Welcome to the Shaping Blog!

Dear Shaping e-Course Participants,

It is a pleasure to bring our e-course to Blogger! You’ll be able to share your Shaping experience with other colleagues in the ELT field. We can now ‘see’ who we’ve been working with for the past few weeks :-).

I trust you’ll enjoy your blogging experience.

Cheers,

Monica Wiesmann-Hirchert
Course Facilitator
Ankara, Turkey

Picture #2:
As you know, I’ve been traveling and giving presentations in different cities. I wanted to share a picture from a presentation I gave in Nidge on Shaping’s Module 03: Integrating Skills.

Shaping Manual in hand!

SEVİM İNAL

Hi!
I do believe that this program is effective, beneficial and reshaped the way I used to teach. It helps me to question both my teaching and learning. It really changed my vision and broaden my perspectives. Additionaly, we have reached a lot of extensive and reach materials. It is advantageous to have a lot of materials compiled from different resources in a short period. Sometimes I was late to send feedback of readings but it was really useful form. I watched and discussed video segments and readings with my trainees in practicum. They benefited a lot from the activities in modules. We tried to adapt them in our classes of different age levels. Children enjoyed the activities as well. My students found classroom management readings useful and effective and used some of them in their real classes. I would like to thank everyone who prepared the programme.
Best wishes

Pictures - Sevim & Students

Kenan Barut

Hello, my name is Kenan BARUT. I am the Head of Foreign Languages Department at Ankara University Development Foundation Schools. This online course is my first long-term online program, so my expectations were quite high. After six weeks of an intense program, I can easily state that its implications on my educational and intellectual perspectives are remarkably important. This online program not only provides me with the opportunity to analyze sample lessons from different areas but also gives me the chance to benefit from impressive experiences of experts living in various parts of Turkey. It is really fabulous to have the facility to compare my own teaching methods with the ways of other colleagues from different institutions. I hope this cooperation and collaboration will never end!

Kenan's & his students:

AYSE AVCIL

'Shaping the Way We Teach English' course is a great experience since it provides a brief but holistic attitude towards English language teaching as well as its rich content along with up-to-date readings and video segments from different classes. I think the most important part of the course is interaction among course members and discussion of a wide range of topics. You can interact with other colleagues from different settings and backgrounds, which gives you the opportunity to learn from experiences of other people. I got hold of very different views, activities and attitudes towards my profession. We share our strategies and tips that we use in our classes and my course mates present very creative activities and efficient strategies. We discuss module topics during the week but most of the time module topics lead us towards some subtopics spontaneously and another discussion thread is already underway. This course is a remarkable opportunity to exchange ideas, update information and reflect on your teaching.

Ayse Avcil
MEHMET CAKMAK ANATOLIAN HIGH SCHOOL
AFYONKARAHISAR

Dilek Inan

Dear Monica,

I studied English lit for BA,MA and PhD, but I work in the ELT department. I believe that literature and language teaching have a lot in common as well as diversities. ELT is another discipline that I feel a need to improve myself. And this need is the first reason of why I am at 'Shaping'. Now I have a better approach to my classes, I am happier, more motivated and more confident than before.I am very happy to be a part of 'Shaping'. It is great to be with you and the other colleagues. Firstly, I must tell you that I learn a lot through the reading materials, video-watching and discussions. Coming from a literature background, I learn new tips in ELT like Edward Bono's 'Six hats' and practise and share them immediately with my students and colleagues The tips I learn at 'Shaping' really improve the way I teach. Secondly, the content of the Shaping programme is excellent and satisfactory. I have my favourite topics like 'Critical thinking' week. But everyday I learn some new things from the colleagues at 'shaping' and I am a person who loves learning. 'Shaping' has almost become a daily habit for me, everyday I feel a need to sign in 'shaping' and read new comments by colleagues, or check if I have received any replies for my comments.Thirdly, I like the idea of Project Works a lot. I think Project work gives me an opportunity to act as an inspector in order to find out the weak points in my teaching that need improving. It is so much fun and challenging at the same time. Having a partner to review my Project is very helpful. You need to establish close relationships with at least one member of the group. I find the Project work as an eye-opener, as an opportunity to develop good habits towards improving, changing, shaping the way I teach not for only the duration of this course but life-long. I learn from 'shaping' that I may always have some projects about the aspects of my teaching that needs to be changed and improved.Finally I would like to thank to you and to colleagues at 'shaping' for their constructive comments and for sharing experiences. It is wonderful to be able to exchange ideas with colleagues coming from the 4 corners of Turkey. Now they all have a friend in Balikesir. 'Shaping' really shapes the way I teach.

Dilek from Balikesir University

Haldun Bilgi

The world is continually changing with a high speed and we as the teachers cannot be unaware of this change in our profession. Definetely I believe that a good teacher should search for the innovations every time. These kinds of courses have a great role on educators to feel current. One of the important points of these courses is “SHARING”. We as the teachers can develop our skills individually but if do not share our knowledge with our colleagues it's just a waste of time. Shared exerince and knowledge is worthy. In this course we have the opportunity to have at least 30 educators' experiences on the same platform. In that way we can shape our way of teaching according to he new approaches.

Kindest Regards,

Haldun Bilgi
Samsun

Haldun's Students:

Mine Eryoldas

I need a break too...


This is my first online course and I should say that one has to give a great deal of attention to it since there is a flow of information, i.e. reviews, questions and replies posted at any time of the day. I have become addicted to the e-course and like the idea of sharing experiences, tips and suggestions with colleagues around the clock. There are a variety of modules and so far I have had the opportunity to read and comment on new ideas about lesson plans, projects, integrated skills, strategies for pair and group work, feedback methods and eventually have implemented some of these to my class setting and program.

Marmara University
Preparatory School

Istanbul

Mine's Students:

Saye Zibande

A Drop of the E-Shaping Sea!

‘Language Contextualization’ is the first concept which I was faced with in ‘Shaping course. Here, I learnt many things such as the application of ‘Film in the classroom’. I use and will use films in ‘Writing and Post-modern American Novel’ classes. Also, the other point which I can state is ‘Language Distance’ and the ‘Knowledge of the second Language’. The former refers to how much similarities and differences exist between the learner’s L1 and FL. How we as the teachers should get the usage of this fact? The later refers to what kind of knowledge does the learner has and how he/she can use it? In other words, is there any consistency between learner’s ‘Competence’ and ‘Performance’?

‘Building Language Awareness’ was the second week. One of the ideas which was very interesting for me was the definition of the ‘Independent Learner’. He/she knows 1) How to Learn, 2) What to Learn, and 3) how to eradicate Affective Barriers. Another interesting statement is ‘if the students are used to eat in restaurants (high school education systems), how can we expect them to cook their meals, lay table, and do washing (Learner Independent)’? ‘Language and Learning Awareness’ is a concept which we should develop it.

‘Integrating Skills’ was the fascinating topic of the third week. I read great articles then. One of them is written by Oxford (2001). According to her, by integrating skills, students touch this idea that ‘language is not for getting the passing mark for exams; it is for communication’. And this is very motivating for students.
There are many games which help us to ‘Integrate Skills’. One of the Games which I learn this week and applied in one of my classes was ‘Bang-Bang’ introduced in ITESL journal (2006). Picture No. 1displays the class playing the ‘Bang-Bang’ game.

‘Pair & Group Work’ is the fourth topic to shape our teaching. The first thing that I learnt from group work classes is that teacher should inform students of how to organize the chairs because as Andrewes (n.d.) puts forth, teacher is not going to leave every thing for students, and he/she should monitor the groups. Thus, only if is there a good arrangement for tables, you can move around the students without disturbing them. Also, the very important thing is that when they are sitting in a circle form, and talking to each other (not to teacher), so they feel much more free to communicate in their mother language. Thus, when I go around the classroom, listen very carefully to them and don’t let them to talk in L1.
As Andrewes (n.d.) suggests, one of the great advantages of group work is that it helps the teacher to realize the fact that ‘It is not 100% the responsibility of the teacher to make students learn the language’. Thus, as we learnt in ‘Language Awareness’ week, the learner awareness process makes progress.

‘Critical and Creative Thinking’ is the topic we are just learning this week. One of the important things which I learnt is to have a good preparation for Role Play game. This game pushes the students towards a deeper level of thinking. Also, in turn, the participants, observers, and the teacher should give feedback to the game. The feedback should be SMART, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, and Time-bound. These are very important and should always be considered. As a whole, the Role Play games should be ‘Focused, Objective and Instruction Clear, and its Feedback SMART’.

Saye Zibande
KTU, Trabzon

References

Andrewes, S. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/whole_class.shtml.%205/13/2006.
‘Games and Activities for the ESL/EFL Classrooms’. IESL Journal (2006).

http://iteslj.org/c/games.html%205/13/2006.
Oxford, R. (2001). http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/0105oxford.html
‘Role playing games and activities rules and tips’. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.businessballs.com/roleplayinggames.htm%20.%205/15/2006.

Saye's Students:

Picture 1: Through the game of ‘Bang-Bang’, Prep Students review the Vocabulary learnt during the previous week.

Picture 2: Prep students this time review the vocabulary learnt in the last lesson of the previous semester by the game ‘Sentence Race’ introduced in the ‘Integrating Skills’ week. They were informed of this game before, so they came to class reviewing the required vocabulary. The paper in my hand shows ‘I am a paper-recycling teacher’!!

Selma Elyildirim

Hi! My name is Selma Elyıldırım. I have been working as an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Atatürk University. I participated in the e-course ‘Shaping the Way We Teach English’ five weeks ago and I’m glad I did it. I teach various courses about linguistics, English language learning and teaching, research design, etc. at the level of graduate and post graduate in my department. I know certain techniques concerning the effective language teaching and use them in my classes but in this course I refresh my memory about the techniques I know, find out some new techniques and also exchange ideas with the course participants. We have already completed the first five weeks of the course but there are eight more weeks to go and this means we learn more things.

Ilyas Saykili

I have been teaching English for 5 years and Shaping the Way We Teach English has become like a lifeguard for my teaching as I start to forget my education I had during university years. We first read academic readings and set ourselves for the video of the module. Video is the part that I like the most because we find the chance to observe what we learn. Besides videos give me lots of new ideas as they are carefully chosen samples of various lessons. Another thing that I like about the course is that we are expected to combine our teaching experiences with the topic of the module and by doing this I fell the increasing awareness of teaching inside me. Finally, class members are great. The reviews, comments and discussions are very useful. Frankly speaking, in the beginning we didn’t have the sense of a class but now I believe we have formed a great online class.

All the Best,

Ilyas SAYKILI
A.K.U.

Ilyas and his students:

Ilyas at work:

Sarp Erkir

It has been great to have the opportunity to share ideas with colleagues from different parts of Turkiye. So far, we have discussed issues of contextualising language, language awareness, integrating skills, group work and giving feedback. There are five more interesting topics that are waiting to be discussed and I’m looking forward to dealing with those topics. What I enjoy the most is observing how the same article or video gives way to different interpretations and ideas depending on people’s backgrounds and experiences. We not only reflect on the assigned videos and articles, but also respond to our colleagues contributions, which leads to on the spot exchanges of ideas.

Sarp Erkir

School of Foreign Languages

IzmirUniversity of Economics

Faruk Turker

Dear distinguished friends,

I can say that E-COURSE project “Shaping the Way We Teach English” was perfectly thought and planned and organized. Especially we; who are away from Ankara and Istanbul and İzmir where you can find much more opportunities to improve yourself, share ideas with authorities; know the significance of this very distinguished project.I have been benefited much since the class started on Friday, January 26. The fact that the course is online and furnished us, who are away from innovations, with CDs is perfect, I think, because I have to assist my friends and my university, which is developing but not rapidly (unfortunately). I have the opportunity to anlyze articles on the subject and state my impressions as well as sharing my ideas and experiences with my colleagues all over Turkey. I wish Monica my best. I think she did s great job to organize and to otganize and to administer this project. Thousand of thanks to everybody, including Monica. CDs on specific points about Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) are golden opportunity for me and my students. We always watch the segments in the CDs and state our comments at the same time. Thus the courses are more affective. I’m very happy to be in the course. I’d like to state with a saying İNGED (İngilizce Eğitimi Derneği) / ELEA (English Language Education Association) (I’m proud of being a member) TOGETHER WE STAND.

Sincerely,


FARUK TÜRKER
Cumhuriyet University, Faculty of Letters-Science,
English Language and Literature, SİVAS-TURKEY
farukturker@gmail.com

Ayca Izgi

I am Ayça İzgi from Istanbul. I work in Feyziye Schools Foundation, Ayazağa Işık Primary School. This is my first year as a teacher officially. I am a trainee English teacher. Before starting to work in this school, I received my Bachelor’s degree on “English Language and Literature” in Bilkent University. Then I started working in Wall Street Institute as an English teacher. I had my first teaching experience there with adult learners for a year. Seeing that teaching is a challenging job that needs proficiency and capability of teaching, I decided to become a well-qualified teacher and completed my master’s education on “Teaching English” in Bilkent University with scholarship. The master’s education I received made me feel like a teacher who has 5 years of experience. In addition to the courses I had taken, I completed my internship in six different schools (TED Ankara College, Robert College, etc), which were at home and abroad. I observed and taught grades 7, 8, 9, and 10. I student-taught in Iowa-US last year for two months. I observed and taught 9th and 10th grade students. Meeting different students and teachers, knowing diverse schools and administrators made me feel experienced on each day of my long and fruitful internship.

After graduation, I am hired by FMV Işık Schools and moved to Istanbul. Now I am working here as a trainee teacher. Here, I substitute classes from grades 1 to 8, prepare materials, grade papers, translate official documents, and tutor small groups as remedial work for grades 4, 5, 6, and 7. Moreover, I work with a student advisor. I also observe and teach her lessons and learn a lot from her. I do not have a class of my own at the moment for I am a trainee teacher of MEB, but I am teaching a lot to children varying from grades 1 to 8. Below you can see photographs of the students that I taught last year in US. I am still on my way to become a well-qualified teacher. I attend many courses, seminars, and conferences on ESL for self-improvement.

Recently, I have been following the Shaping e-course. I feel that I am improving in this course. Each week, I read a number of articles about an educational theme and comment on it. Reading about something, writing about it and reading the others’ comments and engaging in discussions enlarge my vision and add a lot to me professionally. Furthermore, I consider that the video segments that I watch every week is very useful and functional since I find the chance to observe various classrooms and learn new methods and techniques from there and from my colleagues as well. Each week, I learn innovative techniques and original ideas from my colleagues. I especially learned a lot from the last three weeks, which focused on Integrating Skills, Pair and Group Work, and Critical & Creative Thinking. I found the articles, the videos, and the discussions informative and valuable because I believe that our initial aim should be to make our students active learners in the learning process and full interaction and engagement ought to be provided to raise self-confident life-long learners.



AYÇA İZGİ
FMV AYAZAĞA IŞIK PRIMARY SCHOOL
ENGLISH TEACHER (ISTANBUL)

Ayca Izgi's pictures

Picture of an in-class mind game from Language Arts Grade 10 class

(South Hamilton High School-Iowa-US)

Another picture from Language Arts 10 during another game

Picture of Andrew from Language Arts 10, acting out Hitler while we were studying the novel Night by Elie Wiesel.




A picture of Language Arts students playing a skit they have written about Of Mice and Men.



A picture of Language Arts 9 and me


A picture of Language Arts 10 and me

Bengi Ozar

This is the first time I am taking an online course. It is a very interesting experience for me. I am really enjoying the texts and the videos even though I can’t find enough time to participate in the discussions as much as I should. The course participants are from different backgrounds and I love reading about their comments. I recommend everyone to try an online course – if they have enough time to spend in front of the computer. I would like to take opportunity to thank Monica for being a very supportive course tutor.

Bengi Ozar
ODTU

Photos: Bengi as Winnie the Witch with her 3rd grade students

Erhan Guzel

This e-course has been of great help to me as I had a chance to view the relevant source on ELT and the responses of my colleagues about it. Introducing us to the novel techniques used in this field together with the useful activities integrating the basic 4 skills, joining this course enriched my teaching style and performance to a great extend.

Erhan Güzel

METU NCC

Erhan Guzel's students

Erhan's students doing pair and group work!

Selami Ok

Selami & Family

It's really a great experience to be reading articles on current issues in ELT and commenting on them and then sharing lots of ideas with people in various settings across Turkey. It seems that we are also attempting to extend help to each other with the problems we are facing in classroom. I strongly believe that all this sharing will help all of us to reshape our understanding of language teaching and learning process and the way we teach.

Selami Ok

Pamukkale University

Department of ELT

Engin Aytekin

Dear All,

The day I got the mail including the information about the “Shape The Way We Teach English” course I quite knew that it would be the opportunity that I have been longing for so long in order to keep me fresh in my work life and I should definitely not miss it. Like so many teachers participating the program I could benefit from such a great training in terms of expanding my knowledge, developing my teaching skills and catching up with the recent teaching techniques and methods being used in modern classes around the world.

The course was so professionally planned that it indeed worked far more than I expected it to be. Although it is only the fifth week I have made a good progress and had so many changes. Thanks to the program I have had the greatest chance to fulfill my incompetent sides that I sometimes come across in my classes. I can also say it help me enlarge my vision of teaching and learning English.

Today, I can easily monitor that my students are much more confident and effective in the lessons being a lot more creative and critical, taking more responsibility in their own learning process. The classes have become like daily meetings for the students in which they work together in groups and have fun focusing on the meaning further than structures of the language. I certainly believe that there are a lot more to be discovered in the ELT life with the support of “Shape The Way We Teach English” course.

Thank you very much for providing us with such a wonderful program.

Engin Aytekin
Afyonkarahisar
Kocatepe University

Additional pictures: the first picture, ı am in the lesson and teaching, and the second one ı am lecturing my colleagues about what have learnt in the last modules with Ilyas.

The other pictures are consisted of my students who prepared a project about homeless children in the streets. At the end of their presentation of the project as a part of it they collected some money from their friends and teachers to donate Çocuk Esirgeme Kurumu in Afyon.