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Today was the second day of our training and, having a better idea of what PDC is and what roles we are going to take on at the end of this training helped us focus better on the topic of today, which was the listening skills. We discussed every stage and aspect of a listening lesson and came up with many solutions to common problems we as teachers of English working in state high schools face.
We had a role play activity in order to decide what materials could be best utilized for listening lessons, and I believe that using authentic materials that will meet the needs of the students, expose them to natural, daily-used English, prepare them for possible future contexts and enrich their cultural knowledge and vision is crucial for a successful Listening skill based lesson.
In addition to authentic materials such as news segments, songs, plays, daily conversations, youtube videos etc, I think it is also useful to turn to coursebook materials since these are usually prepared to teach a specific point (maybe grammar, maybe content). Adapting those as you go along is quite necessary and useful since coursebook materials sometimes fail to fulfill a certain learning objective.

As for the second question, I believe that the activity that was carried out by Asuman Hoca was quite useful and effective in improving active listening skills. In a similar activity that I can have in my context, I can also have the students listen to each other actively for both information and interaction.
I believe that meaningful Listening activities are necessary to develop the skill level of the students to a desired level.
All of the other tips and tricks, strategies and techniques for solving problems in teaching listening skills that came up during the brainstorming sessions are crucial for us teachers, and I aim to use them continually in my classes. I will be more elaborate on differentiation of tasks and modify my tasks in line with the needs of the students.
All in all, it was a great day of  useful and essential knowledge in listening skills and giving instructions.
Thank you for all of your efforts.

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In today's session, we dealt with issues in speaking lessons. In my specific case and area, the students do not know the importance of learning a foreign language and why it is crucial in today's world, so they have quite a lot of resistance to learning English. They give up quite easily and do not spend much time on their homeworks and lessons. Speaking, since it requires at least a little bit of input, is a necessarily difficult skill for the students. In a speaking lesson, they first need to be exposed to the language, either through modeling or in other ways, and continue to produce language actively as they speak. Since they have issues taking in the input and are unwilling, they have problems when it comes to speaking activities. Another problem is that the level of the students (though mostly very low) differ and it is not always possible to bring together stronger and weaker students.
The students do not strive to use English in their classes since they do not see the urgent need...
In today's session, we were introduced to so many amazing activities that promote and foster speaking for all levels. I believe that the activities such as onion rings, gallery walk, paperslide and find someone who would be perfect for maximizing speaking time.
Web 2.0 tools like voki, animoto, chatterpix are also quite useful for saving time, assigning the students homework, getting shy students to speak and keep students interested and engaged.
I learnt quite a lot today and I am sure that all of this will be very helpful when I go back home...

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In today's session, we dealt with reading.
In our group work activity, we were to plan a reading lesson using one of the reading activities on the book.
We chose the thrid text, carmania, which is on the 11th grade book in theme two which is about hobbies and skills.
We adapted the activity as necessary in order to draw the students attention and fulfill our objective of reading for detail.

For the pre-reading activity, instead of the odd one out acitivty, we chose to show pictures of old cars and modern cars and get the students thinking about cars and how they evolved over time. As they begin to speak about this topic, we show a 2 minute video on the history of cars and at the end we ask questions to elicit answers and revise simple past as we do so. Now that we have the students' attention, we ask them to read the first and last sentence of the paragrahps of the text for gist. They are allowed to read the said sentences only and they figure out what the text is about.
Then, for detailed reading, we ask the students to read the text carefully for details, and answer true false and open ended questions that are in the book while reading.
This made the students read for comprehension.

Lastly for the second question, I believe that the jigsaw reading acitivity would be great for reading to get the students to engage actively in the reading task. Since the students need to come together and bring together pieces of information to complete the reading comprehension task. This is an example activity, and these kinds of engaging activities surely motivate the students to improve their reading skills and overcome any challenges that may come up during tasks.

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I think that in my local context, product writing and snack writing would be absolutely useful for the students since the main goal  is getting production out of the process of writing. In the session, we had a chance to discuss issues in writing and we came up with many solutions for the challenges.
We had a chance to differentiate and adapt a writing task for our students, and it made us think more elaborately on the processes of writing. Also, we were introduced an amazingly interactive writing activity, which was posty posty. I am surely going to be using this activity in my writing classes.

As for the second question, I believe that teachers in PDC sessions would be interested in getting students' attention and making them more enthusiastic about writing classes. We need active participation from the students in a productive activity and for production to occur, the students have to engage deeply with the task. So I believe that the challenges with getting students' attention in writing classes would ne a big question to discuss in a PDC Session.

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On today's session, we dealt with the intensive topic of assessment and PDC session preparations.
As for the question on the issue of assessment, I am inclined to think that self and peer assessment are crucial for progress checking and could be used for local problems with assessment in my context. Students need to know how well they are doing in a specific skill or a language point, and self and peer assessment allow the students to see their achievement or lack thereof through a different lense other than that of the teacher. Various formative assessment tools such as traffic lights, exit cards, smiley faces, thumbs up, onion rings, multiple choice cards and target feedback are tools that I wish to use in my classes in the future, so I am absolutely delighted to have a chance to discover and discuss all of them.
As for the second question, I believe that the best part of being a part of a PDC community is the rare opportunity to get together with our colleagues and share experiences and ideas. This helps us reflect on our teaching practices and improve ourselves professionally. I am glad to know that I am a part of this continuous development community for teachers of English ♥️☺️

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In today's session, grammar and vocabulary teaching and the challenges and the solutions for the problems were discovered.
We reflected on grammar activities in terms of their levels of dependence. For grammar lessons, we have controlled, guided and freer activities and I think that all of them can be utilized in various ways in line with the needs of the students.
In a PDC Session about teaching grammar, I think the most common problem that we will need to deal with will be making teaching and learning grammar more fun and interesting. Usually, the students and the teachers find grammar too prescriptive and rule and structure based, and do not want to focus on grammar, however, grammar is absolutely crucial in learning a language since sentence structures, tenses, time expression and much more can only be acquired through the retention of grammar topics. We have to remember that although it is not the only stakeholder in language learning, we need to teach grammar for the students to be able to use the language with ease.
So, I think that in a PDC session, these issues would be touched upon.