Reflection on English Central

English Central is an absolutely amazing programme which allows language learners with many great opportunities to develop their language skills of listening,writing,speaking or reading.It can used used in input-providing tasks and also output-prompting tasks. I would say it takes its basic principles from Constructivism because it is mostly student-centered and students constuct their own new or "unknown" knowledge by themselves or with teachers scafolding.In a sense, it can be said that students use their old or previously learned knowledge and relate them to their new knowledge to understand the text or new vocabulary items. The usage of this programme can be adjusted according to the context, methodolgy and also instuctional principles but personally I would adopt a constructivist approach to use this programme. It is different from traditional teaching methdos which are generally teacher-centered and not integrating technologgy into the classroom. I would definetely recommend this programme to my students to give them a chance to develop their language development by assisgning them some parts as homeworks so that they can see the benefits of it by themselves.

Change of pedagogy for technology

"There is no longer a four-walled classroom," says Dr Cecilia Goria,which is I totaly agree.Technology changes the concept of time and place of people,which also affects the classroom environment and educational setting. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, there is going to be an obvious gap between students and teachers if teachers don't adjust their instuctional principles and techniques accordingly. As it is stated in the The Guardian by Russell Stannard: "Language development is around four skills – reading, writing, speaking and listening – and all of those are facilitated by technology. There's a very strong link between the affordances of technology and the type of things we're trying to do as teachers." I totally advocate this statement as technology forms a brigde between the social world around us and academic world. Students can use technology to gain knowledge anywhere and anytime they like due to technology. Technology can be used to visualize or voice things, which is very beneficial in language learning. For example, video programmes such as Animoto and Powtoon can be used to make subject matter more effective. I believe many cognitivist teachers should advocate this kind of programmes as they contribute to student's retention process.Also,technology can be used in vocabulary learning. Students can faciliate their vocabulary learning process by just using colorful or voiced materials assigned by their teachers or they can find those materials by themselves. Overall, I am strongly recommending to my peers to integrate technology to their instructional principles and teaching methodology to catch up with students' technological world.

What kind of teacher are you?

https://apps.facebook.com/wkotay_quiz/ I tried this test and got an eagle saying "You spend time creating attractive worksheets/flipcharts and exploit visual aids to the full in your classes." I believe this reflects me as I love using worksheets and visual aids. Visual aids helps students to remember facts more easily.

'Digital Natives' and 'Digital Immigrants'

As Prensky stated, I personally believe that there is a gap between 'Digital Natives' who are students and 'Digital Immigrants' who are teachers. As far as I can reflect on my own experience, I can trace the gap between ourselves (as students) and teacher because the way we are raised is different from their way of being brought up. Nowadays, students are actively engaged in technology and it may be true to say that technology becomes a component part of their lives so their way of thinking and perceiving things or information is changed. It also affects the communication and interaction among themselves(students) and between teahers. For example when we think about Twitter,surely,which is one of the applications that core of the social media, all students are engaged in it. As a result their way of thinking change beacause it is limited; students need to express their ideas in 140 characters, which may make them so lazy to read long academic texts. They are fond of short and concrete information because of social media habits.Hence, students may have difficulties regarding this aspect of the problem. Teachers may be unaware of this division or may be it isn't so visible but they need to adapt themselves and their teaching styles. Personally, I believe technology should be integrated into instruction more to overcome these problems and students attention and language or social media habits are solved.

RESEARCH QUESTION-How are errors viewed in language learning ?

Making errors is an inevitable part of language learning. Through errors learners learn the correct forms, meaning and functions, which makes errors as a natural outcome of development of communication skills. Leaners engage in various different language tasks and contexts which create a possible place that students make different types of mistakes.Caleb Gattegno, who is the founder of silent way, stated that errors are inevitable and are signs that learners are actively testing their hypothesis.(Gattegno,C; 1972) I choose this exploratory question for my research because I am really curious about how errors should be treated and turning error making process into a more positive process for further learning. As a language learner of English for 12 years and currently language learner of French, I want to delve further into my own beliefs about errors to become an humanist prospective teacher. I believe students learning depends on affective factors and emotional factors as it is stated by Gattegno.(Gattegno,1976).Curran,who is founder of Community Language Leaning, also states that learners have some fears such as that they will appear foolish by making mistakes. Hence, it concluded that correction of errors plays a fundamental role in student’s attitude towards learning and language. Teacher’s response to errors should be carried out very carefully. There are many ways of correcting errors. I noticed teachers can encourage students to self-correction while other teachers corrects errors by recasting or reformulating,grammar drills or exercises,giving inductive or deductive explanation in a non-defensive and gentle manner when analyze how methods empowers teachers to correct errors in Larsen-Freeman’s book (Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. The ultimate conclusion I reached is that teachers is motivated by their certain beliefs and apply these beliefs to principles. Principles construct their actions and it affects how they correct the errors.

STOP STEALING DREAMS

Seth Godin has said "What is school for?". Schools are set up to make students obidient and fit in to the society as he explained the case in America. I believe it is not any different from Turkey. Especially many schools have so strict rules which actually make no sense. When I reflect on my high school experience, I remember that whenever a teacher saw my hair untied, s/he scolded me in front of everyone. Female students had to tie their hair up. It was a strict rule in my high school. When I try to find any rationale for this rule, I can't think of a reasonable one. So, I believe these kind of of rules are designed to make students obidient. Also, many students are required to memorize nearly all of the content of instructional units throughout an academic unit; instuctional objectives are based on memorization in Turkish education system. In this respect, it's again no different from American education system as Seth Godin has explained. As prospective effective teachers, I believe we should form a life- long habit for our students. This is critical thinking. This may challange status-quo but it is what an effective teacher should do. By critical thinking, our students would answer the question of "What is school for" by themselves.

Reflection on Nature vs. Nurture

How much are we influenced by our nature and nurture is a key concept in behaviorism and many experiments such as Skinner's experiment with a rat and Pavlo's experiment with a dog geneally deals with unconscious or conscious behavior. In this aspect, we can reflect it to our own success As far as I can reflect on my own resource of success, I would attribute it equally to nature and nurture. Personally, I believe a person won't be able to succeed without the help of his/her particular characteristics such as optimisim. Optimisim determinies how a person react to a stimulus. I think some people have optimisim by nature and the others have optimisim by nurturing. So, it is open to dispute;what do you think about it ? Personally, I believe that I have optimisim by nature which helps me a lot in my studies. When I face with a diffucult task, I always try to remain optimistic about the subject that is concerned. Also, my family especially my mother has a very positive influence on me as an experienced English teacher. This part is about nurture I believe. As a prospective English teacher, I sugggest nature and nurture of students should be considered by taking students' characteristics into consideration. I mean students' chracarteristic really determines it. If a student is more dependant to interpersonal relationships,then we can consider nurture.

Reflection on Teacher-Centered and Learner-Centered Instruction

Personally, I believe the issue of teacher-centered and learner-centered instruction has always been a contoversial topic in Turkey. It is quite important to make a choice between teacher-centered and learner-centered instruction beacuse it makes up a dramatic portion of instructional objectives and also a teacher's teaching philosophy. The issue is arguable as there are teachers who favour teacher-centered instruction;on the other hand, there are some teachers who favour learner-centered instruction. In my high school, I had both kinds of these teachers.What makes them different is the importance they give to how much understood by students. For example,my English teacher always told us what we would be be able to do at the at end of the lesson or an instuctional unit. However, our history teacher always told us his yearly curriculum and how much we had progressed according to his plan. One thing I reliazed in history lessons was that even if we didn't understand an instuctional unit, he just moved on to catch up with his own schedule. It was quite teacher-centered. As a result,it wasn't any beneficial to our class. When we have come to talk about evaluation of these two types of instructions,I have more difficulty in teacher-centered instruction. As I have mentioned above, the teacher didn't care how much we understood. Especialy in written exams,I had no idea about what we were expected to study or know. But in learner-centered instruction, I was more enthusiastic and self-confident because I knew what I was expected to know and study. I am sure all students in Turkey go through the same problems!

My Super Teacher

I choosed the intelligent over speed and power. My super teacher has a good knowledge of subject matter. Personally, I believe  we live in a era of intelligence have the power and dominance over everything.Also knowledge is what empowers many mechanisms since without knowledge many things wouldn't exist today. Being intelligent gives my super teacher the ability to think before acting so that's another reason why I choose her. That's why she has a perfect rapport with students. She is helpful and kind. This ability may avoid getting into trouble as many of us experience in our daily lives. She uses her past experience in a diffucult situation.

Personal Statement

There are many reasons why I want to become an English teacher.However, I will talk about only 2 of them.First of all, I like communicating with people from various ages such as from preschool children to adult learners and personally I believe that this is what teaching profession generally focuses on. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any need for English teachers as people who has the desire to learn would learn anyway such as reading from books, watching videos etc. What really matters and also captured my attention to become an English teacher is to establish a healty relationship between students, topics that we are going to teach and also ourselves as teachers.Secondly, being in an interactive relationship is a great opportunity to develop in terms of both intellectually and socially. As a prospective teacher, I personally believe that teaching profession is ideal for that notion since   we can learn from students as well as they can learn from us in both ways. 

   Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to work with children but in the coming years we will have enough time to work with them as scheduled for the curriculum by our department. I believe it will be a great opportunity for me and my classmates to pratise what we have learnt so far. So I'm very glad that our teachers provides us with this opportunity in the fourth year.

      Every course offers us something that we will make use of in our teaching profession. For example ,at the end of this course I hope I will manage to use online platforms such as Edmodo more effectively and later in my teaching profession life I will use it effctively with my students. By the time I have  graduated from this university, I hope to have enough competence to teach English to my prospective students in a professional manner as I believe I will be equipped many necessary qualifications I need to have with the help of our instructors and courses.