İngiliz Dili Eğitimi
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Browsing İngiliz Dili Eğitimi by Author "Akcan, Sumru."
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Item An exploratory study on isolated versus integrated form-focused instruction at the primary level in an EFL context(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2009., 2009.) Elgün, Zennure.; Bayyurt, Yasemin.; Akcan, Sumru.The present study explores the role of integrated versus isolated FFI on the L2 vocabulary and grammar development and writing development of language learners at the primary level in Turkey. It also investigates the students’ attitudes towards integrated and isolated FFI at primary level. Content based language instruction (CBI) and form-focused instruction (FFI) have been investigated extensively in contexts such as English as a second language. However, there is not much research carried out about integrating or isolating form-focused and meaning-focused practice in an EFL context. The study was a quasi-experimental research design in which 120 students participated from two private primary schools in Turkey. One of these schools implemented integrated FFI while the other one implemented isolated FFI in language lessons. Two KET exams (as pre- and post-tests) and two essays were used to measure the L2 vocabulary and grammar development of the participants. Their essays were also used to measure their L2 writing development. In addition, the students’ attitudes towards the two instructional methods were investigated. The results showed that the group instructed through integrated FFI performed better than the other group in all measurements. In addition, it was found that the students expressed a preference for integrated FFI in general.Item Development and evaluation of an online mentor training program in pre-service teacher education(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Gülbak, Gizem Mutlu.; Akcan, Sumru.The present study aims to design, implement and evaluate an online mentor training program in a pre-service language teacher education program. To this end, it consists of three phases. In the first phase, the expectations of university supervisors, mentors and student teachers from mentoring were investigated through questionnaires and interviews, which informed the content and design of the online mentor training program. In the second phase, the training program was implemented for a total of eight mentor teachers in the experimental group, whereas seven other mentors in the control group were engaged in usual practicum practices. The impact of program was investigated through the comparison of pre- and post-training interviews and surveys with two groups of mentors and their student teachers. In the third phase, the experimental group of mentors was asked to evaluate the designed training program for further improvement. The analysis and comparison of the responses given by the mentors and their student teachers showed that the online mentor training program made positive changes in mentors’ understanding of their roles and especially in their observation and feedback practices. In addition, the mentors who participated in the training program were contented with the presented content and tasks and made suggestions related to the timing of implementation as well as the delivery mode of the training.Item EFL teachers' beliefs and practices on reading strategies and strategy instruction in university level reading classes(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2010., 2010.) Varol, Burcu.; Akcan, Sumru.The present study aimed to explore EFL teachers’ beliefs on reading strategies and the instruction of them and to investigate their actual classroom practices on pre, while and post-reading types. In order to identify teachers’ beliefs regarding reading strategies, a questionnaire was administered to forty two reading teachers teaching at the DBE (Department of Basic English), YTU (Yıldız Technical University) at the beginning of the second term of the 2008-2009 academic year. The questionnaire consisted of three different parts with the first of them questioning teachers’ individual background. There were five points Likert-type items in the second and third parts adapted from Chou (2008), Grabe and Stoller (2002), Sallı (2002) with the necessary adjustments made after piloting the questionnaire. Following the collection of the questionnaire, three teachers were chosen for the observations by looking at the distribution of answers they reported in the questionnaire. The lessons of these three reading teachers were observed weekly throughout the spring term of the 2008- 2009 academic year. With the end of the observations, semi-structured interviews were conducted with these three observed teachers and two other teachers taking the questionnaire in order to capture a deeper understanding of teachers’ beliefs and the rationale behind their practices. SPSS 16 was used to complete the quantitative analysis; accordingly frequencies and percentages were run for the questionnaire. Furthermore, to decide which type of strategies (i.e. pre, while or post) was favored and practiced by teachers most, one way within subjects ANOVA was computed. NVivo 8 software was employed for the qualitative analysis of the observations and interviews. The recurring themes provided more detailed insights into teachers’ beliefs and classroom applications of reading strategies. It was recorded that on the whole reading teachers of the DBE, YTU valued prereading strategies more than while or post-reading types. In response to the question how teachers’ beliefs were reflected in their classroom practices, pre and while reading strategies were discovered to be equally employed types whereas postreading strategies did not get much attention. Specifically, teachers reported both valuing and practicing guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context strategy the most. In addition to these, the participants of this study were noted to conform to the steps of strategy training lessons as they are suggested by the literature. Accordingly, they performed explicit strategy instruction, modeling the strategy, guided and free practice stages in the observed sessions. Moreover, the reading department of the DBE, YTU was acknowledged to put much emphasis on extensive reading through a variety of different activities. The participant teachers also expressed their appreciation of these extensive reading activities since they help extend the internalization of reading strategies and in turn lead to successful reading skills. Finally, the findings of this study were discussed in comparison to similar studies in the literature and pedagogical implications for EFL teachers were drawn.Item EFL teachers’ beliefs and their practices in grammar teaching and corrective feedback: A case study(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Başar, Serhat.; Akcan, Sumru.This Language Teacher Cognition (LTC) study primarily explores language teachers’ beliefs and practices about two common Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) constructs: Grammar Teaching (GT) and Corrective Feedback (CF). This study also aims to investigate to what extent teacher beliefs and practices compromise with each other and cognitive and contextual factors behind their cognition. The data were collected through multiple sources including interviews, observations, and stimulated recall with the teachers from the preparatory school of a state university. The findings after a within-case and cross-case analysis revealed that coursebook-based beliefs, experience-based beliefs, lack of theoretical knowledge and inclination for communicative activities influence what teachers believe about GT. There are both congruent and incongruent relationships between beliefs and practices varying from one teacher to another due to the effect of experiential knowledge, unconscious decisions, and some contextual factors. The teachers commonly lack theoretical knowledge about CF, they use recast most, and they tend to avoid CF during communicative activities; however, they differ from each other in terms of their CF choices for the target structure, grammar exercises, students and context. CF practices are aligned with their beliefs except for a few divergences stemming from unconscious and instant decisions. The findings can contribute to the integration of LTC into ISLA studies to reach more comprehensive results and to LTC framework by exploring the effects of many variables on teachers’ decision making processes.Item Exploring learner autonomy through The European Language Portfolio (ELP) in Turkish context(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2010., 2010.) Yılmaz, Sinem.; Akcan, Sumru.The present study aimed to explore learner autonomy through the implementation of the European Language Portfolio (ELP) in the fourth and fifth grades of a private school in Turkey. It also sought to investigate the implementation of the ELP in that research context by referring to the general structure of the ELP implementation together with the particular practices related to the ELP. The data for the study were collected through on-site observations in one fourth grade and one fifth grade class throughout twelve weeks, interviews with the English teachers of these classes, focus group interviews with students, audio recordings of two self-assessment sessions and artifacts collected in the research site. After writing up the observation reports and transcribing the interviews together with the audio-recordings of the self-assessment sessions, a qualitative research analysis software -N Vivo 8- was used to analyse the data. The findings of the study showed that the ELP contributed to learner autonomy in four aspects; namely in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating learning. It was also found that the ELP was implemented through five common practices; namely awareness raising, goal tracking, choosing content and creating materials, reflection and self-assessment practices. Throughout these practices, learners become aware of the goals in language learning with the help of the ELP descriptors, track their goals both in production and reception based tasks, choose the content of the oral or written materials they want to produce and create them using their own preferences, reflect on their language learning process and assess themselves with the help of descriptors in the form of ELP checklists. It has been found out that these practices lead learners towards learner autonomy by helping learners plan, implement, monitor and evaluate their learning. It has been concluded that although the implementation of the ELP can be ameliorated to allow more room for choices and decision making on the part of the learners, in that particular context implementing the ELP helped learners become more aware of their own language learning process and take active roles towards getting more involved in their own learning. The results of the study were discussed by referring to the relevant literature, and pedagogical implications were drawn.Item The effect of EFL teachers’ language awareness on students’ grammar knowledge :|an exploratory analysis(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Taheri, Ali Akbar.; Tatar, Sibel.; Akcan, Sumru.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Iranian EFL teachers’ language awareness on Iranian EFL learners’ grammar knowledge. To this end, it drew upon theoretical foundations of teacher language awareness. Three hundred and twenty-two EFL learners and fourteen EFL teachers participated in the study. To fulfill the purpose of the study, all the required instruments were carefully selected, designed, piloted and validated. At the beginning of the study, a placement test was administered to the EFL students to determine their homogeneity regarding their general language proficiency and their grammar knowledge specifically. This test served as a pre-test. Then utilizing a reliable and valid test of language awareness, EFL teachers were categorized as high, middle, and low-language-aware based on their scores. Moreover, two questionnaires to explore learners’ and teachers’ grammar perception were also administered. In the second phase of the study, EFL learners were randomly assigned to experimental groups according to their EFL teachers’ language awareness scores. After the completion of the instructional treatment (sixteen sessions), two other reliable and valid achievement tests were administered as the post-test and delayed post-test. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, and three-way ANOVA were the data analysis techniques performed. The findings of the study indicated that learners’ performance depended on their grammar perception and their EFL teachers’ language awareness levels. Overall, the major outcome of the study was the confirmation of the learner-centered philosophy in foreign language grammar learning.Item The effect of written and oral teacher feedback on pre-intermediate student revisions in a process-oriented EFL writing class(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Telçeker, Hürmüz.; Akcan, Sumru.This study focuses on pre-intermediate student revisions in a process-oriented English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class and investigates the effect of written and oral teacher feedback. Specifically, the research questions are: (I ) Does written and oral teacher feedback have an impact on pre-intermediate student revisions in a process-oriented EFL writing class? If so, to what extent? (2) Does writing multiple drafts in a process-oriented writing class have an impact on the overall writing quality? If so, to what extent? (3) Does teacher feedback in a process-oriented EFL writing class have an impact on students' opitlions about writing? If so, what are students' perceptions of the type and amount of teacher feedback they received between first and final drafts? How much attention did they pay to each type of teacher feedback? The teacher-researcher investigated the possible effects of teacher feedback on student revisions d~iring the drafting process of one single writing topic. 16 students produced three clrafts each: first and second drafts plus a final draft. The teacher's written feedback procedures across draft one ancl draft two involved indirect-coded feedback for form-focused errors and teacher commentary for meaning-focused errors. Her oral feedback was given on across draft two and draft three in one-to-one writing conferences held with individual students. The students produced their second drafts on the basis of written teacher feeclback and their final drafts on the basis of writing conference input. The researcher analysed 48 essays in detail: counting grammatical errors, evaluating content revisions, and categorizing the types of errors. As a result of written feedback, all students significantly improved their grammatical accuracy and in terms of content the students were able to make positive minimal and substantive revisions to some extent. The revisions in surface and content changes accounted for the majority of therevision. As a result of oral feedback, all students improved significantly in grammatical accuracy and they often acted on the conference input by making positive minimal and substantive revisions. Content and stylistic changes made up the highest percentage. Multiple drafting led to improvement in overall writing quality. The students thought that process-oriented approach had a profound impact on their opinions about second language writing and raised their awareness of composition skills.Item The effects of a practicum on pre-service english teachers’ L2 grammar teaching(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Üzüm, Eda.; Akcan, Sumru.This study explores the beliefs and preferences of pre-service English teachers about the place and function of grammar in learning and teaching English in a communicative foreign language (EFL) environment. One of the most frequently discussed aspects of communicative language teaching is when and how grammar rules should be presented to learners. Spada and Lightbown (2008) focus on two types of grammar teaching: isolated (focusing on form separately from meaning) and integrated (focusing on form during meaning-based instruction). This study focuses on pre-service teachers’ perspectives on these two types of grammar teaching. Data was collected through a questionnaire and one on one interviews. The study investigates the effects of the practicum program (where student teachers observe their mentor teachers and have teaching experience in a real classroom) on the student teachers’ preferences of grammar instruction. Findings reveal that pre-service teachers favor integrated focus on form over isolated focus on form especially before the practicum. They express their concern about the effectiveness of an isolated approach to grammar. However, after the practicum, they accept that there may be certain uses of isolated focus on form when used in combination with integrated focus on form in a communicative curriculum. The results indicate that the perceptions of the pre-service teachers as shaped by their own language learning experiences and theoretical courses they have taken undergo changes in the practicum period. Practice in a real language teaching context seems to have helped pre-service teachers appreciate the benefits of complementary use of different approaches to focus on form.