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The greatest benefit of being in a Professional Development Community for teachers of English is improving ourselves professionally, getting a refreshment as language teachers and keeping up with up-to-date teaching techniques and methods. Learning new techniques, sharing experiences and being able to adapt materials according to our students' needs is very useful for all foreign lamguage teachers.

I have had lots of collegues as facilitators here in PDC sessions. So, when I want to hold a PDC meeting in my local area, I can contact with my facilitator friends from other cities. I can share ideas and experiences with my facilitator friends before and after our PDC sessions which will enhance collaboration among us.

In PDC sessions we will prepare sample lesson plans, so we as facilitators, will have the opportunity to see our mistakes. Because we will get feedback both from our facilitator colleagurs and our insructors. Furthermore, as facilitators, we will have similar problems about planning and conducting PDC meetings. Therefore, we can get in touch and share ideas, ask for help and collaborate with eachother.

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Actually, in my lessons I use both explicit and implicit teaching for grammar. Before teaching grammar I usually let my students see the grammar structure in a context, which is generally a reading text or a dialogue. I want my students to infer the meaning by themselves. Then, I go on with explicit teaching. In this training course, I've noticed that we should teach grammar implicitly which includes guided discovery. When I start the new school year, I will go on teaching grammar in a context, but then I will ask my students concept checking questions to infer the meaning of grammar structure. It will be a bit challenging for both me and my students but, I will try to do my best.

I think my colleagues in PDC would want to discuss how to teach grammar in their own classes. Because, as it is easy and less time consuming, most of the teachers in my district prefer teaching explicitly. I really wonder their ideas about this topic.
I think asking concept questions is a really effective way of conveying the meaning of grammar structure. (I have learned this better in this course) Therefore, I will share and recommend my collegues to use concept checking questions while teaching grammar.

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I think, the most effective way of teaching vocabulary is game-based activities. If our students like using technology, we can use various web 2 tools or websites to teach vocabulary. For low tech classes, we can prepare games like jeopardy and tarsia.
I usually use quizlet, jeopardy, tarsia and wordmaster games after every unit to repeat the words. My students really enjoy them and these activities lower the anxiety of the students, even the weaker students participate in the lessons.

We can recommend our students to keep a vocabulary notebook. In this notebook, students can write not only the meanings of the words but also word families (verb/noun/adj.etc), collocation, phrasal verb. Maybe, they can use the target words in a meaningful sentence. In this way, they can learn the words permanently and they can improve their vocabulary knowldge.

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I think snack writing would be the most useful and appropriate  writing way in my local area. Because my students have difficulty in writing tasks. They do not want to write anything even in writing exams, they write just by counting the number of sentences :) They feel insufficient about it. If I give them writing task as an assignment, only a few students who are good at English do their homework. As I've learned snack writing here, it will be applicable in my classes. I will give them short, quick writing tasks. I will try to simplify the writing tasks.  What I like most in this writing session is that students can write in groups. Before coming here, I would give my students individual writing tasks. But from now on I will use snack writing and group work activities. I think they will work better with my students.

In my PDC meetings, I think my colleagues will also be interested in group work writing activities. I will try the technique that we did in the morning. I think they will also have fun. And also, I will share some web 2 tools to integrate their lessons such as zoho writer, wordwall and padlet. I hope they will be interested in using technology in their classes.

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Pre-Reading Activity,
In this reading part, I would start the lesson with a spidergram of movies. I would ask "What type of movies do you know?" in order to brainstorm.
Secondly, I would bring the fragment of these 3 films and let them watch and guess what type of films they are.

While Reading Activity,
I would divide the class into three and give one of these texts to each group with the following questions under each film reviews:
1. What is the name of the film?
2.Who are the stars?
3.What is the film about?
4.Do you prefer watching this film?
The students would skim the text and answer the questions. Then, I would swap the groups so that each group could be familiar with all the film reviews.

Post-Reading Activity,
With the same groups, I would let them finish the sentences in the book:
1. .................. is a James Bond film.
2. ................. is a student at the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
3. ................. is the shortest film.
Then, I would let them write a similar film review that they really like.

In this training course, I really like group work activities for reading tasks. As my students really get bored during reading tasks, I will try grouping my students while teaching reading. In my PDC classes, I will share similar group activities so that my collleagues can implement these activities in their own classes. Besides this, I will share the web 2 tools, websites and apps that I know with my colleagues such as storyjumper, breakingnewsenglish, British Council and readtheory. Because most of the high school students like studying from online platforms.

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The most common problem in my district about speaking is that students do not want to speak English. Also, they don't want their teachers to speak English. As far as I observe, most of my colleagues do not speak English during the lessons. I think this is not a good way of teaching a foreign language. Students should be exposed to the target language and they should try to communicate with the teacher and their peers. Besides this, students do not believe in themselves. They say that they understand me but they can not speak:) They are afraid of making mistakes while speaking. Also, the students who are naturally shy, do not participate in the lesson even if they know what to say.

In this speaking session, I have learnt that teachers should encourage group work for speaking rather than individual speaking. I like this way of teaching speaking and I will try this technique in my classes next year. I hope, a group of students with different levels (weaker, stronger) will work better for speaking tasks. I think in this way students will gain self confidence and be motivated for the lesson. Even shy students can participate in the group activity. Furthermore, flipgrid is a good speaking tool for students. The teacher can hide the videos who do not want to be seen. This is a good way to motivate students. Thank you for the idea!

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My second day started with another ice breaker activity called two truths and a lie. I liked this activity and I am sure I will use it with my students and PDC teachers.

We discussed what authentic material means for listening activities. Liz explained it so clear that I can now spot authentic listening materials and inauthentic materials better. I have noticed that I use inauthentic listening materials more than authentic materials. Therefore, with this task I have gained awareness about my own teaching skills. I prefer using a combination of authentic and inauthentic materials. Students should listen for educational purposes with inauthentic materials and they should listen to authentic listening materials for improving foreign language skills. They should be exposed to both authentic and inauthentic materials.

We discussed the difficulties that we face during listening lessons. We have noticed that we all have common problems. In order to lower our problems we shared various kinds of pre-while-post listening activities. I took some useful notes that I can implement with my own classes.

What I like most in today's session was active learning activities. "Class Memory Game" was a good example of it. I think that I can easily play this game with my students. This game can be adapted for any grammar topic as well as improving listening skills. In my opinion, active listening skills are useful for my students. If I have a good preparation before the lesson, choose the topic according to their interests, give clear instructions and comfort them and if my students listen for a specific purpose I mean, if they know what to do, they will be motivated and they will show what they know.

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First day of my PDC started with an ice breaker activity which I was familiar with before. However, the activity gave me new ideas about asking different numbers (like the last two numbers of the year 1981 :)) and using different shapes.

Actionbound activity was also an activity which I sometimes use with my students. Here, we changed our roles as teachers and competed with our colleagues which really gave us lots of fun and energy.

We discussed what PDC is, which was really useful for all facilitators. We have noticed that we are just supporters and encouragers of our colleagues to share, to collaborate and to cooperate. At the end of the session, Reporter & Facilitator role play activity enhanced our understanding of PDC.