Deadline Extended

Proposal submission deadline for the 11th METU International ELT Convention has been extended till 20 February 2012.

You can submit your proposals through this link: http://dbe.metu.edu.tr/convention2012/2012-convention.htm
 
Early registration for participants ends on 11 May 2012.

Efficiency in ELF Communication: From Pragmatic Motives to Lexico-grammatical Innovation

Here is an article by Alessia Cogo and Martin Dewey published in Nordic Journal of English Studies.

To read, please click here.

Beyond form-focused instruction: Reflections on past, present and future research by Nina Spada

In 1997 Language Teaching published an article I had written entitled ‘Form-focused instruction and second language acquisition: A review of classroom and laboratory research’. It was organized around seven research questions and my goal was to review the results of studies that had investigated the questions to determine if we had any firm answers to them. The research questions were:

1. Does second language instruction make a difference?

2. Does type of instruction make a difference?

3. Is form-focused instruction beneficial to second language acquisition (SLA)?

4. Are particular types of form-focused instruction more beneficial than others?

5. Is there an optimal time to provide form-focused instruction?

6. Are particular language features more affected by form-focused instruction than others?

7. Do particular learners benefit more from form-focused instruction?

Read more on http://www.peterbeech.com/LING1014/resources/Spada.pdf

Introducing Language Teacher Cognition

Here is a short article on teacher cognition by one of our plenary speakers, Dr. Borg:

                  http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/research/files/145.pdf

Convention QR Code

Here is the Convention's  QR code. You can distribute the code to your friends and colleagues so that they can easily access our Convention website using their mobile phones.

Current Perspectives on Teaching the Four Skills

This article is by Eli Hinkel, one of our plenary speakers of the Convention next spring.

Current Perspectives .. on TESOL Quarterly

David Crystal on a BBC Show Talking About the Merits of Texting!

David Crystal on BBC: this actually is an episode from 2009 but I've just come across it, and found it quite entertaining, witty and related to our work!

To LESSON PLAN or NOT to LESSON PLAN…that is the question!

Take a look at Tony Gurr's Blog: here is an interesting post.

http://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/to-lesson-plan-or-not-to-lesson-planthat-is-the-question/

Eli Hinkel joins us at the 11th METU International ELT Convention

Eli Hinkel has taught ESL and applied linguistics, as well as trained teachers, for over thirty years and has published numerous books and articles on learning second culture, and second language grammar, writing, and pragmatics in such journals as TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, and Applied Language Learning. She is also the editor of the Routledge ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series of books and textbooks for teachers and graduate students.

Ted Rodgers is giving a plenary talk at the 11th METU Convention

Ted Rodgers has been faculty member at the University of Hawaii since 1968 and Professor of Psycholinguistics since 1976. He has served on
the faculties of Education, English, English as a Second Language,
Information Sciences and Psychology. For fifteen years he directed
the Hawaii English Program, the largest venture in language education
curriculum development as yet undertaken in the U.S. He has authored
some sixty books and articles and is co-author (with Jack Richards) of
the most popular text on language teaching methodology, Approaches and
Methods in Language Teaching, Second Edition (2001) Cambridge
University Press. He also co-authored (with J.D. Brown) Doing Second
Language Research (Oxford University Press, 2002). Rodgers designed the unique group study format for this text. A recent publication is the chapter “Methods, Approaches and Principles” in the Handbook of Applied Linguistics, Vol 6 (2009).

Professor Rodgers has had residential consultancies and/or visiting
professorships in Australia, China, England, Hungary, Japan, Laos,
Malaysia, and Turkey. He was Senior Fulbright Fellow and Director of
the MATEFL Program at Bilkent University 1995 - 1997. Prof. Rodgers
has returned to Turkey ten times in connection with the MATEFL Program
and other assignments in Turkey. He has served as Senior
Professor and Program Designer in a new degree program in International
Communications at Kanda University, Japan (2001 – 2002).

Nina Spada is giving a plenary talk at the 11th METU ELT Convention

Dr. Nina Spada is Professor in the Second Language Education program at OISE University of Toronto where she teaches courses in second language acquisition, research methods and instructed SLA. Dr. Spada’s research focuses on how second languages are learned in classroom settings. She is particularly interested in the effects of form-focused instruction on L2 learning. Publications based on her research regularly appear in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning and The Modern Language Review. She is co-author of the award-winning textbook How Languages are Learned published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Spada is Past President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics.

The Mentoring System: Vol. XI - Merve Çavuş

Merve Çavuş was another mentee from the previous year and she has described her experience regarding the mentoring system as "quite enjoyable, extremely rewarding and a little challenging." She says: "What we have learned and practiced during the training made me feel more confident about my teaching methods and strategies. I make use of the tips we have been taught in class and I find them very useful."

For Çavuş, three advantages of this system are as follows:


-it makes you feel confident
-it guides you through the whole process of teaching at METU
-it helps you be creative


As for the disadvantages, she states only two items, which are:


-it might make you co-dependent.
-it can be time-consuming from time to time.

In general, she finds the system fruitful and rewarding, and she believes that she has benefited from it a lot.
In thanking Çavuş for her comments, we'd like to ask you to keep following us. More to come soon...

The Mentoring System: Vol. X - Zeynep Nur Toker

Our enthusiastic colleague Zeynep Nur Toker was also one of the previous year's mentees. She plans to present at the 11th METU International ELT Convention, and she also works as a volunteer at our Book Fund, which helps supply books for DBE students when necessary. She commented on her experience regarding the mentoring system as follows:

It was my first professional year as an instructor; therefore, mentoring system was fruitful for me in and out of the classroom. First of all, I could prepare and send my lesson plans to her before executing them in my lessons. My mentor’s and my trainer’s feedback provided me with new perspectives over my preparations. Secondly, I did not know how to cope with students’ problems and come up with some solutions for them. However, my mentor helped me find many ways through the journals we prepared weekly during the second term. At the end of each week, we met with my mentor again and checked the outcomes of our solutions of the previous week. Her experience with the students provided us with many examples and solutions. Thirdly, I was not familiar to METU and DBE culture. She helped me about the rules and regulations around DBE and I gained self-confidence in my workplace. To sum up, mentoring system helped me become a real member of this institution. Although it was a challenging experience with all the sessions and observations, mentoring program was an important step for my career as an instructor. I could apply the methods and techniques that I learnt and practiced during my probation and this year I can apply the successful ones in my lessons. 

More to come about the mentoring system soon... Keep following us!

Nicky Hockly is at the 11th METU Elt Convention

Nicky is the Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com), an online training and development organisation which helps teachers learn to use technology effectively in the classroom. Nicky specialises in online teaching and training via virtual learning environments such as Moodle. Author of several methodology books about technology in EFL, her latest book (to be published in 2012) is about digital literacies. You can read more about Nicky at:
www.theconsultants-e.com/about/team/NickyHockly.aspx

The Mentoring System: Vol. IX - Münire Vecdi Özbilen

Here's another interview for our readers - one of our staffroom mentors from the previous year, Münire Vecdi Özbilen, describes her experience as follows:

I was a staffroom mentor for 2 semesters and I witnessed that my experience did not always match with other mentors’ experience. I believe that every mentor’s experience differs based on the mentee(s) they mentor. Each mentee has their own dynamics, some of which are their work experience, personality, and students, and so the mentor has to be able to read into these so as to guide them in the best direction possible.

I believe that the mentoring system is pretty advantageous because the mentee benefits from it in ways that we couldn’t when we were being trained. The mentor is there with the mentee 7/11 trying to guide or help them in areas they may feel insecure, i.e., how to seat students in quizzes and midterms, how to mark quizzes and midterms, how to deal with class management issues on the spot, enlightening them with the department’s unwritten culture and ease their adaptation period, etc. I certainly didn’t have that during my training and thanks to other colleagues in the staffroom, we felt safer and more at ease.

With this being said, when the mentoring program was introduced, it suddenly all made sense to me. Having someone you can trust in the staffroom with you was what my colleagues were doing during my training. Now, it has become formal, structured and planned. I’m sure as time passes, more and more people and maybe even other institutions will see the benefits of this system and would want to adapt it.

More to come soon. Keep following us!