Reading Journal Tasks

Why do I want to become a teacher?

I am coming to the end, but I can be still regarded as an undecided one about my future because I do not really know what I expect from the life. I did not choose foreign language department to be an English teacher at high school. I believed that learning languages and being an expert at a foreign language would be beneficial for my career plans as my primary aim was to become a business woman, but I also knew that I had to improve myself in some other fields at the same time. My first step to pursue my dreams was rewarding as I got a chance to be a student in METU, which would provide a privilege through all my life. I thought that I would be feeling extremely proud hereafter since I would be sensing the soul of METU along my life. However, the rest of my plans did not go well as I expected after my education life in METU had began. My leading expectation was to continue to improve myself as well as maintaining my academic life in METU. My first plan was to enroll in a open plan school program so as to get a chance to develop myself in the field of business in consideration of my dreams. Nevertheless, the workload of my university already seemed to me so heavy that I did not believe that I could succeed in a second school. My next plan was to strive to learn some other foreign languages so that I can be a qualified candidate for the business sector. Therefore, I decided to attend German minor program to improve it, but I only had a chance to learn mostly grammatical aspects of the language rather than using it. I took also Chinese courses during three semesters, but I had already forgotten what I learnt because it was a very difficult language to grasp. My plans on the way of being a business woman were not accomplished and I gave up on this way. Now, I have to veer off in a new direction for the future and I have decided and now I am truly determined to become a teacher as I have noticed that I am really enjoying being with children and trying to teach them in the wake of my experiences. Indeed, I feel myself very happy and cheerful among students. I want to make a difference in their lives by teaching and instructing them. I know that being a teacher requires a huge responsibility with many difficulties but I am really passionate to challenge on this way. I believe that teachers can not only change the world, but also improve it and I want to be also one of those who contributes to our future as a teacher. My biggest and single purpose is now to get an enough point to be appointed through KPSS as I want to be a state school teacher foremost.

TEACHER ROLES

I have read the articles of the week and one of them introduces us three different perspectives of teacher roles that are teachers as reflective practitioners, teachers as passive technicians and teachers as transformative intellectuals.

 Firstly, a reflective teacher likes examining his goals, evaluates the context and makes assumptions all the time. However, if we come to teachers as a technician, they need to pass the content knowledge that is accepted universally on to students. Instead of making a detailed questioning, they tend to accept a common view without altering the content of knowledge. Therefore, passive technicians will be mostly losing their curiosity and excitement about teaching because they are just expected to manage what is prescribed for education, so they do not need to make any change in teaching or improve themselves.

When I compare these approaches to teaching, I can see there is a big difference between these two teacher roles. The first one, namely reflective teacher adopts a more innovative way of teaching. They strive to overcome problems in a class by posing many different ideas. They always question their decisions. In contrast, teachers who adopt a technical approach just stick to an idea and attempt to implement it to the class. However, I believe that it is not sufficient to resolve a problem, as there are many different students in a class who have also variety of characteristics, thus all should be taken into consideration and various solutions should be put forward instead of just adhering to one.

Finally, the article tells us about teachers as transformative intellectuals. Actually, their roles are mostly similar to reflective teachers’. They should be always following the process of self reflection and self renewal as reflective practitioners and be willing to build their own personal theory of teaching. However, transformative intellectuals are also anchored in the society rather than just classroom as in reflective teaching and their primary role is also to maximize sociopolitical awareness in the classroom atmosphere.

 I think, these three perspectives are not opposites but they are complementary, so synthesizing all these mentioned roles in a teacher will create a much better learning environment for learners.

Some Misconceptions about CLT

The article mentions the four main conceptions about communicative language teaching and some important points of CLT which is mainly emphasizing the communication through the target language are explained in the article. However, a number of teachers are confused about CLT and some misconceptions about CLT still remain alive. The first misconception of CLT is not teaching grammar. There have been some claims about not to teach grammar explicitly and grammar teaching is also thought as unnecessary but the omission of explicit grammar teaching in CLT is not valid. There have been some objections to heavy grammar structure in order not to hinder natural communication but it is always pointed out that grammar is needed for effective communication, so enough time should be spared for grammar teaching but students should discover the rules by themselves rather than being taught the rules directly by teachers.  Primarily, learners should be exposed to the language in a context in order that they can comprehend its meaning and function, and then grammar rules can be studied with the guidance of teacher. Students ‘ active roles in their learning process will be definitely result in more efficient and permanent learning, so explicit grammar teaching would not help students to learn at once but their learning will be just facilitated. The second misconception is about teaching speaking only. Students learn the language in case they can need it for personal communication at a later stage, so it can be understood that the main focus of CLT is on speaking and listening skills but it does not mean that communication is just built through speaking. Students are expected to talk more in CLT but they also continue to read and write because learners are supported to communicate through many various contexts. The next misconception is that pair work activities are thought as role plays in CLT. Role playing is a really beneficial strategy to make learners actively participate in the class as a requirement of CLT but it is not the only strategy for pair or group works which give opportunity the students to control over their learning and they can get greater self confidence and competence in communication skills through these types of activities. Apart from role playing, they can also work as a pair work to solve a problem, analyze the new language structures or prepare a questionnaire. The last misconceptions stated in the article is expecting too much from the teacher. Teachers should be always ready to listen to students and interact with them easily, so they should have a higher level proficiency in the language to smoothly contact with the students. However, there are many books that are giving very useful CLT guidelines, which does not require too much work load on the teacher. After I have finished reading this article, I have gained much deeper insight into the CLT and have a chance to review what they have already know about the CLT. Now, I know its characteristics well and I will try my best to apply CLT in my classes in the future.

Integrating Internet into ELT

This article is mainly talking about the reasons to use internet while teaching English and also reasons not use it in ELT. The access to internet gives an opportunity to use the language actively and interaction with the language. Internet can also motivate learners and engage them as well as supporting autonomous learning but the question is how to integrate the internet into our classes. If we have an unlimited access to the internet, it enables us with a great number of activities to practice in class. It can be used as a tool for increasing student engagement and creativity. Even though students are no so proficient in English, there are many web sites promoting their learning. For instance, they can work on picture dictation activities, draw strips with dialogues or create short films together, hereby the advantage of peer feedback come to the forefront and they can learn from one another.  There are also many interactive chat options supporting learners to communicate through English with native speakers or some other learners of English, thus they can develop their oral communication skills. In the article, I have learned about Livemocha that allows for collaboration among different language learners while they are trying to teach each other their mother tongues.  I think it will be very useful in terms of information exchange and will be creating a rich learning environment with various languages. What if we had a limited access to the internet?  We can still benefit from the facilities of internet through retaining the materials for future use in classes.  We can reach plentiful materials in online but we should make a selection according to needs and interests of the learners.  The selected materials should be also suitable for their levels. After choosing an appropriate material, we should save to use it later in the class if there is no or limited access to internet. The last step is to make it ready for practice by simplifying its language or adapting it according to the conditions of learners. Along with the benefits of Internet, there can be also some restrictions because some referenced sites may become outdated in a short time, so we should find and use practical tools for the learners’ advantage. We could also use mobile phones as a medium of instruction. For example, students can play vocabulary games like Word Soup downloading the app for their mobile phones. They can also utilize mobile versions of sites to download some apps. The article informed me about how to exploit from the internet in ELT through providing me with a great number of different website names and how to integrate them into the lesson. I think, internet usage will be beneficial for creating a more enjoyable learning atmosphere through various sources for the learners.

Using Locally Relevant Authentic Materials

The article firstly emphasizes the importance of choosing materials according to students’ interests and realities with the example of an English teacher in Chile. Using authentic materials locally relevant to students will be giving a chance to actively participate in the lesson. In general, the article attempts to reveal the benefits and challenges of using authentic materials associating with Input and Output hypothesis. It can be inferred from the reading text that authentic materials are produced to provide the learners with a real communication environment and the main objective of these materials is to communicate the information rather than to teach. An authentic text should be genuine and natural instead of being just produced for the use of language classrooms. The most entertaining authentic material types are recipes or menus that are intended to communicate meaningful information in the actual world but we should be able to adapt these sources to suit the needs, interests and levels of the students. As well as letting significant exposure to language, authentic materials also increase the motivation of learners and help them to improve their communication skills. Students can improve their general knowledge about many different topics thanks to authentic texts which are connecting the classroom with the real world. However, they can also be challenging for the learners in terms of language difficulty and unfamiliarity with the content. Therefore, we should keep away from unfamiliar cultural topics and choose more relevant materials to students’ traditions or culture. We should not also forget to adapt the materials according to their proficiency level. Authentic materials that are suitable for the class will be absolutely boosting EFL teaching and learning. According to Krashen’s Input hypothesis, language acquisition takes place when learners’ comprehension is supported by the clues of context, so the input should be locally relevant along with being engaging and intriguing to create a meaningful communication environment. The Output hypothesis of Ellis reveals that output is also essential to internalize the knowledge and gain more control over the language. Developing authentic activities which take advantage of input hypothesis also give chance for useful output hypothesis described by Ellis.  The significant roles of input and output for EFL classes can be reinforced by using materials which are matching with the students’ realities. Focusing on cultural topics such as food, holidays, traditions etc that are relevant to the local context can help students develop a critical thinking over situations. Selecting authentic materials such as menu of a restaurant or a recipe, magazine or newspaper articles would make a class more interesting and enjoyable. The internet is a very rich source to reach such materials. We can find variety of materials corresponding to our own teaching context through internet. The most important thing while searching is to remain linked to students’ reality. We should also keep in mind their interest areas and proficiency levels to make a lesson more engaging.

Professional Development

The article begins with an example of a traditional teacher who just speaks and students take notes and an example of reflective teacher who guides the students and asks for their opinions about the class because she always tries to evaluate her teaching experiences in order to create a better learning environment for future classes, so the article mainly talks about the importance of professional development and some methods to improve ourselves as teachers. We should follow some professional development techniques to feel empowered and self-confident in conveying our thoughts. We can exhibit better performance in our professions if we become a reflective teacher that means being open to changes rather than sticking to certain rules. Thus, getting knowledge about new concepts and strategies can be very supporting for our professional development that is very crucial in the changing world of technology because keeping up with the technology is necessary for motivating the students into the lesson. There are many opportunities to develop ourselves and we should decide and choose best strategy for development according to our needs.  Firstly, we can learn about the news reading articles and studies about ELT. Another way of professional development can be through reflective teaching which means questioning and examining our way of teaching all the time, so we can be always aware of our beliefs and objectives about teaching English. Thanks to reflective teaching, we can get rid of the results of monotonous class experiences and develop our own teaching styles in line with the needs of students to achieve effective learning. We can also share our experiences with our colleagues because cooperation which provides an opportunity to get feedback about our teaching can also encourage us to find answers to our questions.  There are some techniques to be a reflective teacher. For instance, we can keep journals of our teaching experiences, thus we can have a chance to see the strengths and weaknesses of our teaching as our journals will be providing us with questions to focus on and deal with for the next time and we can be more conscious of our teaching style and improve our actions in a more positive way.  Sharing these journals with our colleagues is very beneficial because we can get comments of our friends about the parts that need to be improved. We can ask questions and get suggestions for better teaching experience in such a collaborative atmosphere.  Beginner teachers can also get support from more experienced ones thanks to collaborative technique. In addition, we can reflect on an unexpected event that makes us stop to think for a while. Analyzing such events in detail can help us to improve our teaching performance in next similar situations. Peer mentoring and peer coaching can be also useful for both novice and experienced teachers to reflect on their teaching ways. Peer mentoring requires a beginner teacher matched with an experienced one to provide support and share their knowledge. On the other hand, two equally experienced teachers concentrate on a teaching problem and they can make constructive suggestions to each other through peer coaching. We can form a teacher support group to regularly meet and discuss the issues related to teaching.  The main goal in such a support group is to learn together and develop new teaching strategies. The other aspect is to join in a support network that is different from support group because the network contains teachers from various schools in the same region. We can also join some associations to contribute our professional development like ATES or TESOL. The primary objective of such associations is to provide teachers with an alternative development through exchanges. One another professional development activity is to attend workshops which can give us a chance to get more competent and practice in a specific skill. Besides, participating in conferences can also motivate teachers to try new techniques and find an answer to their problems in the class. Later, teachers can also share what they have learned in a workshop or conference and help their colleagues to practice new techniques in their classes.

In conclusion, we can continuously evaluate and review our teaching beliefs and skills through lots of development activities. I have learned many individual or collective professional development techniques through this article. Now, I know how to develop myself and I should be able to choose the most appropriate and strategies that encourage my professional development to create a better learning environment.