Session Summaries

Aslı Ünlü, ENKA Schools

YOU MATTER!

In her presentation, Aslı Ünlü pointed out the fact that the characteristics of our best teachers have an influence on how we teach, how we want to teach, or how we believe we should teach. Some of our beliefs come from our own language learning experiences. Our work experience, professional learning experience, emotional experience also shape the way we teach. Therefore, it’s to be expected that one teacher’s beliefs on effective teaching is not equal to another teacher’s. By the same token, teachers’ beliefs may not be similar to those of students’, either. These differences need to be taken into account, since beliefs shape behavior. She suggested that in order to be able to change behavior, we need to understand them first. What we believe and what our students believe matters. We should take the time to think about what has affected either our decision to become a teacher or the way we teach now. Therefore, here are some questions we can ask ourselves:

What experiences or expectations made you choose teaching as a career?
What experiences disappointed you and affected your teaching negatively?
What experiences contributed to your teaching?

Are there times you would like to teach differently but are afraid of getting a negative response from your students as it happened once or a couple of times in the past?
Also, we can encourage our students to be more reflective about their own learning and our own teaching, to control their learning, to control the unexpected situations that might be caused because of the discrepancy between our beliefs and our students’ beliefs, and ultimately to create a more positive learning environment where there is mutual trust.

Ayşegül Liman Kaban, Bahçeşehir University

Teacher Tech Tool Box

In this session, Ayşegül Liman Kaban introduced several tech tools that she has been using recently. She suggested a variety of technological tools as a means to make the language classroom more lively and fun.

The session started with an online quiz activity on http://www.quizizz.com where all the participants took the quiz simultaneously. Mrs. Kaban recommended the website to create different kinds of quizzes or tasks to enhance collaborative learning and adding fun to the classroom.

Next, the participants reflected on their lessons from the previous week. Their reflection was based on the zones (i.e. Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, and Panic Zone) that their students entered in the classroom. The participants discussed “Which zones were your students generally in? Where does the most learning occur?” At the end of the discussion, it was pointed out that most learning happens far from the comfort zone, which means learning requires some form of challenge for the students. Another point was the emotional contagion in the classroom. It was underlined that if the teacher is happy, the students also become happy. “Wall of questions” was a blog activity where students are expected to answer questions like “What color were the walls in this room before they painted them blue? How many vacation days have you got in a year?” The presenter also advised using a Google browser window named “symbaloo” to collect different tech tools together to make them easily accessible. A sample website: http://alturl.com/bv5tn

Next, several uses of “What’s app?” and smart phones at school were suggested:
1. Asking the students’ favorite music and welcoming them with their favorite music the next morning.
2. Immediate feedback/help (Though students may disturb you late at night)
3. Revision and Reflection
4. Two-minute digital breaks in the class: (e.g. .Find someone who has the same number of apps with you, six similar apps with you, etc.)
5. Talking about the photos in your phone

Another suggestion was about using real contexts in writing like “Writing a review of Antalya hotels on booking.com.” The final suggestion was about using the software “English Vocabulary Profile” based on CEFR to separate vocabulary into the levels in accordance with A1, A2, B1, B2.

David R. Albachten & Levent Balcıoğlu, Şehir University

Two-year 300-student Quantitative Study of English Preparatory Writing
Implications for Turkish Preparatory Programs

The question David R.Albachten and Levent Balcıoğlu aim to answer is: are we really improving students’ writing skills via our writing practices and if so to what extent? 303 papers were included in the study and an overall improvement of 43% was observed in the grammar (mechanics, articles, subject-verb agreement, etc.) of the second drafts (process writing). The most common mistakes were articles, missing commas, spelling, subject-verb agreement and, of course, the use of prepositions.
After this study, the prep program was revised according to the results.

Duygu Umutlu, Boğaziçi University

How to Maximize Learning Through Flipped Classrooms 

In this session, Duygu not only introduced the term “Flipped Classroom” to those who had not heard it before but also gave the ones who already knew about it some pretty good insights into the subject. She started the session by defining Flipped Classrooms and mentioned the other terms which are used interchangeably. Then she showed us a couple of videos that demonstrated some good examples of these types of classrooms. After that, she gave us some good reasons why we may want to adopt such a method in our ELT classrooms. She talked about a study that was conducted to see how flipped classrooms affected the students’ success and involvement in in-class activities. She also mentioned some issues that may arise because of flipped classrooms and suggested some possible solutions to these problems. Towards the end of the session, Duygu recommended to us some good websites which have lots of ready-made video lectures to use in our language classrooms, some good applications and websites to use if we want to create our own video lectures, and some ways to publish these lectures to make them available to our students. At the end of the session, some ways to apply this in the Turkish education system was discussed and everyone gave their ideas and concerns about flipped classrooms.

Ebru Yalçın Özden, Istanbul Bilgi University

It’s Time to be Moocoholics

Ebru’s presentation received a lot of enthusiasm and the participants left the room with some great input regarding using technology both in the classroom and outside. Besides MOOC serves not only as teaching tool but also for personal improvement. In that sense, her presentation is useful for academics as well. The fundamentals of the presentation were as follows:

1. What is a MOOC?
2. Who are the Learners?
3. What are the Goals of MOOCs?
4. A Brief History
5. Who Provides MOOCs?
6. What do MOOC courses contain?
7. The Pros and Cons
8. Some Examples

MOOC is a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any person—with no limit on attendance

During the presentation the participants were more than welcomed to ask any questions; in fact, all the participants were eager to upload the application and benefit from it for their personal pleasure and development as well. Besides being used as teaching tool, MOOK is also applicable for any sector or business profile as it is comprised of many field work and launched by the professors across the world actively teaching in the most reputable universities in the world like Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, are only few of them.

She has presented 3 applications that work under the name of MOOK. The following picture is what she has provided the participants with as part of her presentation.

The presentation was really appealing with the visuals and participants seemed and sounded really enjoying as much as they were developing ideas and plan how they can engage their students into such a great application. Ebru has also provided the participants with her personal interaction with MOOK which also made the presentation reliable, sound and worth listening. In brief the session started sharply on time and planning was done very smoothly. There was a room for every participant ask questions, and she was very positive and genuine with her answers. The presentation was delivered so successfully and the participants left the room with shinny eyes as they have learned something new about “Teaching Methodology –Strategy” using technology. As ELT is somehow recycling and repeating itself and may appear to be redundant sometimes, functional usage of technology and staying in tune with the learning needs and styles of 21st century’s students is a prerequisite both in and out classroom teaching environment. This can only be achieved if we teachers speak the same language with our students. In fact, this presentation was like a box of chocolate and sweats for us as it stays away from old fashioned textbooks, or thousand of pages of photocopies. Besides, it provides the teachers with the opportunity to enjoy their free time doing something useful for their own sake. Ebru said she would have been much happier if she had had the opportunity to share this priceless application with more people in her session. Only 6 people had watched the presentation.

Sedef Koc, Üsküdar SEV School

Technology, but Why and How?  

The presenter Sedef Koç started off by using a selection of visual cult cartoons and images that hinted at what was to come in the future. She illustrated how many of those then humorous images are now reality and how education has become technology-bound. Consequently educators have to embrace and adapt. She then showed us a couple of projects from her class that use technology to motivate the kids. The tools focused on were Popplet and AR Bulletin Boards. At the end of the session the audience had a chance to experience first-hand an app called Kahoot though a participant competition. The app offers great scope for synchronous online quizzes, polls etc. and can be used during class time using tablets or phones.

Meltem Akbulut Yıldırmış, Şehir University

What’s in control of a listening class? Testing? 

The session entitled “What’s in control of a listening class? Testing?” mainly focused on what procedures may be involved in each listening, how listening lessons usually follow a testing-style-pattern that puts too much challenge on the learners and several techniques that may lead to competent listening.

The presenter started by asking the participants “what stages do you usually follow in your listening lessons?” and elicited some models related to different listening lessons at various institutions. Then she shared a basic model based on the observations she conducts in classes as;

1. lead-in
2. pre-teach vocabulary
3. listening for gist
4. feedback
5. listening for details
6. feedback
7. post-listening

After reflecting on the model, the presenter asked the participants some discussion questions to gather some ideas on the effectiveness of pre-listening, post-listening and strategy-training activities. Then they sought out the missing element of the listening lessons. After a mini discussion, the presenter elicited how “little” time is devoted to understanding students’ needs/ difficulties for each actual listening stage. Upon analyzing the difficulties, the presenter shared her “integrated listening tasks” which consist of

• metacognitive listening sequence
• self-directed listening,
• listening buddies,
• post-listening perception activities, which can help learners overcome these challenges.

In the final part of the session, the presenter provided the audience with some activities for each integrated technique that can help learners become more competent in listening, and guided session participants to explore awareness-raising type of listening questions. Ms. Büyükduman’s session, titled “Assessment: Greener Side of the Fence”, mainly focused on the basic principles of formative assessment as part of overall assessment in ELT. She started with a comparison between ‘Traditional Assessment’ and ‘Alternative Assessment’. Then, she briefly outlined the role of assessment in language teaching and talked about why and how summative assessment may result in frustration in classroom settings. She showed a video of a traditional exam situation to indicate how such exam situations are artificial, not interactive or meaningful. Ms. Büyükduman continued her presentation with classroom assessment tools through which students’ language improvement is evaluated on the basis of more communicative and interactive tasks. She introduced ‘Alternative Assessment Tools’ such as ‘Video Project’, ‘Oral Presentation’, ‘Group Discussion’, ‘Process Writing’, and ‘Vocabulary Logs’. She also shared the video recordings that displayed the students’ actual performances in these tasks for alternative assessment.

 Görkem Satak and Okan Bölükbaş, Sabancı University

Innovative Vocabulary Practice in the Post-Method Era

 After the opening remarks and the presenters introducing their selves, the presentation was started by warming the participants up on vocabulary learning, factors affecting vocabulary learning and then the presenters suggested vocabulary strategies and what can be done in classrooms. They shared a sample of an exam paper to highlight the factors affecting vocabulary learning, such as memorizing L1 translations. Then they introduced various vocabulary games on some technological tools and applications that facilitate vocabulary practice from four websites, which are https://kahoot.it , www.socrative.com, www.plickers.com, and jeopardy from www.superteachertools.com . They implemented them into the session by giving instructions, explaining the procedures step by step and letting the participants play on their mobile phones and take part in the games by having a hands-on experience. The presenters also offered some alternative ways to implement these activities into different classes with different learner profiles. It was obvious that the participants found the games very engaging, enjoyable, and innovative in terms of the technology used and everybody had a lot of fun while actively participating. In brief, it was an interactive, fruitful, and fun presentation.

Adam J.Simpson, Macmillan Education

From Pen and Paper to Tech App: Is it worth it?

In his session entitled ‘From Pen and Paper to Tech App: IS it worth it?’ Mr. Simpson primarily focused on how technology could increase the effectiveness of traditional language learning tasks and his classroom research on blended learning. Mr. Simpson started his session with the importance of blended learning as a result of the changing nature of the ‘learning process’ the changing profile of ‘learners’. He suggested that, although collaborative, interactive and communicative, many language learning tasks may become inefficient unless they are backed up by technology. For his research, Mr. Simpson chose ‘Poster Presentations’. He emphasized that his main purpose of the research was to see if such a classic pen and paper activity could be implemented using the kind of technology that students use every day. In the session, Mr. Simpson reminded the audience about the benefits of classic poster presentation tasks (e.g. it fosters oral practice; it fosters learner autonomy, etc.). For his classroom research, he first assigned his students a classic poster presentation task and recorded each step of the poster presentation (group work preparation, presentation, and feedback). Then he played the video recording to show the presentations of each group. His students were quite successful as they had a good command of English. However, as Mr. Simpson stated, a traditional poster presentation may become dull and the end product may not be equal to the time spent during the preparation stage. For example, the groups’ presentation took much less time than they spent while they were preparing their posters. In addition, students tended to work less or they procrastinated when the teacher was physically distant and therefore the teacher had to monitor them more closely. Moreover, each poster presentation group consisted of 4-5 students and it was hard to evaluate each group member’s active involvement during the preparation period, and in the oral presentation phase not all group members actively participated. After sharing this poster presentation experience, Mr. Simpson introduced an alternative way to increase the efficiency of the poster presentation task using Infographics. It is a well-designed representation of information which can help simplify a complicated subject or turn an otherwise boring subject into a captivating experience. Because the student will be using Internet technology, which they spend most of their personal time on, they will be more motivated to be actively involved in the process of the ‘poster presentation’ experience. To put it simply, instead of a classic pen and paper poster presentation, students will prepare their presentations using a web-tool. For this purpose, Mr. Simpson designed a lesson for poster presentation using technology. His lesson consisted of certain stages to increase the efficacy of the process. The first stage was ‘Orientation’ to establish the concept of infographics (how it works, what kind of experience does it provide). Then, students are asked to work in pairs (ideally only 2 students can work on one computer) to find an infographic online using a search engine. Later, pairs reflect on what information their infographic shares and the way in which it is formatted. As it can be seen, before the presentation, students spend a considerable amount of time on the graphic design and receive training on how to use it. As part of training, the teacher takes students through the process of using the software application showing all of the necessary steps to produce an infographic. Moreover, the teacher tests students on how to use the software application to see how effective the training was. Then students choose the content and material to use in their infographic. After that, there is the presentation stage which is followed by a feedback session during which each student shares their thoughts on the graphics produced. At the end of his session, Mr. Simpson came to the conclusion that his students were more motivated to take part in oral presentations using an infographic (although some complained that it took much longer to prepare their visual graphics).

Sibel Taşkın Şimşek, Sabancı University

TGIG: Songs in Action

In her presentation, Sibel Taşkın Şimşek, an EAP instructor and a member of the On­line Learning Support Project and Webinar Team at Sabanci University, focused on the ways to motivate students on Fridays. She pointed out that knowing that the weekend will start soon the students’ motivation starts to decrease and it becomes very hard for the teacher to motivate them to focus on a task. After pointing out how difficult it is to keep students in class, especially in the last lessons on Fridays, she presented the stages and tips for the Friday Song Project, which she has been doing with her students since Fall 2013. She highlighted that the aim of the Friday song project is to give students a chance to develop their autonomy, increase their engagement and performance on Fridays by using the power of songs. She concluded her presentation by reminding the audience that the great potential that songs have in the process of learning could only be used when the song is a popular one or the lyrics are familiar. During Sibel Taşkın Şimsek’s presentation the audience also had the opportunity to see samples of the different tasks she has done with her students and to analyze the criteria for the song project.