ELT Practices in Turkey | 21st century Skills Training and Project Based Learning

     Hello again my dear readers! I hope you are all fine and you enjoy your time. I was busy with my final exams for the last two weeks so I was not available here but don't worry I'll let you know about the updates of our project. As we were going to be busy with the finals, we agreed on postponing the deadline of writing our research papers with my teammates. I will upload my blog and share the link of my paper when I post it on our website yet, for now, I will share the key points of my research. 

    In Turkey, students start to learn English starting from the age of 8 and they receive a high exposure to the language; however, learning English is still problematic. One of the main reasons is that English is taught as a subject lesson instead of as a tool of communication. Students know the grammatical system of the language yet they cannot use them in practice of speaking. For instance,while they can fill in the blanks by using present perfect tense and write "I have worked at this company since I graduated.", they cannot answer when somebody asks them "Where have you been?". So, it can be concluded that the methods used in teaching process need a change. Teachers should focus more on communicative activities which allow learners to be active speakers of language. Another reason is coursebooks focusing on basically British and American cultures. Students have difficulty in engaging and involving in the language. Studies have shown that coursebooks should give place to a cross-cultural approach where Turkish culture is also integrated into the material as well as the target language culture. The other reason identified is that coursebooks include only Standard English which is accepted as the proper use of English that guarantees intelligibility. Students feel obliged to speak the standard form of the language, which discourages them. In fact, students need to be familiar with the norms of the globalized world since they are going to communicate with mostly non-native speakers of English and have an intercultural conversation with them.

    My teammates and I finished writing our papers and shared them with each other. We reviewed and edited our papers according to each other's feedbacks. For the next week, we will have a meeting and talk about suggestions and activities. We plan to present our solutions by using multimedia tools. It will be a very busy week. I will let you know about the process. So, keep up with me and I'll see you very soon. Bye!

Zey.