Current Issues ın ELT

 In this article, you will read about my thoughts and experiences with the current issues in the teaching course.
    First things first, It was the course I never wanted to miss, and I felt lucky to take it from Mrs.Kurt. To be honest, it was very challenging for us. Even if the tasks looked easy to complete, they were a lot. It was tiring, but it kept our minds fresh. It was working like gear all the weeks. Therefore, our minds were always ready to create something new. and I was shocked that we achieved it. That's why, even if I was exhausted, I didn't complain about the task load. I applied the tasks I had done and used the ideas we had discussed in the class at the time I was working in a language course. and I saw how the current issues course developed my perspective and teaching skills, or whether the materials we designed are really helpful, as my instructor claimed. One of the most seminal materials was using corpora for me. because I always had a question like that: ıf we must not translate the meanings word by word or in the L1, how else can I teach ıt? and how the way ı use can be engaging and encouraging the learner. but when I learned about corpora, I was enlightened. I believe that there are much more things about that course. So my advice for newcomers is to not see the tasks as loads and try to enjoy learning. Believe me, it will get easier and more beneficial for you. I even say I wish this course would be next term for the same syllabus and we had much more time to create and improve our materials. Maybe we could focus much more meticulously on them.
    My last word for our instructor's Thank you for your devotion and precious time. You are kind of an ıdol for new generations, both as a woman and as an academician. I will always mention you and be proud to have a chance to take courses from you.

        See you soon.

        Take care of yourself .🙋 

 

AI Integrated Material Preparing 

     In this article, you will read about our experiences with AI (artificial intelligence) integration into language class material.

created by craiyon

    Of course, it was quite a different thing for us. We haven't decided on the topic for a long time. But later, we thought, Let's just try to use the tools ourselves at first. We literally played it. We wrote different words, created different pictures, and tried to understand the extent of ability AI has. Thanks to that, we could start to think about the topic and say, 'Why don't we want them to create pictures of traditional foods by writing ingredients and adding some adjectives to the prompts?'. It was entertaining, even for us. Because to create the most satisfying pictures, you must force yourself to use the most appropriate words. If it doesn't make you satisfied, you force your vocabulary and grammar knowledge again and again. You try to be more clear so the AI gets you correctly. The point is not the food from now on, but rather your ability to command it with your language use. That's why my friend, Sude Filiz and I find it beneficial.

    You can check the material here and my friend's blog to read her comments.

See you soon.

Take care of yourself .🙋 

Integrating VR Technology Into Language Teaching

    

As If You Were There 

     In this article, you will read about a sample of how we implemented VR technology in a language class, the importance of it, and how we assessed it.

    Presently, AR and VR technologies are at the top of the agenda. Therefore, as the teachers of the new era, we should find ways to integrate it into education. At this point, my friend and I did it with very basic but still useful material. And we did this through a very traditional activity, which is learning about a city, its museums, landmarks, and famous food. Firstly, my friend found a website to create QR codes; we linked them with sites where we found the contents and pasted those codes on the handouts. These codes lead them to the 360 tours of a museum, a cathedral, and the video of a recipe. I think 360 tours enhance their exploring experience, make feel them as if they were there for real and make the content more concrete for preparing their project. You see, even with such a simple activity, we can make use of VR to pull them into the 21st century's learning journey. That is why my friend and I very much enjoyed using VR in teaching a language.

    Here is the material we designed again on Canva. You can also take a look at Sude Filiz's blog to read her point of view.

 See you soon.

Take care of yourself .🙋

Flipped to Be Swift

        In this article you we will talk about flipped teaching method and my experience with my friend Sude on it . 

        To comprehend its importance and the core principles, we were assigned to prepare a sample of lecture material and a task to test whether or not they studied it before classtime We thought it was very easy. But after I presented our material for the feedback session, we realized that we missed the vital thing. It was the source itself. Let me explain a little more. While we were preparing the material, we made use of the course book of MoE. We got some ideas from that source and applied them in the way of our teaching style and use of language. But according to the feedback our lecturer gave us, we need to use the words, phrases, and structures as they are in the coursebook. That made me enlighten too much. It makes a lot of sense. Therefore,we should have prepared our task according to the coursebook as well. 

        Of course, there are some technical principles. So that we could imply them, we checked Mayer's principles. They were also some basic things, but at that point, the syncronization of multimadia and when/how we should use the teacher's voice and image were new and striking for me. We also utilize that in our tasks.
         And finally, I should mention the problems that may occur. Because one of them happened to us. The tool we used, Canva didn't work unexpectedly, and we had to fix it. That's why the teacher needs to choose the tool s/he will use carefully, always get ready for problems, and check it again and again.     

        There are a great many things to talk about in flipped teaching, but so far, that is all. Here is our material. Also, if you wish, you can take a look at my friend's blog to read her point of view.

        See you soon.

       Take care of yourself .🙋

 

 

CORPUS-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

CORPUS-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

WHAT DID WE DESIGNED AS AN EXAMPLE MATERIAL IN 4 STEPS 

        In this article, you will read about the material which was designed by my friend Sude and me , the process of designing, and the objectives that we pursued in the light of the corpus-based language teaching method,.  

        We made use of a preparatory class course book of high schools prepared by MoE while choosing the target words. That's why, both the external and the internal design of the material are chosen addressing our target audiences, which are high school pupils.

        We aimed by choosing these particular words 'win' and 'earn' to make the students find out the different uses of these words which are translated into Turkish as the same. To reach that aim, in the first step, we test their guesses and prior knowledge with a matching activity as a warm-up. In the second step, we asked them to exploit a corpus website called 'Skell', which is more usable for their age and possible competence in English. Considering that, we use simple explanations and two photos of the website to show what they will come across. When they access the website and search the words one by one, they see several examples of sentences in which these words are used. after they select four of them,  they note them in the two boxes allocated. With the help of sentences, we hoped that they discover the words. By getting the help of given sentences, we expected them while the activity of the third step, to circle the correct one according to the uses. As we expected them to refer to the meanings and uses, in the four first steps, we want them to practice it with a true/false activity. After finishing that activity, we added a re-discussion section to compare their new knowledge with old guesses.

        When it comes to the objective of that material, our students will be able to use the corpus tool to recognize and infer the words and forms. Also, they will be able to process them by following the steps.

        Of course, there can be some missing parts despite we designed it in detail. As for me, no matter how we explain the material clearly, or the tool is simpler than other tools like COCA, they can still not understand the example ordered by Skell. That is, if they cannot understand, they lose among the sentences' other items and cannot focus on the target words/forms/structure, etc.

    I will share our material here. Also, if you wish ,you can check  Sude's blog out.

See you soon.

Take care of yourself .🙋

What I learned from the 'Educational Technologies' course?

   

What I learned from the 'Educational Technologies'  course?

        Our task-based course, which made this term pass to the fullest, was educational technologies. I learned new things. Not only did I learn, I also produced something. It was all mine and very precious. This is the first time I interacted with my friends this much. I got to know more about technology, which is my biggest fear and warmed up to it a little more. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned something from all of them.

   

  I thought about how I could present what I learned to my own students. At the end of each task, I felt closer to being a better-equipped teacher. I collected the works I put forward in a separate folder to share with my students later and present them as an example. In order to be useful as soon as possible, I shared what I learned with my family and teachers, Web2 tools that I enjoyed using and found useful.

    

 Before I took this course, I believed that the integration of technology into education was very necessary and important. Now I am more conscious. Of course, what we learned during the course was limited, but now we have learned to reach more according to our needs.

    Not only the content and planning but also the role model of my dear teacher Gökçe KURT helped me a lot. Her attitude towards us, her clear and entertaining lecture, her tolerance for mistakes, and her useful and constructive feedback gave me an idea about my own teaching future. I would like to thank you for making me spend my time at school valuable and making me feel valuable.

See you soon.

Take care of yourself .🙋

 

STORYTELLING  

     I've always been writing stories to myself since I was little. I find characters for these stories and visualize them in my own head. This time, I animated my dreams by voicing them with real characters. Are you ready to listen to the story of the animated movie I created with my friend Sara BAL?

     Another technology lesson and various activities... Our homework this week was storytelling. My friend and I were afraid we wouldn't be able to do it, and for days we didn't decide what to present. Then, to end this suffering, we got together in an empty classroom at our school and were able to prepare plot scenes characters in 3 hours. 

 

    The plot part took a lot of time. We thought a lot about what kind of story we should create. Then we gave up on this and wandered around in the tool we were going to use. That's what helped us come up with this idea. It made our job very easy and fast to fit a story into a background that we liked there. We both showed a real collaboration example. At every step, we both presented ideas and put them into practice and created  'Leyla's Dilemma'.

      

    I can't say there was no problem. We were very upset when we realized that the application we used, Pixton, was just a comic application. Because we needed to animate it. After thinking for a while, we thought that we could turn the scenes we created here into a movie in another application, and we immediately started researching new ways and applications. Finally, we found the best fit for us. The voiceover remained. We also  needed a man in that part. Sara came up with a great solution and turned her own voice into a male voice with a voice changer app. 

      I don't know if I would give this task to my students because it even forced me. I think it would be more difficult for them. But I had very good ideas for my own training materials and course schedules. For example, I can prepare the dialogues that we have created to keep the grammar topics in mind, in the form of animations, for the children myself. Maybe I can help them learn English and have a good time by doing it together in the classroom. I can upload my students' homework, work, and drawings and animate them. I'm sure they will be happy about it.

    For now, these are my dreams and my dreams. If you want to watch our animation, you can find it here.

    See you soon.

    Take care of yourself .🙋