ENRICHING MICROTEACHING IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO YOUNG LEARNERS (TEYL): AN ACTION RESEARCH

This action research is conducted upon noticing the need to provide pre-service teachers of English with a deeper insight into their microteaching demonstrations in TEYL course, which takes place in third year of the teacher training program before the practicum. Regarding the microteachings in TEYL course, the pre-service teachers complained about not being sure how children learn, think and act. Their concerns and dissatisfaction about the performance and feedback stages of microteaching sessions were also acknowledged by the researchers. Thus, 71 pre-service teachers were required to re-conduct their storytelling with target age children and complete a reflection questionnaire. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals that microteachings had some drawbacks in preparing pre-service teachers to the teaching profession. Actual practices with children enabled the pre-service teachers experiencing the natural atmosphere of teaching and developing understanding how children think, learn and react.Keywords: teacher training; teachers of young learners; young learners of English; microteaching; video-recorded reflectio

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

Discourse markers and spoken English: Nonnative use in the Turkish EFL setting

Bu doktora çalışması, anadili İngilizce'den farklı olan Türk konuşucuları tarafından kullanılan söylem belirleyicilerini, anadili İngilizce olan konuşucuların sözlü söylemlerinde kullanılanlarla karşılaştırarak, konuşma İngilizce söylemindeki tekrar sıklıklarını ve işlevlerinin kullanımını araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu amaçlar için, araştırma, hem nitel hem de nicel araştırma yöntemlerini kullanmıştır. Araştırmanın nitel yanı içerisinde, çevri yazı yöntemiyle, Gazi Üniversitesi'nde okuyan Türk lisans öğrencilerinin ders sunumlarını içeren bir araştırma bütüncesi oluşturulmuştur. Verileri, karşılaştırmak için, MICASE bütüncesi yardımıyla ile Michigan Üniversitesi'ndeki öğrenci sunumlarının yazılı metinlerine erişilmiştir. Her iki bütüncedeki söylem belirleyicilerinin tekrar sıklığı belirlenmiştir. Sonuçlar, Türk İngilizce konuşucularının konuşma İngilizcesi'nde söylem belirleyici çeşitliği eksikliğine sahip olduklarını ve söylem belirleyicilerini sınırlı sayıda kullandıklarını göstermektedir. Çalışmanın nicel yönü içinse, söylem belirleyicilerinin işlevleri, her iki bütünceden örneklendirilmiştir; bu da, anadili İngilizce olmayan konuşucuların, sözlü söylemde söylem belirleyicilerinin işlev çeşitliğinden yararlanmadıklarını ortaya çıkarmıştır. Bu bulgularla birlikte, araştırma, konuşma İngilizcesi söyleminde söylem belirleyicilerinin kullanımı konusunda Türk konuşucularda farkındalığı artırma ihtiyacının önemini vurgulamaktadır ve İngilizce dil eğitimi için dikkate değer çıkarımlar önermektedir.This dissertation aims at identifying the discourse markers used by Turkish nonnative speakers of English, their occurences in their spoken English discourse by comparing them with the ones used in native speakers' spoken discourse and their use of functions. For these purposes, the study used both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Within the quantitative side of the study, a research corpus was composed with the course presentations of the Turkish undergraduate students studying at Gazi University throughout transcription process. To compare the data, transcripts of student presentations from University of Michigan with the help of MICASE Corpus were also attained. The occurences of the discourse markers in both corpus were determined. The results show that Turkish nonnative speakers of English have a lack of variety in using discourse markers in their spoken English and use discourse markers in a limited number. As for the qualitative side of the study, the functions of the discourse markers were given examples from two corpus, which revealed that nonnative speakers do not benefit from the variety of functions of the discourse markers in spoken discourse. Along with these findings, the study highlights the importance of the need for awareness-raising of Turkish nonnative speakers in using discourse markers in their spoken English discourse and recommends considerable implications for English language teaching

Üst bilişsel Dinleme Farkındalığı Ölçeğinin Türkçe Uyarlama Çalışması

It has been acknowledged that the role of metacognitive awareness in foreign language learning is significant as it includes monitoring and regulating cognition to complete a task in a foreign language successfully. The metacognitive awareness of foreign language students has been investigated to understand and provide evidence for a better understanding of language acquisition process in line with four main language skills. In particular, the relation of metacognition with listening skill has been investigated with Vandergrift et al. (2006) with a scale which is one of the reliable and valid instruments. Since the scale was developed in English, its implementation in the Turkish context required the necessity of translation and adaptation into Turkish language. Therefore, the aim of this study is to adapt the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire to Turkish and provide reliability and validity results. To this end, 344 Turkish EFL learners participated in the study. The results showed that the scale had one-factor structure and worked better with 3 items (3rd, 8th and 16th) omitted. The final version of the Turkish version yielded reliable and valid results for future references and implementation in the field.Yabancı dil öğreniminde üstbilişsel farkındalık, yabancı bir dilde bir görevi başarıyla tamamlamak için bilişselliği gözlemleme ve düzenleme açısından önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Yabancı dil öğrencilerinin üstbilişsel farkındalığı, dil edinimi sürecini dört ana beceriyle bağlantılı olarak daha iyi anlamak için araştırılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, Vandergrift vd. (2006) tarafından üstbilişsel farkındalık ve yabancı dilde dinleme becerisi arasındaki ilişki incelenmiş ve bu bağlamda ilgili konuya yönelik bir ölçek geliştirilmiştir. Ölçeğin orjinal dili İngilizce olup, Türkiye bağlamında kullanılabilmesi ve literatüre katkı sağlaması adına Üstbilişsel Dinleme Farkındalığı Ölçeği’nin (Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire) Türkçe’ye uyarlanması ve geçerlilik ve güvenilirlik sonuçlarını sunulması amaçlanmıştır. Araştırmanın çalışma grubu İngilizce hazırlık eğitimi alan 344 öğrenciden oluşmaktadır. Geçerlik ve güvenirlik analizleri sonucunda ölçeğin orjinalindeki 5 faktörlü yapısından farklı olarak uyarlanmış halinde tek faktörlü yapı doğrulanmıştır. Faktör yüklerinin düşük olmasından dolayı ölçekten 3 madde (3., 8. ve 16. maddeler) çıkarılmıştır. Üstbilişsel Dinleme Farkındalığı Ölçeği’nin Türkçe uyarlamasının yabancı dilde dinleme becerisi üstbilişsel farkındalığının ölçülmesinde geçerli ve güvenilir bir araç olduğu belirlenmiştir

The affordances of a mobile video-tagging tool for evaluating presentation skills in a second language

This study investigated the affordances of a mobile video observation and tagging tool used to evaluate presentation skills in English language classrooms. The data consists of 35 video-recorded presentations in a higher education setting. Using a digital evaluation grid, the students received feedback based on visual analytics generated by the mobile app. The students then were asked to reflect on their performances, and were also asked to comment on the affordances and limitations of the method and the tool. Qualitative data that came from (1) students’ written self-evaluations and reflections and (2) their reported perceptions of the affordances of the tool were analyzed using the Constant Comparison Method. Analyses of reflective writings indicated the dominance of negative self-evaluations of language use, while affective factors were also a strong theme. The video-tagging tool was found to be very beneficial by the learners, mainly in enabling them to notice their strengths and weaknesses in presenting in English and facilitating effective feedback. The results show that this data-led reflective presentation model can be beneficial for learners as they can identify points of development

Investigating Learning Technology By Design Approach in Pre-Service Language Teacher Education: Collaborative and Reflective Experiences

The study aims to present how technology integration can be fulfilled into Language Teacher Education (LTE) contexts by tracking the development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) of the pre-service English Language teachers through Learning Technology By Design approach. A total of 100 senior student teachers (STs) of English at a large state university in Turkey participated in the study. The STs were required totrain their peers about one digital tool and prepare digital materials to be used in language classrooms. The data were collected through three instruments quantitatively and qualitatively: the TPACK-EFL survey, peer reflective discussion forms and focus-group interviews. The findings revealed that the TPACK-EFL knowledge of the STs has improved significantly in all domains after the research intervention, and the STs reported considerably positive perceptions about the digital tools such as increasing motivation and positive atmosphere, more attractive and content-rich materials and more practical and found the experience of peer teaching very effective. The study suggests implications for a variety of digital tools to be used in language classrooms and aneffective technology training in LTE contexts