Reflection+on+YUCE+College+Conference+by+BARIŞ+ERGÜN


 * DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING AND LEARNER AUTONOMY**

The first speaker at the conference was Dr. Annamaria Pinter. She is associated professor of ELT/Applied Linguistics at the centre for applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. Mrs. Pinter gave her speech about differentiated learning and learner autonomy. She stated that learners in classes have different levels of English competence; they have different interests, motivation levels, needs and learning styles. In larger groups, differentiation becomes more important. Thus, she emphasized the importance of breaking down classes/sessions into smaller groups. I agree with this because; in this way, groups can look after themselves and they can take responsibility for whatever they do. She also stated that teacher has massively important role in introducing differentiation strategies to the learners. Teacher guides them and they work together. As learning is a social process, students not only learn alone but also learn from each other. Apart from old-fashioned teaching strategies like “open your books and start reading the page 65”, I believe that we should put students into the learning process as much as possible. Mrs. Pinter also stated the importance of learner autonomy. Students should not be receptive in this process and they should develop self-awareness. They should look themselves in the mirror and realize their weak and strong aspects. They should be aware of why they are learning, what they are learning and why they need to learn. To develop learner autonomy, we should use some strategies. Mrs. Pinter underlined “Autonomy cycle” and it begins with “choice”. We should give them choice rather than saying “open the page 65 and read it”. We may give different tasks to the learners; however, my opinion is that different tasks can cause difficulty in control and they will require much more time. We may give the same task to the learners but we may expect them to produce or develop it differently. In this way, they will share different ideas in the classroom and they will have a chance to learn from each other. If we involve students into the learning process, they will enjoy it. Thanks to autonomy, they will observe their own improvement. This improvement can motivate them or motivation can lead improvement. Thus, Mrs. Pinter says that motivation and improvement go hand in hand. To increase these, we should do the activities regarding the learners’ interests, age level, motivation levels. Mrs. Pinter stated that teachers can apply differentiated learning easily in classes. In Turkey, we have enough resources and technology to apply it to our classes. Mrs. Pinter did some activities with the audience to show this. As there were lots of people, she did not have chance to deal with each of us; however, she applied a nice warm-up activity to show the effects of differentiated learning and autonomy cycle. She gave us 2 minutes to speak with the person sitting next to us. She did not restrict the subject and wanted us to speak whatever we wished. I did not know the person next to me; however, we talk 2 minutes to introduce ourselves to each other. Others might talk about the weather, clothes or what they would eat in the afternoon. So, task was the same for all of us; however, the output changed from person to person. I learned from my pair and she learned from me new things. In classrooms, we can use such kind of an activity and we may record the conversation, for instance. As many of us have mobile phones, we can use recording property of these phones simply to record this 2 minute talk and our students can have a chance to deal with their fluency, accuracy, intonation or vocabulary knowledge of the target language. In her second activity, Mrs. Pinter applied us a “poem writing” activity. She showed examples of the activity first and then expected us to produce simple poems. Her example includes title word, description, 3 action words and synonym; however, she didn’t restrict us. We felt relaxed to write whatever we wished and some friends shared their poems with the audience. This kind of a task also can be applied in the classrooms to increase learner autonomy. In my opinion, this kind of an activity should not be complicated, demotivating and allow choice. Moreover; we should be careful of using humor in these activities. In some cases, we can restrict the subject; however, we should give them “choice” as much as possible. In the final activity, Mrs. Pinter informed us about picture stories and then she showed us a video on the internet. She wanted us to find 5 key words to describe what happened in the video. We watched the video and then we shared our words with the person sitting next to us. Each person found different words and shared them with their pairs. By this way, we can vary input and offer learners more options. In our classrooms, we can show such kind of simple videos and lead them to do such simple but efficient activities. As a conclusion, I agreed most of what Dr. Annamaria Pinter said in the conference. In her speech, she gave importance to “differentiated learning and learner autonomy”. As teachers, it is our job to turn classrooms into enjoyable, motivating, interesting places. It is our job to lead students to monitor and evaluate themselves. We cannot force them to get whatever we say in the classroom; however, we can lead them to take whatever goes around in the learning environment. We can manage this with differentiated tasks and putting learners in the process.

__ Mahmut Karaca __

Firstly, I agree with Barıs that this conference was very helpful for English teachers and every English teacher should attend this kind of conferences. This was my first ELT conference and I was waiting it to be a boring conference but the things that are covered were very beneficial and attractive for me. As Barıs mentioned above, there is not only one kind of student type so the teachers should know about differentiated learning and learner autonomy so that teachers can teach to every students instead of some of them. Also, ı agree with the opinions of Dr. Annamaria Pinter's opinions about the motivation of students. She said “choice is very important because one may not want to do something if teacher tells him what to do”. So, teachers should give importance to the students’ opinion. It affects students psychologically and increases motivation; if the students enjoy the activity, they want to do it again and again. However, I have some concerns in my mind about breaking down classes/sessions into smaller groups. I think it can be problem in crowded classes, teachers may not be able to observe all the students in that classes so it can be problematic.

__Cengiz Dikme (Comments)__
I am holding the same ideas with Baris in that the importance of choice was clearly pointed out in the session conducted by Pinter. In the final instance, choice is the very core of the differentiated learning. Therefore, addressing the grandness of choice, Barishas grasped the underlying idea of differentiated learning. On the other hand, when it comes to applicability of this kind of differentiated methods and strategies, we won’t be concurring on the point. Though Baris thinks that these ideas can easily be implemented because we have enough resource and technology to fulfill these strategies;I personally believe that Turkish public school systems are designed and structured to be centralized, leaving thee least space for learner autonomy.

__ Yakup Güneş __ I agree with the Barış because people are different from each other and teacher should approach differently to each student. Therefore, teachesr should improve their mixed ability teaching. However, our teachinh system is not suitable for foreign language teaching now.