IOJET - International Online Journal of Education and Teaching
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EDUCATIONAL ANALYTICS OF AN OPENCOURSEWARE
No full textAnalytics as one of the recent fields in technology-based learning offers many benefits to educators, instructors, and administrators to improve the efficiency and quality of alternative educational materials, and learning experience through tracking and storing students’ log data on web platforms over an extended period of time. This mixed-method study investigates students’ log data retrieved from the opencourseware (OCW) specifically launched for a required academic English speaking skills course offered at Middle East Technical University in Turkey with the aim of enhancing the quality and efficiency of the materials available for the course. By understanding the reasons behind students’ behaviors via the interviews conducted with 50 students on this online courseware, this study also aims to provide useful practical hints to the instructors and guide them to act on future decisions. The analyzed data is based on learner behavior with a specific emphasis on average view duration, likes and dislikes, and comments. This study can serve as a starting point to guide and provide the instructors and administrators about the future of the aforementioned course which is also offered in a rotational hybrid learning format where the effectiveness of online materials gain even more importance
ASSESSING AND ENHANCING PRE-SERVICE PHYSICS TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE (PCK) THROUGH REFLECTIVE CORES CONSTRUCTION
No full textThe purpose of this study was to explore the effect of Content Representations (CoRes) construction, and reflective peer discussions on pre-service physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Participants consisted of 16 third year pre-service physics teachers; 12 females and 4 males. The results show that the majority of participants made positive improvements to their initial PCK. Participants became more knowledgeable about students’ misconceptions, developed improved orientations to teaching, and suggested more responsive instructional strategies and assessment strategies along with more elaborate justifications. Discussion focuses on implications of these results for professional development of pre-service science teachers and research on PCK
HOW ESP PEDAGOGY IN INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL COLLABORATION CONTRIBUTES TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE LEARNING PROCESS: A CASE STUDY
No full textGiven the rapid advances in information communication technology (ICT) and the ever-increasing likelihood that students will be collaborating on cross-cultural teams in their future careers, creating opportunities to engage in collaborative writing projects across borders and then observing the dynamics of international virtual online collaboration have high pedagogical value, though studies are scarce. This research examines the learning process that occurred when engineering and computer science students from France and Germany were connected with business and technical writing students from the US to work on co-authored documents. The researchers were specifically interested in how students addressed the situational constraints of the collaboration and how those constraints influenced students’ choices of communication and collaboration tools. Two separate projects were assigned and each employed reading, writing, “talking,” and critical thinking components. Analysis of post-project survey data and the correlation of students’ ICT choices revealed students had to continually renegotiate their communication and collaboration. Allowing students to make rhetorical choices resulted in cultural learning through hands-on experience with these constraint variables: English language proficiency, cultural differences, project complexity, time difference, and technology. The results from this study will be useful to ESP pedagogy in projecting how to prepare students for international virtual collaboration
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GAINS FOR MENTORS IN A MENTORING PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY OF ERCIYES UNIVERSITY
No full textIn the most general sense, mentoring is defined as the assistance more experienced teachers give to less experienced, generally novice teachers. Teacher mentoring programs have been long believed to assist novice teachers professionally in several ways. However, not much is known about how mentors perceive their experience within mentoring in relation to their own professional development. This research, in that respect, attempts to examine the contributions mentoring processes provide mentors with; specifically elaborating on common ways these teachers believe to have grown professionally. This case study, which covers the second semester of the 2015-2016 academic year, was conducted with 17 mentors working within In-service Support program in the School of Foreign Languages at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey. In order to explore the participants’ professional development gains as a result of their mentoring experience, semi-structured interviews that allow open-ended responses were used in the collection of data. The interviews with the participants, 17 mentors, were audio-recorded and transcribed. The data was analyzed through content analysis. Qualitative data of the study showed that mentoring acted as a way of professional development for mentors and led towards these mentor teachers’ reviewing their existing teaching beliefs and values, reflecting on their own teaching, experiencing a sense of renewal and increased enthusiasm in the profession.Keywords: professional development, mentors, mentoring, mentee
THE EFFECTS OF SINGING IN ENGLISH ON THE SPEECH FLUENCY OF TURKISH TEENAGERS LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
No full textSinging has been suggested to have a positive influence on the speech fluency of people with various neurological disorders, such as stuttering, aphasia, and autism. Again, research demonstrates the benefits of singing as a teaching method, through which many aspects of language can be taught or improved, such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. However, there are not any studies as to the effects of singing on the speech fluency of people with no neurological speech disorders. Thus the study aims at investigating any possible influences of singing on the speech fluency of Turkish EFL teenagers. The study was carried out with 10 high-school students (control n=6, experimental n=4) studying at a private school in Turkey. The quantitative data was collected via a questionnaire that aimed to identify the demographic features of the participants. To identify the utterance fluency, audio recordings of the participants’ speech production were collected. The speech samples were produced subsequent to watching short film clips after the participants in the study group were given two songs each week for 5 weeks. The results of the study demonstrate that none of the three measures of fluency showed any significant differences between or within the groups, suggesting that singing does not necessarily have positive influences on speech fluency.
REVITILIZING THE ONTARIO PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR YOUNG ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
No full textHerein we argue that teachers who work to foster their ability to teach English language learners effectively need to learn about their students. Although Ontario (Canada) educators have demonstrated that English language learners’ cultural knowledge and language abilities can be mobilized within the classroom as important tools and resources for learning the systematic development of language policy at the school level is crucial for extending innovative practices and attitudes into schools across the province. Such policy should reflect the demographic trends and recent research literature that recommends teachers must be informed and able to assess and evaluate English proficiency since this can disguise and hinder students from communicating the information they know. Teachers, therefore, must be diligent and perceptive to accurately measure and record information that the student does know. Given this stance we present a review of the perspectives and attitudes of Ontario Elementary school teachers towards skills, abilities, and training for teaching young English language learners. We introduce current themes and facts prevalent in the OMOE literature pertaining to effective ELL education and professional development for teachers to implement and foster English acquisition and student success
THE ROLE OF SUBTITLE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
No full textToday it is accepted that learning a language by seeing, hearing and by getting to know the culture is a more appropriate approach. In this sense, films in foreign language teaching are important audio-visual tools in terms of reflecting the fineness of the language, culture and customs and traditions, clothes and lifestyle of a community. In language teaching, it is very important to know what words and expressions are used in which context and environment and to pronounce them correctly. Many language learners benefit from this audiovisual tool because of the contributions of films to foreign language learning. Especially in the developing of listening comprehension skills, learners prefer to watch films on foreign language. There are three options: watching the film in its original language without subtitles, watching the film in its original language with subtitles in source language and watching the film in its original language through subtitle translation in target language.In this study, it has been searched which method and the reason English language teaching department students prefer to improve their English language skills. Therefore, the factors that should be considered in the selection of films to be used in foreign language learning, the subtitle as a method of film translation, the place of subtitles in language learning, the positive and negative aspects of film translation with subtitle method have been dealt with and some suggestions have been made. As a research tool, appropriate sampling questionnaire has been distributed to the students and collected data has been analyzed by SPSS program. As a result of the research, students believe that watching films has improved their listening comprehension skills and has a positive contribution to the development of their speaking skills. Thus, they prefer English subtitles more
THE ESSENCE OF SEMIOTICS AS A MEDIATOR OF COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION
No full textStudies in modern linguistic theory to determine the scope and vision of human communication have shifted their attention to semiotics, in which actions speak louder than words as some say. The semiotic capacity of an individual reflects the effective and efficient usage of pragmatic competence in which the language user has the awareness of sociocultural and anthropological conventions processed and produced in the course of communication. Such a capacity also enables a systematic usage of cognitive skills, thereby developing the value of the communicative context and the perception of the individuals in various discourses. This paper attempts to identify, decode, and proceed utterances in a systematic mixture of psychological, physiological, sociological and anthropological procedures, in which non-verbal expressions appear as signs and symbols to communicate information. It is also argued that not only do individuals attain semiotic information naturally, they also do so with proper semiotic training and research. In this respect, studies in biosemiotics explore the micro and the macro cosmos of human nature which are in a continuous cycle of interaction to process language. It is further established that the curiosity to discover the value systems in human communication through semiotic decoding means more than the mere study of language and its linguistic properties.Keywords: Pragmatics, Competence, Semiotics, Cognitive Theory, Communication, Cognition, Biosemiotic
SPEAKING ANXIETY OF FOREIGN LEARNERS OF TURKISH IN TARGET CONTEXT
No full textWhile speaking anxiety has received much attention in foreign language education, speaking anxiety experienced in second language learning context still needs investigation. In addition, while there are many studies on speaking anxiety in English, speaking anxiety in Turkish learned in second language learning context remains under-examined. This qualitative study was intended to investigate the sources of speaking anxiety for foreign learners of Turkish as a second language and their coping strategies with these challenges. The data collected through semi-structures observations and open-ended questions from ten foreign learners of Turkish were analyzed through content analysis. The results revealed that the participants, as they had language learning experiences in foreign language learning context in their home countries and second language learning context in Turkey, favored the latter learning environment for their speaking development because of the available chances for exposure to and practice in the target language. However, the participants also referred to some challenges increasing their speaking anxiety such as the fear of making mistakes and being negatively evaluated, immediate questions, self-comparison with others and self-evaluation. In addition, they counted such anxiety-creating, context-specific factors as the fear of communicating with native speakers, having native-speaker teachers, accent of the local people, cultural differences between themselves, their classmates and the native speakers. They also reported the strategies like considering mistakes as natural and beneficial, regarding the existence of native speakers and friends from other countries contributory for language development and cultural enrichment, having self-preparation and doing individual listening or watching activities. In the light of these results, some practical suggestions were provided
AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEIVED TEACHER SUPPORT AND MOTIVATIONAL/EMOTIONAL RESPONSES
No full textTeacher support has an important role in effective language learning, because it helps students have successful motivational and emotional responses. It leads to decreases in anxiety and increases in intrinsic motivation, help-seeking behavior, and effort, factors of productive language learning. Based on this fact, the current study aims to analyze the relationships between EFL students’ perceptions of emotional/instrumental support and their motivational/emotional responses. The participants were 200 EFL learners at a state university in Turkey. The data were collected through a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Correlation coefficients were obtained to detect the relationships of emotional/instrumental support with anxiety, intrinsic motivation, help-seeking behavior, and effort. Finally, independent-samples t-tests were administered to find potential differences between genders concerning emotional/instrumental support, anxiety, intrinsic motivation, help-seeking behavior, and effort. The findings showed that emotional and instrumental support are two related types of teacher support. Besides, significant positive correlations of emotional/instrumental support with intrinsic motivation, help-seeking behavior, and effort were detected, along with negative correlations of emotional/instrumental support with anxiety. Furthermore, the results showed no significant difference between genders concerning emotional support, anxiety, intrinsic motivation, and effort, but significant differences concerning instrumental support and help-seeking behavior were obtained based on gender. Moreover, the findings of the interviews supported those of the quantitative analyses