Reflections+on+Yuce+College+Conference+by+Fatih+Kızılkaya

REFLECTION PAPER on ELT CONFERENCE
In the conference, the first speech was given by a nice lady called Annamaria Pinter on differentiated learning- links with autonomy and learning strategies. The aim of the session was to give brief information about the differentiated learning and its linkage to learning strategies and learner autonomy. In the session the speaker mentioned what autonomy is, understanding what the learner understands about himself, understanding how to get to resources and understanding about evaluating outcomes. One of the things that I heard for the first time was about the 2 minute talk which seemed very practical to me and very useful for the students’ development of proficiency in the second language. It was about making the students talk to each other in English about any topic with their peers for 2 minutes to improve their talking skills. It is very logical and could be a warm up before the lecturing. Practise of language is very essential for effective language learning and language use. Not only it is a very applicable and useful exercise for developing the students language skills, but also an enjoyable exercise that the children would like. Another thing that was really interesting was about making students write a simple poem using 2 verbs, 3 adjectives and then a noun and a verb about anything that they would like to write about. It is also a very practical and useful for the development of students’ vocabulary skills. It will make the students use the knowledge of their vocabulary more effective and also will make students learn new vocabulary items and turn their passive vocabulary into an active one. Another useful activity was picture stories and video. In that activity, the teacher shows a video or sometimes some pictures in a little story and asks for 5 key words for explaining what happens in the story. It is an integrated skills exercise and also very important in terms of developing the students’ skills. This exercise can help for development and improvement of many skills of students such as thinking, imagination, talking and elaboration. All of the activities that are proposed by her are really relevant and useful. I am sure that they all work well. Other than talking about the exercises that can help us teach our students better, she has also focused on important points such as giving a chance to students for making their own choice in the activities or other parts of the lesson. She told us that letting students make their own choice is a kind of factor that motivates them. By this way that get more committed to learn and they get involved in the given work. It also increases their awareness. I strongly believe in this idea. When the students make their own choice, they get to become more responsible about their choice and are eager to do what they are supposed to do. Because when they choose they are choosing things that they want to work on. And they are more concentrated and willing to do the exercises. However, for young learners there should be limited and clear options so that it becomes easy for them to choose among the variants and complete the given tasks. I think that the speech of the speaker was very affective and relevant. I have learnt much from her. Unlike the other conferences that I have attended where most of the activities and suggestion that are advised are not applicable for the English language teaching classes because of some reasons, the things that she proposed were really practical and applicable. I guess I will benefit from most of the things that she has mentioned. Working especially with young learners requires such kind of useful activities since their learning style is different from the adult learners. She was successful in supporting her thesis and the activities. She has showed us there is still a lot that can be done in our classes that might make our teaching style more effective.

__ COMMENTS: __

Volkan ESEN: First of all, I definitelly agree with Fatih in terms of effectiveness and usefulness of this presentation by Annamaria Pinter. She was a nice old lady who is very effective and persuasive about what she suggests. The first thing she mentioned was really reasonable since making students talk to each other is a good way to warm them up for the coming class and it is a very good practice talking in a foreign language. The second thing was writing a poem with three adjectives and one verb at the last line was a splendid activity to activate students brain and make them use their all language skills and create something worth trying. I will definitelly use it in my own classes, as well. It is a good thing that we all learn and gain knowledge from that conference. As Fatih says, all the things she suggested are very practical and useful to use in real classroom environments in Turkey.