shows us that Yıldızoğlu is right; we should also focus on culture when we are teaching the language.
UGUR UZER
What do we mean by Grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn his presentation, Willis gives us many suggestions about teaching grammar. He talks about two different types of description of grammar. He states that there two kinds of teachers: first one thinks that my students know the grammar but they cannot work with and the second one supports that you cannot speak language unless you know the grammar. Considering these descriptions, I see Turkish that teachers are more close to the second description. In our country, especially in high schools or primary schools, our teachers are only concerned about giving rules and teaching things systematically which is what they think. However, as Willis mentioned in the presentation, there is no way to teach students every rule completely and systematically. I really liked the idea that students should not be taught wrong things, because there is no exact rule in English. Students can encounter many different usages or aspects of language in different context, so sticking to one rule would be nonsense. As a teacher, we cannot teach every rule and every rationale behind it, but we can help them infer these rules from context by using creativity. Students have already knowledge of grammar even if they do not know the grammar. Another thing appealing me in the presentation is that teachers are only helpers in language learning process and students should be dominant in this process. I support this idea, but we see that teachers are on the task; they just give the rules and then examples, and ask questions. Students are only active when they are given some written exercises. It should not be like that; students should be active and creative and also have critical thinking in language learning process. Lastly, I think teachers must use text as Willis stated, because text makes things more comprehensible, contextual and useful.
Useful Exploitation of Pop Songs in the Classroom by Stephanie Davis
ReplyDeleteIn her presentation, Stephanie explained the effective usage of pop songs in language classrooms. She starts with a discussion for her presentation and she says she teaches both kids and adults. She explains that kids love to sing and also songs work with everybody. She gives a real life example from herself. She was teaching in Spain for some time before. She was teaching elementary 7-8 years old kids and in the book there were a unit about antonyms: hello-goodbye. There is a song of Beatles called “Hello-Goodbye”. They studied the song in the classroom. Then one of the kids in the classroom went to the zoo in their car. On the way, the kid heard the song in the Spanish radio and she sang the song in English. Her family and she were very excited. This was very motivating for the kid.
She asks the audience why and when they use songs in the classroom. She takes some answers and then she explains herself. She says songs are motivating and fun, they build a bridge between school English and real life, they are authentic materials and the students are familiar with them. She provides some ideas about why songs can be used in the classroom. She says they develop comprehension skills, they may lead to new topic in the course book, they may revise the grammar and vocabulary, and so on.
As she said before, songs are not useful just for teenagers. They work well with very young children and also serious adults. She says we need to be very careful while choosing the songs since we may get into trouble. She explains that we should make sure that the songs’ lyrics are at a suitable level, and the activities are appropriate, challenging and achievable. Lastly, she explains how the songs can be used in the classroom. First we should give a focus and linguistic aim for the students. We use gap-filling activities, jigsaw listening, and wrong words. For instance, you may delete the words related to money. She also advises that you may delete the words from the same category such as phrasal verbs, past tenses and etc. In wrong words, you may give wrong words in the listening text that fits the content but has different pronunciation.
Stephanie’s presentation is very useful. We use songs very much in our classrooms but as a contingency plan. If we use them for achieving something in the classroom, we both accomplish the task and also we get fun in our classrooms.
Kadriye AKSOY
What do we mean by Grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteDave Willis starts his presentation with a striking point. He says some of the teachers say my students know the grammar but they cannot use it. This means that they know the rules and they tell the rules. At the age of 5, most children have the grammar rules in their minds. They produce wh- questions, tag questions. However, when asked what a tag question is, they cannot answer the question. This does not mean that they do not know the grammar. He divides the grammar rules into two groups: grammar1 and grammar2. With the knowledge of grammar1, we produce sentences. Even very young children may construct complex sentences. Grammar2 is being able to use the language. He says that rules are taught explicitly. But there are some exceptions in the language and these rules do not work at each situation.
He explains we do not know the grammar rules unless we cannot use them. Grammar is the performance; it is not the knowledge of the rules. Also if you cannot speak the language, you do not know the grammar of the language.
Explicit grammar teaching does not work and it is restricted. He suggests before giving an explanation, a teacher should think about it for a long time in order not to give even a trivial wrong. Teachers should encourage learners to look at the texts very critically. If learners do not learn from direct instruction, they learn by exposure and use. By encountering more samples of the language, they build grammar rules. We should give more texts as teachers. We should give authentic things. He suggests that we should not work with constructed texts for a simple grammar rule. We should also have the learners work in groups. We cannot teach the language systemically. We should guide the learners in the classrooms.
I agree with Dave’s ideas about grammar teaching. When we first started to learn English, our teachers always taught grammar rules in an explicit way. I knew the rules but I then realized that I was not able to use the language. Explicit grammar does not work at all. Also we cannot teach grammar in a systematic way. It is not possible in real life to talk about only one thing. We should provide our learners with authentic materials to form a schema in their minds.
Kadriye AKSOY
What Do We Mean by Grammar by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn his presentation, Willis defines grammar in two ways which are grammar 1 and grammar 2. Grammar 1 means knowing about the language and grammar 2 means being able to use the language. He explains grammar 1 and grammar 2 by giving striking examples. I really liked his presentation because he enabled me to look at grammar from a different perspective. We were always said that we cannot speak a language unless we know the grammar of that language. However, Willis states that we cannot know the grammar of a language unless we can speak it. This statement is really a good answer to the question ‘why can’t we speak English like a native although we know the grammar?’ knowing the grammar of a language is not enough to use the language. We need to discover the language by being exposed to the natural use of it. We need to deal with authentic materials rather than specially produced structures. We should free ourselves from the strict rules of grammar. That is the only way we can get closer to perfection in language use.
I think Willis’ suggestions can be applied to foreign language teaching in Turkey. We can introduce grammar 1 to our students with its basics such as how to form questions, etc. Then we should try our best to expose the students to authentic language, so that we can help them explore the language by using it. When we say grammar, the thing that comes to people’s minds shouldn’t be just ‘rules’. We should overcome this prejudice and let them enjoy the language.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhat do we mean by Grammar? By Dave Willis
ReplyDeletehttp://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/what-do-we-mean-grammar-dave-willis
The presentation by Dave Willis is very impressing. He come up with a very different point of view of grammar. His opinions about teaching grammar are totally different from the current teaching system.
In his presentation, Willis defines grammar in two ways; he classifies it as grammar1 and grammar2. He states that grammar1 is the ability of telling the rules and grammar2 is the ability of using the language.
He suggests that grammar 1 is meaningless without grammar 2. In contrast with the point of view of grammar that suggests; without learning the grammar of that language you cannot learn and speak that language in our country, Dave Willis suggests that you do not know the grammar of a language unless you can use it. I totally agree with this suggestion. In Turkey, grammar teaching is generally explicit, and the teachings may not be authentic.
In the presentation Dave Willis offers that sticking to grammar 1 restrics the creativity of the students in language. It says the teachers should not restrict learners with simple rules. Instead, they should let learners use their creativity and recognize some grammatical rules themselves by implicit grammar teaching.
Daves Willis makes another suggestion which I find really applicable. We should give the students opportunities to use the language and we shouldn’t punish the for the errors they make while using the language because errors are kind of signs of development. He does not discredit the grammar 1 instruction completely though. He says we can correct the students and prevent fossilization by grammar rules. We can also provide some guidelines to students by using grammar.
To conclude, teachers should use implicit teaching in their classes. They should use text like the ones Dave uses. İmplicit teaching is much more effective tht explicit teaching by giving the exact rules to the students. And explicit rules, grammar 1 with the words of Dave Willis, is ot much applicable in language teaching because there is no exact rule in English.
Ideas for creating activities using free resources - Suzan Oniz
ReplyDeleteMs. Öniz presented some useful websites and resources for preparing creative activities in the language classroom. I think this we can use her suggestions in our lessons in the future because they are useful. There are really effective activities the presented activities. However, I think these activities may be a bit expensive to use. This may prevent them from being applicable. The teacher may find some solution to this economic problem and I think it is applicable for Turkey’s language classrooms in most of which the students are taught via boring, traditional activities which consist of fill-in-the blanks and true-false. I don’t mean these activities, true-false and fill-the-blanks activities are rubbish. They are no wonder beneficial. However, they should be applied when needed. Our students need more colorful activities like the ones presented by Ms. Öniz.
Among the activities presented by her, I liked numbered jigsaw and picture grid activities. They are enjoyable activities for the students and effective in making the students revise the vocabulary items they covered. Picture grid activity is useful for revising the grammatical structure as well. Odd one out activity is also a good way in revising the new vocabulary, which I remember from my experience as my teachers used to apply. The activities are also important in that they encourage group work and so make the students communicate with each other while working together.
All in all, I think all of the activities presented by Ms. Öniz are applicable to our classrooms. I want to use picture grid activity in my future classes because in my opinion it is very useful, enjoyable and effective. As a final word, using online resources is very useful and encouraging in language classrooms and we, as language teachers, should be ready to search the best activity using the net. I think the websites given by Ms. Öniz are useful and free so they may be taken into consideration in language teaching process.
What do we mean by Grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteAccording to Mr. Willis grammar is the area which the students get frustrated by since it consists of misunderstanding of being formulas of language. Unfortunately, this is an issue in the traditional classrooms where English is taught. In those classrooms, teachers generally give the grammar as formulas as they explain mathematic rules which I used to find enjoyable but most of my friends used to find frustrating and difficult. The reason behind my enjoy was that I like maths a little. Anyway, generally, teaching grammar like teaching math is what makes the class boring and ineffective in my opinion. I think that the grammar should be given in a contextualized way.
In his presentation Mr. Willis divided the grammar into two type: “In 1 it means being able to cite the rules for forming acceptable sentences. But in 2 it means knowing the system in a way that enables you to produce acceptable forms of the language. In 1 it means knowing about the language, whereas in 2 it means being able to use the language.” I strongly agree with this idea. There are two ways of defining the grammar and I think the second one is more acceptable because one can know the abstract rules but if he can’t use it in his or her language then knowing those rules is not beneficial, it is only torture for the learner.
In Willis’ presentation I liked his ideas of grammar such as:
You don’t know the grammar of phrasal verbs unless you can use them.
You don’t know the grammar of a language unless you can speak it.
• I think in our classrooms his ideas can be used. I agree with his idea of how to help learners best. I think he is absolutely true in his suggestions:
• We need recognise the limitations of what can be achieved by formal instruction
• We need to recognise that language is a meaning system not a set of ‘dos and don’ts – a form of polite etiquette.
• We should offer learners plenty of opportunities to use language both receptively and productively.
• We should encourage the kind of activity that stimulates learners to think about language, to identify.
• We should celebrate achievement rather than penalise error. There is no virtue in avoiding error if, in order to do so learners limit what they have to say to something which is limited and circumscribed
All in all, grammar is one of the most crucial parts of language. However, it shouldn’t be boring for students. One can form sentences without knowing any rule. Thus, it is important that the learners should be given freedom. They can learn everything as the time flows with basic aid from the teacher.
Listening skills by Sheila Torn
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Sheila Tom’s session about listening, I unawarely made a comparison between my listening comprehensions before and after I came to METU. The result was surprising for me. Before I came to METU, in high school, the methodology applied to teach listening was the same that Sheila complained about. On the other hand, I realized that my instructors at METU applied every single suggestion in Sheila’s paper. The result is poor (almost lacking) listening skill at high school and high listening competency at METU. I think that is a clear proof that Sheila has strong bases to her suggestions and claims. Therefore, I think there is more to say about this than “I liked her ideas” because the suggestions she makes to listening teaching/learning problems are also valid and applicable.
I liked her way to introduce the topic explaining what happens when we listen and I appreciated her steps to raise learners’ awareness and confidence, respectively. They are right-to-the-point activities for a bottom-up approach. Some of the practices she suggested were volume and stressed syllables, minimal pairs, gap-fill and intonation. And personally I can proudly say that they all work. Actually they were what made difference in the methodology my instructors followed here in METU and in high school. So, I believe, we should adopt such activities that focus on details in language forms because it is so easy to have misunderstandings with some small missing parts (like I try to and I tried to) in a language which is not our mother tongue.
However, there are two difficult sides of adopting such an approach in Turkey. One is from teachers’ perspective and the other one is from students’. For teachers, it is that there is very limited time allocated for such complex teaching activities and teachers usually hide behind the excuse “you do not need to understand everything” because the other way requires their commitment and time. When it comes to students, they are the children of a badly designed education system. Their brains are programmed to memorize and to learn “as quickly as possible”. Therefore, such detail-emphasizing activities might feel challenging to them.
What do we mean by grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteDave Willis’ presentation starts with examining the description of grammar. In order to teach grammar effectively, we should at first know what grammar is. Willis states that there are two important descriptions of grammar. The first one is named as grammar 1 and this refers to the amount of grammar rules the learners know. The learners may know there rules; however, they may not be able to use these rules while speaking. The second one is named as Grammar 2 and it refers to the fact that younger children speak very fluently using every possible grammar rule properly; however, when we ask them to explain one rule they cannot. So they use grammar rules subconsciously and they learnt them implicitly. Willis says we should decide which one is grammar at first and aim at helping our students improve Grammar 1 or 2. By giving many examples, Willis refutes the importance of Grammar 1 because rules may mean nothing sometimes. As in the example of using simple present tense or present continuous tense, we may not be able to discriminate when to use simple present tense. If we assume that the rules we learnt are right, then we should not say ‘he is studying economics.’ as it should be ungrammatical. However, Willis says if we ask a native speaker we will see that this sentence is grammatical. Therefore, it is not important to memorize rules unless we can use them. Willis suggests that learners do not know the grammar unless they can use it. Therefore, what we should do is to expose the students to target language as much as possible because they will be able to learn more efficiently when they are taught implicitly. The learners tend to rely on teachers so we should not give them explicit rules and limit their knowledge. Instead, we should help them by giving them more examples.
In Turkey, English teachers should change the meaning of grammar in their mind. Our English lessons aim at making the students memorize a great number of rules and it apparently achieves this. However, it does not help the learners when they want to speak in the target language. They cannot achieve this by thinking about the rules all the time. They should be exposed to some daily life expressions and more examples of the use of such grammar rules implicitly. It is certain that exposure will be more beneficial for learners than explicit grammar rules.
Özge Ceren ÇELİK
Pelin Aşçıoğlu
ReplyDeleteHer aim is to benefit from culture in the EF classroom environments. She thinks that it will help to communicate effectively and empathize and respect other cultures. Actually learning a language consists of learbing the culture as well. I agree with her in this point. As we do still as language learners of English, we make mistakes sometime because of pchicken translations and think as if it was same with our culture too. In her presentation she says that she manages this problem with classroom activities. This is what is supposed to be. In Turkish learners of English classrooms we need such activities to introduce the English culture to them. She says that certain features of the cultures should be mentioned so that the students' awareness can be awakened. It may both help and be enjoyable. She suggests to compare the two cultures and it is an effective way of introducing a culture by comparing with an existing one. In Turkish classroom, it may be interesting but in some extent may be difficult because English culture is really different from Turkish culture. Students ccan really find strange the English culture. Some students cannot understand the point and give chance to understand it because of fanatism or conservatism. they can refuse to accept it or use it. Presenter Deniz also suggests to watch the students short videos. She has a point in this issue. It is always beneficial to use audio-visual materials. It always makes sense.
as a part of a culture it is also meaningful to involve proverbs in language teaching as she mentioned in her prensentation. It also helps to improve the students' lexicon.Besides gsetures part is also enjoyable because when learners cannot find the right word they try to use their body language to express their opinions or feelings. It makes sense to get their awareness. It may be little difficult in Turkish classrooms because our body movements are really different the English ones. Its adaptability may be difficult. However, the things taht are presented by Yıldızoğlu, is available to use in Turkish EFL classrooms. Actually it is useful and as language learners they can benefit from it.
REFLECTION ON SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION
ReplyDeleteShe talks about challengings and solutions for listening practice. Her outline is like this:
• 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
Firstly, she proposed some purposes of listening practice. In my opinion, the most important one is exposing students to different accents and speeds of delivery because we give highly importance to communication in foreign language. Therefore listening and being familiar to different accents are significant for fluency.
Secondly, what is happening when we listen? We recognize words, sounds and decode them to understand. It may be difficult to differentiate sounds but the more we get listening input the more we begin to recognize the differences automatically.
Thirdly, she states that we should turn back traditional ways, bottom-up process. I don’t think that we totally have to understand every word. Of course it is important to recognize every single word or sounds however we shouldn’t push our students to do so.
Fourthly, we always say that people speaking English speak so fast. Sheila Thorn states some reasons for this problem. They are like this:
• assimilation
• elision
• linking
• ellipsis
• general vowel reduction and weak forms
• unstressed words and chunks of speech
• unfamiliarity with accent
And lastly, we should give emphasis on listening training to prevent problems. As Thorn suggests, we should use activities to promote word recognitions and phonology. We also enable students to trust themselves while listening. So I think we should give appropriate feedbacks to our students kindly.
What Do We Mean by Grammar by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteAs we all know the only way of grammar teaching in Turkey is giving grammar rules to the students and maybe forming a few sentences by using these rules. So I think the ideas that Dave Willis presents in this video will create a positive change and be useful for Turkish language learners. We know that our education system in Turkey is based on memorization and in language classes, teacher tells the rules and expect the students to use the language depending on the rule. The only way of being able to use the rule is memorization. This technique is an artificial, ineffective way and it is not even a language learning process, so what is shown by this technique is temporary. The students don't question and learn the rationale behind these and their usages in various contexts. This way never lets the students use their creativity since they accept the rules as they are given. This problem results from the common view that knowing a language means being able to use it. But in fact it is not right; because rules are not enough when it comes to communication. This is what Dave Willis means by the two types of grammar: Grammar 1 is the one which we tend to teach in our language classes in Turkey, it is knowing the rules. Grammar 2 is the one way which we need in our language teaching, it is being able to use the language. The idea of letting the students learn the rules by recognizing them in different contexts which Dave Willis suggests is a solution to this limitation in our EFL classes in Turkey. In this video, Dave Willis presents us an example of teaching infinitives in an EFL class and in this example he shows how to make the students realize the usages of “to” on their own. The way of this is providing the students with a meaningul context which includes the target grammar structure and make the students find out the rules by using the language. In an effective language learning process, the most vital thing is exposition to the target language. Since we don't have too much opportunities to use English in daily life in Turkey, EFL teachers' creating opportunities to make the students exposed to English in class is crucial as the students are able to learn the language more effectively and permanently if the language is taughtt implicitly. So EFL teachers should not give rules explicitly because it affects learning negatively, causes memorization and limits creativity.
Nilüfer Alkın
TEACH WRITING! BY SHIRLEY ANN HILL
ReplyDeleteIn this presentation, Mrs. Hill explains
How to write?
What is the aim of teaching writing?
In what ways writing could be taught most properly?
What is the important point to focus on?
Young people’s writing: Attitudes, behavior and the role of the technology
And she presents a possible approach (including five steps of related techniques)
Writing is another challenging skill for L2 learners. In the same way it is one of the most problematic teaching parts of a second language.
According to Shirley Ann Hill written work is the basis for evaluation in schools and universities in most countries in the world. I totally agree with her. Writing requires the learner to have some experience about the subject to be able to have an idea and end up with a good written work. The presenter names it as EDC (experience, discover, communicate). According to her approach, there are some ways for teachers to apply in teaching writing: content and context, discovery and awareness, scaffolding and templates, guidance and synergy, engagement and ownership. These techniques are really applicable to L2 learners. They include all the necessary works with writing.
She gives some examples of writing steps in her presentation. As a prospective teacher, I like her techniques; however I have a suggestion in addition to the points in the checklist: to be able to better apply these steps to young learners, they should be really in the upper levels of the target language. For example, without having all properties of grammar, a young learner cannot achieve to have a good input and establish the nature of the goal. As teachers, we can shape the way of the lesson in accordance with our learners’ proficiency level, special features, etc. We should provide them with a good background and motivate them to express what they have in mind. Moreover, it has too much importance to make writing enjoyable rather than a trouble maker. So as to achieve this, the teacher should have the knowledge of the learners’ interests, age, proficiency level, and the possible problems with the subject matter. At the end, as Hill mentions, setting up a meaningful communicative activity constitutes the final and the most essential step of teaching writing.
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/task-based-teaching-language-learning-and-clil-%E2%80%93-balancing-act-jane-willis
ReplyDeleteJane Willis (Task-based teaching, language learning and CLILL)
Jane Willis states that in CLIL and TBL, focus on meaning is primary in the process. She argues about when the form could be implemented and makes a chart about the issue. She states that the form should be given after the effective implementation of the task and the meaning together. The chart given below is the steps suggested by Jane Willis in the task-based method.
THE CHART
1. Priming & Preparation
Key lexis & useful phrases
2. Task >>Planning >>>Report of outcome
Language extension >> Prestige language use
3. Form focus
Analysis & practice
of language features from the texts -
written or spoken - that learners have read or heard
In Turkey, the structure of language teaching is generally different. In the classroom, the presentation and analysis of the form is given before the language use with the help of tasks. Moreover, the analysis part of the introduction of the forms is usually ignored because grammar is usually given as explicitly.
The first step of the language teaching process mentioned above could be an effective step for the students to prepare for the language tasks in the next step. In this way they can learn useful phrases and key vocabulary in order to work on the tasks and projects effectively. However, in the second step, there is a point which confuses my mind: The planning part comes before the task. I think the planning part could come before the task process.
The steps stated above are not used in this order in Turkish language learning classrooms. The form is usually given before the production step, namely, before the tasks. Actually, we cannot say that the activities are based on task-based method. If it were based on task-based method, the system of language learning in Turkish classroom would show similarity with those steps mentioned above. I believe that the form could be given before the task and planning part in Turkey, but it definitely shouldn’t be given explicitly. If the teacher prefers to present the form of the language explicitly, he shouldn’t base his method only on the form at least. I think that the steps used in presented by Jane Willis could be very effective in the language learning process in Turkish classrooms as I believe that all the students have the potential to carry out a task by using their previous language and blend them with the new information or structures. However, there are some important points which support the effectiveness of the task-based activities such as report of outcome (feedback, assessment, evaluation, and error correction), planning and analysis. These are important steps which are usually ignored by some teachers but actually have the potential to complete the task-based learning method.
Sessions Presented by Oniz
ReplyDeleteIdeas for creating activities using free resources - Suzan Oniz
Suzan Oniz, in her presentation, mentions from the ways to make tle lessons more creative. She says the lesson should be colorful and learner-centered. She suggests a list of websites, which are all free, useful for teachers. The websites she recommends are really useful, because they can be applicable in the class environment if we use our creavity and find a way to apply them in classrom. We can take them as a model, and thanks to them, make our lessons more interesting by creating our own contexts and making our own quizes, worksheets, games etc.
If the students do not stay passive during the lesson, they enjoy the lesson, and if the students enjoy the lesson, they learn best, because concentrate better. The activities that are presented by Suzan Oniz require active student participation. The activities which students take active role is much more memorable. I liked the jigsaw activity best. Especially for small groups it will be very effective way to get students to speak. The students will easily remember the subject they have learned thanks to pictures. Moreover, they get cultural information about the thing they see in the pictures. Also, group works develop the students' interpersonal intelligence.
As for applicablity of these in Turkey, some school do not have computers. Even if there are computers, they are not accessable mostly unless computer course. However, even if there are no computers, we can find a way to apply the activities by using papers. Already most of the activities do not have something with computers. Preparing activities may be time consuming for teachers, but it is worth when having enjoyable lesson.
Özge Tepegöz
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Asiye BAŞTÜRK
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Classroom games from corpora by Ken Lackman
When I saw the title of the presentation, I couldn’t understand what the content of it is at first sight. Also, I thought the corpora studies and games can not be enjoyable and motivating. However, after I examined the games integrating corpora are very enjoyable and can be used in a classroom environment easily. Because they are from real works, exams or researches, they are trustable and they bring the real culture to the classroom. Especially collocations guessing game and categories on wall are very effective vocabulary practices via the real examples the students can reach. Also, categories on wall can be used as a grammar practice game. However, when it comes to application in Turkey, there will be lots of preventions. One of the preventions is that the students need computers in order to reach and use the corpora. Another thing is that the students may have difficulty in using this kind of a site. The other thing is that they have difficulty in discriminating one thing from the other in the sentences from the corpora. All in all, the games are very creative and useful I think. They can be used in Turkish classes with only a little difficulty as well.
Asiye BAŞTÜRK
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Dave Willis-What do we mean by Grammar
Dave Willis defines two types of grammar. Grammar 1 is knowing the rules, while grammar 2 is being able to use it. These two types are completing each other and if one is missing, the other will not be effective at all. According to Dave Willis, knowing only the rules is not enough to know the grammar. Grammar is not learnt for the exams, but for communication. It is impossible to communicate without knowing any grammar structure and being able to use it. Thus, it is wrong to give the students only how to use infinitives without giving them a chance to try to use that structure. But, especially in our schools, the belief that the students will know grammar when the teachers give them the rules is going on. However, it is clear that there are lots of people who will explain how to use infinitives in paragraphs, but who can not make a sentence with that structure. It is not the exact grammar, as Willis said. In order to make the students have the exact grammar, the teacher should make them discover the structure themselves via various activities. Also, he/she should give lots of chances to the students so as for him/her to use the structure in a communication. To sum up, Dave Willis is right about that “grammar” is a dangerous word, because it is used differently. But, what we should know about the grammar is to be able to use different structures in communication correctly.
What do we mean by Grammar? by Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIt was really impressing presentation. In his presentation Willis introduces us with two new terms. He states that there are two kinds of grammar. One of them is grammar1 and the other is grammar2. According to his speech grammar1 is being able to say the rules and the grammar2 is being able to use the language. He implies that grammar2 includes grammar1 as we cannot communicate by knowing the rules; we must also use these rules in a communicative way. Moreover he says to teachers not to force students to know and obey to the grammatical rules. He says that giving simple rules and making students use them kills their creativity. I think we can make students to explore the rules themselves instead of giving them the forms of grammatical structures.
In my opinion the ideas presented by Willis are very useful and applicable to EFL context in Turkey. He suggests giving students authentic materials which they can use in their daily life. Namely he states that instead of making students store the rules of a foreign language, teachers must raise students who can explain their ideas in a right way and communicate effectively.
Grammar2 seems very effective in learning a language, especially for communicating in that language. If we, as teachers, start to be inspired from this video, maybe our students will not be afraid of speaking as we are.
Gülşah UYAR
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.
What do we mean by 'grammar'? - Dave Willis
ReplyDeleteIn his presentation Willis suggests two concepts for the grammar. One of them is traditional meaning of the grammar: the rules that are should to be taught. The second one is to the ability to use the target language. In my opinion, in our country only the first concept is focused by the English teachers and that is why the students do not like being taught grammar. As Willis suggests we, as prospective teachers, should provide some flexibility to the learners to make them use their imagination and creativity while they are using the language. I think what Willis suggests is quite important for the grammar teaching. If we just say the rules and say ‘you should obey these rules’, the students will get frustrated and will be never willing to be inside the language. The teachers should give the chance to the students to ‘discover’ the language on their own.
In our country the biggest problem in English teaching is to great focus on the rules of the language. The teachers write the rules on the board and say ‘you will memorize these rules and obey them’. The teachers forget about the fact that a language is used for the communication. In our country English is taught as if it is made of only set of rules and nothing else. This approach makes the students alienated to the language. As Willis suggested the teacher should focus on the usage of the language as well as its grammar. While teaching grammar, the teacher should give the usages of the rules in different contexts.
To sum up, I totally agree the ideas of this presentation. If we see the grammar in this way, both the students and we as teachers will enjoy being in the grammar and the language.