Reflection+on+Yuce+College+Conference+by+Emine+DÜZÖVÜT

In 7th Foreign Language Teachers’ Conference at Yuce Schools, there were four speakers and all of them had talked about the various aspects of differentiation in language teaching. Actually, all of the speakers had dynamic and effective ideas related to differentiation, but my favorite session is the one that is presented by Annamaria Pinter who is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. That was the first session of the conference and its topic is “Differentiated Learning- links with autonomy and learning strategies”. The aim of the session was to inform participants about the concept of differentiation in connection with autonomy and learning strategies. At the very beginning of the session, she explained what differentiation means and the significance of grouping. Grouping is important, because it increases awareness, responsibility, independence and inter-dependence about learning. To maintain permanence, learners need to be trained gradually how to work effectively. I think that can be applied in English classes at different levels in Turkey. She linked differentiation with autonomy which means taking some responsibility for one’s learning and that can be achieved by awareness. Learners should be aware of what learning is, should understand about the self, resources, and evaluating outcomes. These are all interlinked under the autonomy cycle for which the key term is choice. Choice brings out motivation and motivation is a crucial necessity for learners. Then reflection comes into the picture and better understanding of both the self and the learning process are carried out by learners. As a last step which leads to choice again and complete the cycle is the desire to improve and do it again. When we look at the autonomy cycle, it is an unavoidable fact that motivation cannot be thought separated from this cycle, because teaching and learning are social processes. I have heard autonomy cycle for the first time at this session, and I found it very useful for my future teaching life. Task with choice, working at our individual level, focusing on our learning needs, learning from others, and giving learners different tasks or the same tasks are needed to provide differentiation. Actually, that part was a little bit problematic for me, because I could not be so clear about what she means while saying different tasks or the same tasks. She also stated that it will start with choice, work for all levels and working on different aspects of language depend on needs. I am agreeing with her at that point, but I could not understand to what extend it is possible to decide on the task in a limited time with a lot of students by covering so much criteria. The last thing that I want to mention about the session is the enthusiasm of the activities. The activities kept us active during the whole conference including that session, and they were really enjoyable and informative. I will try to use them throughout my teaching experiences. The activities that were performed in this section were two minutes talk and cinquain that is creating a poem by following an order which is stated by the instructor beforehand. Picture stories and video were also useful. Generally, it was a good experience to participate in a conference like that; I believe I have learnt so much from the speakers related to differentiation in learning owing to different perspectives of them.