Esen Metin-Olmuscelik

My reflections:

I joined the ‘Shaping the Way We Teach’ on-line course with the expectations of expanding my knowledge on various aspects of teaching through exchanging views and experiences with colleagues coming from different settings so that I can provide better assistance both to my students and colleagues. Up to now, besides gaining new insights on teaching via articles and videos, we have exchanged opinions on various class activities, management and assessment techniques, etc. Sharing our actual classroom practices with the group is really beneficial as learning about such experiences provides us with new ideas or strengthen our views on different issues. Exchanging the problems and questions through discussion threads also make us think critically to find out working solutions. Though this is a hectic term for me and this on-line course is quite demanding, I am glad to be involved in such a program as I have been refreshing up my teaching and gaining a lot. I am also planning to use the ideas I get here in my course project so that I can have the chance to apply what I am attaining. I would like to thank the course moderator and the participants for realizing my expectations.

Esen Metin-Olmuscelik
Çankaya University, Ankara

Esen's students

Project fair! Students are presenting their posters at the fair

Esen Metin-Olmuscelik - Student pictures

Students in class getting ready for a ‘panel discussion’ while I am writing the topic on the board.

Esen Metin-Olmuscelik,
Çankaya University, Ankara

Anil Rakicioglu

It's a great experience to exchange ideas on current issues in English Language Teaching in a foreign language setting with colleagues. Not only academic readings but also videos make the discussions meaningful. In addition, ideas grow as we share them with other colleagues. While going through the discussions, I feel people from different regions of Turkey are trying to find a better way of teaching English in our classrooms. I believe that "Shaping the Way We Teach English" e-course leads us to reshape our understanding of language learning and teaching, in addition to reshaping the way we teach English.

Anıl Ş. Rakıcıoğlu Söylemez

Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi

Bolu

Sema Summen

Hello to All ,

Shaping the Way We Teach English e-Course has been fruitful and productive so far . The in-depth discussions and exchange of ideas have not only provided a colloborative learning environment that I can share my experiences and teaching resources with friends who share their wisdom and joy of teaching but also opened up new doors of learning for my professional and personal development . The readings and the video have encouraged to self evaluate teaching techniques and materials I currently employ and broadened my perspectives as they allowed me to learn a lot by dealing with different ways of thinking and ideas.

Sema Sümmen

Abant İzzet Baysal University

Bolu

Huseyin Altindis

Dear Monica,

In Shaping so far, I have learned a lot of theoretical and invaluable practical ideas. I realized the importance of contextualizing language through skits and group works. I have applied many techniques my participant friends recommended. My students really liked my new approaches and they are highly motivated. The best thing I like about the Shaping is the videos. They gave me great ideas about classroom management and using tools, such as internet and other real life tools effectively. The discussion our friends involved were very valuable and stimulating. The rubrics for the assessment group work and enhancing the students’ critical and creative thinking skills are among the benefits I have gained and applied in my classes so far.

Best regards,

Hüseyin Altındiş

Selcuk University

Huseyin Altindis - Students' pictures

The photos are taken during the students’ presentation. It is one of the techniques I adapted from Shaping. In this module the students prepare power point presentation about the topics we have already studied in Reading classes and they present it. For the presentation they spent some hours as a group and find relevant information on the internet, they prepare puzzles, riddles etc and share them with class in their presentation. They really like it and they reach authentic reading texts and paraphrase it.

Best regards,

Hüseyin Altındiş
Selcuk University

Feryal Cubukcu

Dear All,

I would love to express my heartfelt thanks to Monica for everything she has done. The e-course we have been joining has provided us with a lot of discussion threads and platforms to focus upon the same topic every week and exchange ideas and experiences. It feels wonderful to have met a lot of people who are very enthusiastic and eager to share, explore and participate in the weekly modules. I am sure this platform will pave the way for us to take the issues further. I wholeheartedly thank all the people involved in this project.

Warmest regards,

Feryal Cubukcu
DEU, Izmir

Cise Sakalli

Shaping the Way We Teach English has been a very rewarding learning experience. Our group consists of teachers from all over Turkey and is of a very diverse make-up, not only because many different institutions are represented but also various educational backgrounds and types of classes taught. Most of fellow participants either have completed their first or second MAs or are working on their PhD, and have been teaching for a considerable number of years. It is a great learning opportunity to be exchanging information and ideas with such knowledgeable people and benefit from their personal experiences and suggestions. The module readings and videos have been very useful resources to learn from and the discussion threads we engage in on a weekly basis serve as a platform to expand my critical and creative thinking upon. Every week I welcome my class with a new idea and/or improved strategy to implement in my setting. Since I took up the course, I have been able to step back and observe myself as a teacher, thus refreshing what I already knew and adding on to what could be enhanced.

I strongly recommend the course to those who consider participating. It literally helps shape the way English can be taught as a second or foreign language.

Cise Sakalli

METU

NCC

Picture #2: Cise in London

Lutfi Cem Yener

Hello Everybody!

This is Lütfi Cem YENER. I studied English Language and Literature at Ataturk University and now I'm working for an international language school named English First but at a state school named Aydin Dogan Meslek YuksekokuluVocational School of Erzincan University. My school building is in Kelkit, Gumushane. I have been working for this school for 2 years. That I teach in a distant place from major cities in Turkey with fewer facilities is a good chance for me to deal with worst scenarios in teaching.

It's a pleasure to see my colleagues all over Turkey and my Linguistics lecturer Ms. Elyildirim in the same course.
I can only find a chance to write just after the seventh week of this lovely intensive course which sometimes makes me sleepless. As far as this course is concerned, I see this course as another step after my Celta course. It is really nice to have an environment through which we can share our ideas on single topic by reading different essays. My main focus in the course is Managing Large Classes which is a fact of Turkey that we cannot ignore. Of course, other titles are also important for me. I try to read all of your ideas line by line and share with my colleagues. It seems that we have two main groups here: 1- Teachers who educate language proficient students and 2- Teachers who educate non-language proficient students. I think, this is also very useful for us too, because we can get ideas from each other to get rid of some cases in which we can make use of our experiences.

Don't Stop Learning New Things....
Yours,
Cem

P.S. I want to send some of my students' photos in one of my lessons but I'm really sorry for the blurry pictures. Oh my old PDA!