English Teaching

  Hello everyone, This is the final post about Current Issues course. First of all, I would like to start stating that this course was absolutely useful for me. In the beginning we were lectured about theoretical background of 21th century learning. And then we started to create material accordingly this. One of the strength aspect of the course is that it was a practical course. But we did not have access to computers in the university. This might be the weakness of the course. Making text for the material was easy for me but preparing design on Canva was a little bit difficult. My favourite task was AR/VR Integrated Teaching Materials, because in doing it I found a chance to be creative. On the other hand, AI-integrated Teaching Material was my least favourite task since I was not able to make an interesting material. I am very glad to take this course. Thanks to this course I have learned to create material, not only for English teaching but also about everything. For exampl...

 Hello everyone. Today I will talk about the final project of the Current Issues course. As I mentioned in the title, this time I prepared a study about artificial intelligence. The material I prepared is a writing task consisting of three stages. Accordingly, students are asked to write a paragraph and have it checked by artificial intelligence and receive feedback from it. In this way, it is aimed for students to learn how to use artificial intelligence functionally. In this period when artificial intelligence applications enter every part of our lives, students will definitely use them. This cannot be prevented. However, it is up to us, educators, to teach our students how to use artificial intelligence beneficially. You can access the material here .

  Hello everyone. This time, I prepared AR/VR integrated material for the Current Issues course. Actually, this was a group work. However, since I couldn’t find anyone to work with, I prepared it on my own. I think this is better. Because when you work as a group, you don’t do everything because the work is divided. However, when you work alone, you have the chance to apply and learn everything. In this study, I chose a foreign city and prepared a material about two landmarks, a museum and the famous food of that place. Students are asked to obtain information about the topics and answer questions by going to the links provided with QR codes in this material. I both enjoyed and learned a lot while preparing this material. First of all, it feels very good to produce something on your own. Secondly, learning how to prepare a design and having the opportunity to apply it to other areas is a very important gain. You can access the material here .

Hello everyone. Today I will talk about the Flipped Teaching Video I prepared for the Current Issues in Elt course. First of all, let me briefly explain what the flipped classroom approach is. Flipped classroom is a blended learning model. In this learning model, students learn the subject on their own by studying at home. In class, they do exercises on the subject. Compared to the traditional method, students are more active in this model. While the classical education model is teacher-centered, the flipped classroom is student-centered. One of the most important advantages of this model is that it activates the student. Thanks to this method, students learn to learn in accordance with the 21st Century education approach. However, this model may be difficult to implement if any student has access to technology. This is one of the disadvantages of this model. In this project, I prepared a 3-minute video in accordance with the model in question. Normally this was a two-man mission. ...

  Hello everyone, Today, I would like to tell you about the Corpus-based Teaching Material I prepared for the current issues in Elt course. Actually, this was a group work and we prepared it together with Melis  (click her name to access to her blog). The main purpose of preparing this material is to help students learn a grammar topic or vocabulary on their own using corpus data. Our target audience was secondary school students and we focused on teaching the difference between since and for as a grammatical topic. Thanks to this material, students will be able to see since and for in sample sentences, identify their differences, and finally reinforce the subject by doing relevant exercises. The study material consists of four steps. In the first step, students' background information is questioned and they are given relevant examples. In the second step, students are asked to enter https://www.lextutor.ca/conc/eng/, which is a corpus data collection, search for relevan...

  Hello everybody! Today, I will tell you about the digital story telling work that we did as the last task in the education technologies lesson. Our teacher gave us three options: Public Service Announcement, fictional story and How-To. I, Hasan Şendil and Erhan Anlar chose the PSA and created a video about abandoned animals. We used the canva program to create the video. Canva is a very useful and easy app. I used the same program for the poster preparation task. As for the task: First we created a text, then we prepared the video. Finally, three friends vocalise the video. In this process, we encountered a problem that limited us. The texts were moving fast in the video, so it would be difficult for him to voice over. We overcame this problem when we reduced the streaming speed of the video. I think it would be beneficial to give students a task such as preparing a digital story in the classroom. Because students can improve their writing, listening and pronunciation skill...

 Hello everybody! The end of the semester has come and I am here with a general review article about the educational technologies course in this post. First of all, I must say that I did not know much about educational technologies before taking this course. I had never produced a podcast or a digital video before. I didn't even have a blog! I think this course is very useful as it is a great experience for me. In addition, as a foreign language teacher candidate, what I learned in this course will be very useful for me. Because technology is developing day by day and I will be teaching a generation that grows completely intertwined with this technology. Therefore, it is neither possible nor appropriate for me to teach them anything with traditional methods. Among the tasks we prepared, I liked preparing podcasts the most. Because creating a text and voicing it was both fun and provided the opportunity to improve my pronunciation by listening to my own voice. My least favorite thin...

Our task this week in the educational technologies class was to prepare a digital poster. Our options were to make a fictional movie poster or create a magazine cover. I chose the latter. I used Canva to make the poster. It was a little difficult at first, but when I understood how it worked, I could easily do it. I designed an imaginary fitness magazine cover and used my own photo :) The link of the tool is here: https://www.canva.com/ In the future, I think it would be beneficial to assign such a task to my students. In this way, students can develop both their English and their creativity. Here is my imaginary magazine cover :)

 This time we were asked to prepare a podcast in the educational technologies class. Our teacher offered us four different options. I chose 60 sec idea to improve the world among these options. Accordingly, I gave a sixty-second speech about improving the world and expressed my ideas on this subject. Frankly, before I started working, I thought that I would encounter difficulties such as finding a topic and recording a sound. But when I started working, I realized that this was not the case at all. It wasn't hard to come up with ideas. I chose this topic because I am vegan and believe that being vegan will make the world a better place. It was also in line with the title of the project. The audio recording was supposed to be exactly sixty seconds. That's why I recorded so many times. Listening to my own voice would normally sound weird, but this time it wasn't like that. Honestly it was pretty fun! In the future, I may assign such a task to my students according to thei...

A web-based project assignment was given for the educational technologies course. We worked together with three people for this task: Me, Çağatay Sönmez and Tuna Tamimoğlu. What we had to do was create a padlet page and create a KWL chart there about a specific topic: What We Know, What We Want to Know and What We Learned. As a team, we chose the topic of migration. We each wrote three entries in the What We Know section and supported them with images. Each of us chose different colors for his column so that these columns do not mix with each other. Then we each wrote three questions in the What We Want to Know section. Finally, everyone wrote the What We Learned section by referring to the results they found by researching their own topic. Thus, we have completed our small research project. Above all, working as a team was both fun and educational. Padlet offers a very functional environment for collaborative writing. There is a common page and everyone can add and delete things there...

  We were asked to make a movie analysis by creating a wiki page for a task given to us in the educational technologies course. This was supposed to be a two-person team effort. I did this assignment with Eray Sezer, you can find his blog here . First, we decided which movie we would review. After deciding on the movie, we watched the movie separately. Then we divided the tasks. I wrote part of the review and Eray wrote the other part. Finally, we checked each other's writing, shared our ideas, and completed the task by making final corrections. I find creating a wiki page as a team effort is both fun and beneficial. First of all, since being able to keep up with teamwork is a very important quality, this task was extremely useful in terms of developing this feature. Second, doing a writing task with someone requires being open to criticism, which is a must-have for a prospective teacher. You can check out the review here .  Thanks for reading, take care!!   ...

 Hello everyone! This blog will be about 21st century learning techniques and its connection with foreign language. Here I will try to provide you with useful information on this subject. If you are interested in this subject, I definitely recommend you not to miss this blog;)

Learning in the 21st century differs from traditional learning. The teacher is at the center of traditional learning. The teacher is like an omniscient authority. He transfers what he knows to his students and students are responsible for memorizing this information. However, in the 21st century, the student is at the center of education. Innovative thinking, lifelong learning, and rapid access to information are key concepts in 21st century education. Here the teacher is like a guide. Instead of giving direct information to students, it tries to give them the above qualifications. It teaches a kind of learning. The students who learn to learn will easily acquire the qualifications necessary for them. We now live in a digital age and children start using technology from a very young age. Social media tools such as Youtube and Instagram are to them what radio and television are to the older generation. Through these tools, they are introduced to foreign languages ​​at a very young age. ...