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On the first day of our PDC Training we went through some sessions and tasks that helped us understanding what "PDC" is and how will it work for us.

I want to answer the question: "What was the most relevant task(s) from today's sessions that would be appropriate and useful in your own classrooms? Why?

The most relevant task from today's session is "Task 7" for me which is appropriate and useful for my own classrooms.

When I first applied for this training I didn't know anything about "English Together" project and while we were doing that task in the classroom it cleared everything for me. I thought that this project was like an additional training to our "English Language Teaching" program which we studied in our university education. It definitely develops our teaching skills but the main purpose of it is making us "PDC Facilitator"s so that we can create problem-solving environments for teachers where we work.

That task defines "Trainer" and "Facilitator" term. After that task, I learned that I am a "Trainee" here to be a "PDC Facilitator".

Also FYI dear Christina teacher, "Aysel" is pronounced as "I sell" in English. :)

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Questions to be answered on Day 2:

1- In your classroom, would you prefer using listening materials and activities in your coursebook, authentic listening materials and tasks, the ones from other sources or a combination of the three? Discuss the reasons for your preference.

2- Do you think the ideas about developing more active listening skills in today's sessions would be appropriate and useful in your classrooms? Why, why not?

Answers:

1- I prefer using a combination of the three. I'm using Face2Face coursebooks in my classes even if our Ministry of National Education says we can't. The reason I'm doing this is most of the content of these books are authentic materials. For example, The Founder of KFC, The Father of Mario Bros Games, The Lookalike of Johnny Depp .etc informations are not available in our ministry coursebooks. I use those listening activities from the books in the classroom. When I think that the book gave insufficient listening activity, I choose other authentic listening records to apply in the classroom. I pick authentic listening records because the generation we teach at the moment is very different from ours. If they aren't interested even a little bit to the content then activity fails even before beginning. When I do something about football players like "Messi" or "Ronaldo" even my student who can't say "My name is ..." listens to that lesson. And finally I use listening records and activities from LearnEnglish for my listening exams.

2- As I said in the answer for previous question, I'm using Face2Face coursebooks in my lessons. However, the listening activities in these books are not for a whole lesson. They are made to be done in 10 minutes or half of a lesson. Because of that the ideas about developing more active listening skills in today's sessions is very valuable for my classrooms. Because of the lack of activities in the coursebook, most of my listening parts in my classrooms are "Listen once, listen once more with transcript on and let me translate for you in the end". This way I'm not developing any listening skill for my students.

From now on, I will prepare active pre, while and post listening activites for my classrooms and use one complete lesson for them.

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Question to answer for day 4:

Which idea from today's sessions do you think your colleagues in your context would find most useful to solve common problems in teaching reading?

Answer:

In today's session I think my colleagues in my context would find "Teaching Reading" first in our lessons most useful to solve common problems in teaching reading. Unfortunately this is because our students as "TikTok" generation are not used to reading even in our own language. So they don't know how to read with a purpose in our lessons. Of course they read books as a hobby but we need to teach them skills like "Skimming", "Scanning" etc. first and then we can continue our reading lessons in a much more efficient way.

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Oguzhan, think about adding a photo for Day 5 as an aid memoire :-)

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Oguzhan, think about adding a photo for Day 5 as an aid memoire :-)

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Questions to be answered on Day 3:

1- What do you consider the most common problem in your district related to teaching speaking in language classes?

The most common problem in my district related to teaching speaking is that there are 1100 students in total in my school. 280 students in 10th graders. I'm currently teaching 4 of 10th grade classes and there are 160 students. When I ask them about their English lesson backgrounds, some of them say that they didn't have an English teacher, She or He was another subject's teacher, they had English lessons but no teacher at all. But I have some minority students that I can sit and chat in English for hours.

So it's really hard to prepare different levels of speaking activities is a lot of work and very hard for my district and that is the case in almost all schools there.

2- Do you think the ideas or suggestions you have taken away from today can help you cope with that particular problem? Why, why not?

I'm thinking to use Flip in my classrooms. I think that if I can manage to combine students whose English is good with students whose English is bad and give them homeworks to do together and send through Flip, maybe they can do peer learning together. If I am to level my students in English lessons in the given lesson time, in the real world on which we live, that is impossible. But as I said if they can manage to do peer learning together and put something on their work in our lesson times, we can succeed in something good with my students.

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Question 1 - What ideas from the grammar session do you think would be the most useful and appropriate in language classrooms in your area? Why?

Answer: I believe preparing a paper slide presentation about the grammar concept would be the most useful and appropriate in language classrooms in my area. Because, as I'm working in the capital city of Türkiye, Ankara, most teachers who assigned to schools are not continuing to work in that school. They either change their schools or work for Ministry of National Education. This way, most students who are in High Schools as I'm working at the moment are coming without proper language education. Paper slides activities are, if properly made, helping students from many aspects. Visual, audial and written inputs shaping grammar concept easier than traditional grammar lessons.

Question 2: What do you think the most effective vocabulary teaching suggestion in today's session for language classrooms in your area? Why?

Answer: Practising writing CCQs is the most effective vocabulary teaching suggestion in today's session for language classrooms in my area. Because as I mentioned in the answer for previous question, most of our students lack of middle school English education and with CCQs we can begin from basic vocabulary and build a rich vocabulary collection in our students. But teachers who are planning to use CCQs in their classrooms must plan their lessons very efficiently because classrooms are crowded. I think they can prepare worksheets with CCQ activities as in our PDC book and give their students regularly.That way they can close their students' lack of vocabulary quickly.

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Question:

What do you consider the greatest benefit of being in a Professional Development Community for Teachers of English in your local context?

Answer:

I have mentioned some problems we have in our high schools in my local context in my answers for previous questions. The greatest benefit of being in a PDC in my local context will be being able to solve these problems. Teachers will attend these meetings in which I suppose I will be the facilitator and with the guidance we learned here hopefully we will build an efficient environment for them to share their experiences.

I want to add a saying here:

One man's thrash is another man's treasure.

How I connect this saying with PDCs is that, we as English Teachers in our country all of us have problems. One of us is having a problem with something another teacher thinks trivial and another one of us is having a problem with something one of the teachers thinks as a huge problem. With these meetings, something we don't even think about may be the solution for another teacher. If we look at these things as a whole, if we can make these meetings common and done efficiently, hopefully English won't be a problem which people talk negatively in streets.

And the leaders of this change will be us thanks to you. :)