BTU School of Foreign Languages 2021-2022 Academic Year 4th Quarter Opening Meeting and Professional Development Activities
The 2021-2022 Academic Year 4th Quarter Opening Meeting of our School of Foreign Languages was held on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at 13:00 in Yıldırım Bayezid Campus A Block Red Hall. After our B2 level coordinator Inst. Mustafa Çoban's notes on the 4th quarter education and the question and answer session, our instructors came together for four sessions of professional development activities. These events, the first two sessions of which were held on Tuesday, April 12, 2022, continued as two online sessions on Friday, April 15, 2022.
Session 1: Metacognitive Reading Strategies – Inst. Miranda Karjagdiu Çolak
Preparing a workshop focusing on the "think aloud" strategy, one of the metacognitive reading strategies, Inst. Dr. Miranda Karjagdiu Çolak gave information on how these strategies can be implemented according to the gradual release model. Our instructors who participated in the event had the opportunity to experience the process with sample applications.
Session 2: Motivation in Distance Education – Inst. Dr. Meral Öztürk
In the second and last session of the day, our Distance Education Coordinator Inst. Dr. Meral Öztürk and her lovely assistant Ezgi talked about practical ways to motivate students in an online learning environment. Dr. Öztürk emphasized the importance of three different types of interaction: learner-learner, learner-interface and learner-instructor. With the fun and memorable activity of wearing a baseball cap, it proved how challenging giving instruction can be, even for everyday tasks.
Session 3 - Feedback: Evaluating Our Students, Our Teaching, and Ourselves – Teresa Doğuelli
Teresa Doğuelli, our guest from Macmillan Education, shared her views on feedback in the field of education. The presentation started with an engaging activity where we, the instructors, who teach in the classroom, likened ourselves to tools and increased our awareness of who we really are in the classroom. She emphasized that it is not only teachers who can provide feedback, but also that students can be effective feedback providers who can help teachers improve themselves and their teaching, thereby improving the language learning processes of their students.
Session 4: Using Higher-Order Thinking Skills with Rhetorical Analysis: Inst. Hossein Turner
In the last online session, Inst. Hossein Turner talked about what rhetoric is and how it relates to language teaching. He shared with our B2 level students about the reflections of rhetoric in language learning, the connection between the principles of rhetoric and how these principles can be used.
We would like to thank our dear colleagues who prepared all these events and our guest Teresa Doğuelli.
