Reflection+on+YUCE+COLLEGE+Conference+by+Hatice+EKİZ

The first key- note speaker was Annamaria Printer who mentioned about autonomy and responsibility in language teaching. It is a new topic for us and so, firstly she started from zero and explained it step by step. Firstly, she talked on every pupil has different level of competence, interests, needs, personalities and learning styles. We already knew this, but she kept on building on this. She mentioned how grouping is important because while students are in groups, they have more awareness about learning. In addition, students develop some strategies for learning to take some control alone with others which lead into autonomy. In other words, groups take care of themselves and group members are more aware what they are learning and also learn how to interact with others. According to Pinter, to make a group is so important in order to enable learning and the teacher should be careful some issues like gender, friendship and independence and inter- dependence should be parallel. Secondly, she talked on autonomy and autonomy cycle. Autonomy in classroom comes to mean of understanding what learning is and understanding about the self. The students know what strong and weak points they have. According to Pinter, those students understand about resources and they know how to ask for help. In addition to these features, students who have autonomy know how to evaluate themselves or resources. After autonomy, she mentioned about autonomy cycle. She believes that autonomy cycle starts with choice and it is followed by commitment evaluation. After these, reflection comes and it is succeeded by better understanding of both the self and the learning process. At the end, desire to improve and do it again comes. According to Pinter, if learners enjoy the activity, then they want to do it again and again. Lastly, she talked on how to enable autonomy and autonomy cycle. She offered to give the different tasks or giving the same tasks to students. She meant that the activity should be related to students’ desires. There should be opportunity to choose the activity for learners. She definitely advised us to start with choice. In addition, she said if we speak a lot and do not let the students speak, then it is mini- presentation, not autonomy. Instead of this, we should give the students opportunity to talk. After this, she stated that even a very simple activity leads each person to do it in a different way because everybody has different characteristics and features. I have heard some terminologies like autonomy, autonomy cycle, and differentiation in learning. However, she explained each of them in a clear way, so there is no question mark in my mind. According to me, these points highlighted by Pinter are appropriate to be used at all language levels and actually, the matter is to use it classroom efficiently. After this session, I realized the importance of giving choice to students. Then, I decide to pay attention to this subject. However, I would like to hear more examples of activities in class. On the other hand, she said to us we can use the same activity if the learners like it, but “do the learners gain new thing after this activity?” I want to ask her this question really. As a conclusion, I like her new point of views and I would like to apply them into my class activities. I think she assisted me to shape my future career.
 * DIFFERENTIATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING BY DR ANNAMARIA PINTER **

thank you Hatice for this good writing.ı agree with you in this sentence 'She mentioned how grouping is important because while students are in groups, they have more awareness about learning' we must know that students are actually know what they do but they must also know that different views different ideas different thoughts are important in life..we can give this idea to the students with differentiation.. Comment by Suna TOPUZ

Firstly thank you Hatice for your detailed reflection... You stated your ideas and general points in an elaborately and clearly. I agree with you in most points, especially on your question you addressed to the presenter. I think also there are some question marks on this issue. I do not know how the fact that the learners practice the same activity frequently helps the students gain the new knowledge. As you stated as well, Mrs. Pinter explained the topic in a clear way and she served a beneficial and necessary knowledge for us as a future teacher. But I do not have the same opinion about giving different tasks to students according to their level and desires. I believe in that this technique will result in jealousy among the students. For example, low achiever students in a class might feel that they are looked down by the teacher through different tasks which they are given. That’s why I am not sure about its effectiveness.


 * by TUĞÇE NUR BOZKUR ****T; **

//As a first point, I want to thank Hatice for her summary of the session which is presented by Annamaria Parker and also for sharing her ideas about this session for us. I wrote my own reflection for the same session and I realized that I forgot to mention about some parts of her speech in my own reflection such as autonomy cycle although I remember the cycle itself clearly. I agree with Hatice at the point that she explained the terminology which is unfamiliar to us before that session clearly and especially the term “differentiation”. And, she was also effective in her presenting style with the various examples she gave us. // //As a weakness of Hatice’s reflection I can only say that she could have include some activity examples introduced in that section. It could be helpful for a person who couldn’t attend this session. Other than, I should say Hatice made a good and clear summary of the session by emphasizing important parts of the speech. Also, Hatice’s question related to repetitive tasks didn’t come to my mind until I read her reflection I think this is a good question I wish she could have asked her question to the speaker maybe she would mention about some new things which we do not know. //