Developing Communication Skills of EFL Teacher Trainees

Abstract Higher Education Council of Turkey has added a one term course named as "Effectiv

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION AND ITS IMPACT ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF MILITARY CADETS AT TMA

The purpose of the study was three-fold: First, to determine the perspectives of the international and Turkish military cadets at Turkish Military Academy (TMA) towards multicultural learning environment and cultural diversity. Second, to analyze to what extent the multicultural learning environment affects the language development of both international and Turkish cadets. Third, to identify the observations and suggestions of language instructors about the best practices to be applied in multicultural learning setting. A questionnaire and two proficiency tests were applied on 80 cadets for quantitative data. Qualitative data was gathered from 13 language instructors studying at TMA. It was found that the perspectives of the cadets towards multicultural learning setting were positive. However, the international cadets’ language proficiency developed more than the Turkish cadets. Analysis of the interviews with the language instructors provided important insights into the issue.Key Words :  cultural diversity, international student, multicultural learning, TMA

Lexical Awareness and Development through Data Driven Learning: Attitudes and Beliefs of EFL Learners

Data-driven learning (DDL) has become an innovative approach developed from corpus linguistics. It plays a significant role in the progression of foreign language pedagogy, since it offers learners plentiful authentic corpora examples that make them analyze language rules with the help of online corpora and concordancers. The present study attempts to reveal Turkish EFL learners’ attitudes and beliefs about DDL instruction in terms of lexical awareness and development. A mixed method including a questionnaire and a focus group interview was used to gather data. The statistical analysis of the results indicated positive attitudes towards DDL instruction in terms of raising the depth of lexical awareness particularly for synonyms and collocations. However, participants reported that their awareness towards word frequency, idioms and vocabulary learning strategies did not increase satisfactorily. Negative attitudes were also observed due to technical problems of the software and time-consuming nature of doing tasks through corpus

Using theatre extracts in teaching speech acts to Turkish efl students with special reference to apologies and refusals

Dil kullanımında edimbilim ve sosyodilbilim kurallarının geliştirilmesi dil öğrenenler açısından önemlidir. Dili çeşitli durumlara uygun bir şekilde anlamak ve kullanmak gereklidir, aksi takdirde, iletilmek istenen önemli noktalar gözden kaçabilir veya mesajların yanlış anlaşılmasına sebep olabilir. Daha da kötüsü, iletişim bütünüyle kopabilir hatta ikinci dil kullanıcıları duyarsız, kaba ve beceriksiz kalıp yargılarıyla etiketlenebilir (Thomas,1983). Özürler ve redler, kültürden kültüre değişiklik gösterdikleri için oldukça karmaşık söz eylemleridir; bu yüzden bu dile özgü anlamsal formüller yanlış anlaşılmalara açıktırlar. Bu çalışma, İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen Türk Hazırlık sınıfı öğrencilerine tiyatro eserlerinden yapılan alıntıların özgün materyal olarak kullanılması yoluyla İngilizce özür dileme ve reddetme söz eylemlerinin karmaşık ve detaylı özelliklerini öğretmeyi hedeflemektedir. Veriler anadili olarak İngilizce konuşan 10 Amerikalı ve yirmisi uygulama yirmisi control grubu olmak üzere 40 hazırlık okulu öğrencisi Türk denekden toplanmıştır. Özür ve reddetme söz eylemlerini içeren sözlü söylem tamamlama testi bilgi toplama tekniği olarak katılımcılara ön test ve son test aracılığıyla verilmiş ve etnografik veri toplama aracı olarak da sınıf içi uygulamaları videoya kaydedilmiştir. Bir ders dönemi boyunca Amerikan ve İngiliz oyun yazarlarının oyunlarından alınan parçalar edimbilimsel öğretimle beraber kullanılmıştır. Bulgular, tiyatro alıntıları kullanarak etkili bir söz eylem öğretiminin, belirli durumlarda öğrencilerin ana dil kullanıcıları benzeri ifadeler kullanmalarına yardımcı olduğunu ve sosyodilbilimsel davranışlarını etkilediğini göstermiştir.The development of pragmatic and sociolinguistic rules in language use is important for language learners. It is necessary to understand and use language that is appropriate to the various situations, because failure to do so may cause users to miss key points that are being communicated or to have their messages misunderstood. Worse, yet, is the possibility of a total communication breakdown and the stereotypical labeling of second language users as people who are insensitive, rude, or inept (Thomas,1983). Apologies and refusals are considered to be highly complex speech acts as they differ cross-culturally, thus, these language specific semantic formulas are prone to misunderstandings. This present study concerns with the teaching and learning of the more subtle and complex features of the speech act of apologizing and refusing in English to Turkish Prep-school learners by using theatre extracts as authentic material. Data was collected from 10 American native speakers of English and 40 Turkish Prep-school foreign language learners, 20 of which were experimental and 20 of which were the control group from the same proficiency level. Participants were given a discourse role-play test (DRPT) instrument for elicitation including both apology and refusal strategies via pre- and post-test questionnaire and the classroom treatments were video recorded for ethnographic data. Theatre extracts from English and American playwrights' plays were used as an authentic material with pragmatic instruction throughout one semester. Findings indicated that effective instruction of speech acts through theatre extracts can assist learners in producing native-like utterances in certain situations and affect their sociolinguistic behavior