Reflection+on+Yüce+College+Conference+by+Volkan+Esen

In the third session of the Yüce College Conference, the presenter was a very nice lady called Meghan Beler. She was so enthusiastic, smiling and welcoming that all of the audiences pay attention to her during her presentation. The session title was ‘Understanding and working with Multiple Intelligence’. She involved nearly all of the skills required for language teaching and learning in a way. Her aim was to give an overview and allow teachers to reflect on their own understanding of multiple intelligences and how different preferences for learning and teaching should be taken into account by teachers. She led us experience and analyze some practical classroom activities that meet the needs of different types of students in a dynamic classroom environment. Firstly, she asked us whether we remembered the types of multiple intelligence and wanted us to find them out in pairs. After that, we all tried to tell them out loud. She wanted all of the audience to be paired again and then she asked one of the pairs look at the screen while the other one turning back. She showed a picture and wanted the ones looking at the screen to describe it to their partners. They were supposed to draw it on a piece of paper according to the descriptions of their partners. This is a fantastic activity I believe because it helps language learners express what they see and what they hear in different ways by using their imaginations. She said that she used this activity in language learning classes and it was always beneficial for students since they improved their language skills. I agree with her in that way because I believe language should be used in realistic things very like describing a situation and a thing and a photo maybe. It will help them in real life, as well. They just practice language in useful ways. I think it was a very strong point in her presentation and I am planning to use it in my language classes, as well. She talked about differentiated learning activities. She recommended lots of activities, for example, listening to music can be very fruitful and calming for students. It brings their nervous level down and makes them open far learning. She also suggested lots of websites like explainthisimage.com for those activities. Later, she introduced us a very good thing for language learning. It was “word cloud”. She showed us a word cloud about a story and asked us to guess what it could be about. We tried to guess with our partner and it made us think artificially which is very demanding and useful for language learning. Then, she told us a story about “water bearer”. It was a terrific story and we learned much from it. Also, at the end, she told that in word cloud the bold and big words are critically important and mostly used words in the story. She taught us how to use it in a learning environment. It was the first time I have ever seen the word cloud in this format. I think both describing and drawing a picture and word cloud activities can be applied to our language learning classes in Turkey. They are available and appropriate to use for our purpose. Before the seminar I thought it wasn’t possible to apply the things shown in the seminar into our schools but I saw language learning is a universal process and most of the activities can be done in every environment. It was luck for me to attend that conference. I gained lots of beneficial information from it in my field, and added it into my language teaching knowledge.

Volkan Esen 1734821

Comments: Comment by Fahriddin Hakimov: I definitely agree with you. I couldnt go to that conference but as u said that it was nice, I really wanted to go there. But after reading your reflection, I learned some new information. Moreover, I think activities done in the conference is beneficial as u said because it will be like a role play for students. in future, they can use it. And also the activity named word cloud seems really good because it is good for learning activities.

__Barış ERGÜN__

Differentiated Learning Conference in YUCE College was beneficial for me, too. Before I went to this conference, I had some hesitations about wasting my time; however, I understood that it was wrong. This conference contributed much even compared with many of my theoretic courses. Maghan Beler talked about multiple intelligences and differentiated learning in her presentation. I agree with her ideas and I believe that we should observe our learners well to apply tasks. Each of our learners has different properties, interests, needs,etc. We should guide our students to take part in their own learning process. They should monitor and evaluate their own learning. Maghan Beler showed us the different intelligences like explaining what one sees and depicting what one hears in one of her activities. This activity shows us the differences between intelligences. As teachers, we should apply different tasks in our classes or we may use one task and lead our learners to produce/develop this task differently. In the classroom environment, learners will share their different ideas, thoughts, etc. and they will also learn from each other. In Turkey, we have enough resources and technology to apply differentiated tasks to our learners. In my opinion, differentiated tasks will get students into their own learning process and they will be responsible for their own learning. By this way, they enjoy the process and they experience improvement in their learning. This can motivate them or motivation thanks to differentiated activities may lead to improvement. I plan to apply such kind of Beler's differentiated activities in my classes to have an effective larning environment. I think, all the ideas of Beler is beneficial for us, future teachers of English language. I don't have any negative comment about Maghan Beler's presentation.

Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi

First of all, I agree with you that she was a very charming lady and she got my attention immediately :) Her session was not boring at all becasue she showed varied techniques in an enjoyable way by involving the audience while introducing the techniques for different intelligences. I liked the session since she didn't choke me with lots of thoretical information. Instead, she provided very valuable practical classroom activities. Okay, we all have some basic information about multiple intelligences and we can say some common activities related to them. However, this limited knowledge about multiple intelligences does not make us expert in that area, so we need such practical activities by such professionals. An EFL teacher should be aware of up to date activities related to his/her area and I believe Beler's activities are not ordinary ones and they seem innovative in the area of multiple intelligences. We say using charts and pictures are useful for visual learners and we can give such common examples for each intelligence, but do we have more creative activities? She answered that question with her activities. For example, I will definitely use "explainthisimage.com" and "word cloud" introduced by her in my classrooms because they involve technology which is favoved by today's learners. They also have an effective role in meeting the demands of different multiple intelligences. I also agree with you that we can apply such activities in our schools because we don't have any obstacles for applying them. Actually we are in a position that we are not too behind latest imporvements in the area of ELT and we have enough equipments in our school to perform the latest innovative techniques in this area. All in all, as you also stated, it was a very useful session for me and I am happy to see other people also benefited from that session.

by Fatih Kızılkaya

The reflection is very good at summarizing the seminar in Yuce college. Almost all of the things that the speaker touched upon were presented in the reflection. This part of the conference was not only interesting and fruitful to Volkan, I guess everyone in the seminar liked this session a lot because it was interactive and many things new to us were presented in a very good way. I agree with the speaker that multiple intelligence is a very real and important fort he teachers to know about because in the reallife we will deal with our students who are very different from each other and they have different multiple intelligence. In order to Access all of our students and teach them the language we should really be aware of their multiple intelligence and be able to address them using different materials, activities and etc. So that they all learn from us. I agree with you that the Picture exerccise is wonderful and very authentic activity. As you say, the language must be taught in realistşc environment addressing to students different language skills to improve them. I also agree with you that activities that were presented by the speaker were all creative and appropriate to our purpose. In turkey all of the activities shown by her can be used and I am sure that they will work. Well, ı have no points to disagree with you, however it would be better if you have given your ideas in more detail, thank you for your reflection, I remembered some of the activities that ı have forgotten in that session.

Saniye DEMİRTAŞ Firstly, I would like to tell that Volkan summarized everything really orderly and deeply. I also really like the style of Megan Bellar; who showed what she is talking about by applying them to her own life. Even her presentation was proving that. As Volkan said, word cloud and picture exercises were fun to engage in; also they were teaching us how to teach. I think, purpose of the multiple intelligences part is to activate our schemata about this topic. She wanted us to recall all this information back and use it. This is how a teacher should make her/his lessons. As another aspect, this session was completing what Annamaria Pinter says in terms of different intelligence types. Then, Mrs. Bellar made us to a couple of activities, which are, most of the time in pairs or in groups. In that way, she gives the message us that pair work and group work works better than invdividual work. Then lastly, word cloud was really original. As Volkan indicated, it was really useful in classroom settings. Just a little point to make, although I agree with what Volkan says about how behind we are from the current ELT world, I think that today's teacher candidates are much more qualified and aware of the fact that improvement is needed. That's why, I believe that we will make much more important innovations in ELT in the future.


 * By BÜŞRA ELMAS**

I can definitely say that all of the sessions held in Yüce College add a new dimension to us, and Meghan Beler's session was one of them. As you mentioned she involved nearly all of the skills required for language teaching and learning in her teaching demo. She aims to give an overview and allow teachers to reflect on their own understanding of multiple intelligence. I think that using some picture and the drawing activities like in the session will be very enthusiastic for the students in real teaching life because it holds students attention and help them keep on the task while learning by activities. As you mentioned, she recommended lots of activities,such as,listening to music can be very fruitful and calming for students because it brings their nervous level down and addresses to musical intelligence also. other than these, guessing activity using word clause was very applicable and useful technique because it applies inductive teaching and promote students' thinking abilities and creativeness. As a result, we should keep in mind that each of the learners has different properties, interests, and needs. So,we should guide our students to take part in their own learning processbeing aware of the multiple intelligence and using various activities because variety is the key for being able to use multiple intelligence techniques.