Theses supervised by Prof. Dr. Zübeyde Sinem Genç
11 theses · Bursa Uludağ Üni̇versi̇ty
EFL teachers' perceptions on task-based language teaching in the context of a preparatory school
This study was conducted to investigate the perceptions and practice preferences of teachers who teach English as a foreign language in a university preparatory class, about task-based language education, and to reveal their ideas about the task-based approach and preferences about using this approach in their classrooms or not, along with the reasons. In order to achieve these goals, the teacher questionnaire developed by Jeon and Hahn (2006) was applied to fifty teachers who participated in the study. The results were analyzed using IBM SPSS 22.0. Interviews were conducted with five people selected on a voluntary basis among the participants, and the results were analyzed by thematic analysis method. According to the results obtained from the quantitative and qualitative data, it was revealed that the majority of the teachers participating in the study had positive views about task-based language education and applied it in their classrooms. According to the other information obtained as a result of the analysis, it was understood that the most common factors preventing the implementation of task-based language education in classrooms were the high number of students in the classrooms and the inadequacy of course materials for task-based language education. Among the implications of the study, there are the reasons for not preferring task-based language education can be eliminated as a result of the improvements that can be made in the curriculum and materials proposed by the existing education system and the solution of the infrastructure-related problems of the university. Keywords: English language teaching, task, task-based language teaching, approach
An evaluation of "Content-Based Instruction (CBI)"-oriented course material in teaching English as a foreign language at tertiary level: A case study on the students of software engineering department at a foundation university in Türkiye
Content-based Instruction (CBI) has taken the attention of foreign language educators as it enables learners to learn the target language and to absorb subject matter knowledge at the same time. Although there are various foreign language teaching materials on the market, it is quite challenging to find a suitable material designed and specifically developed for each unique expertise field. The present study aims to demonstrate the evaluations of the students and of the instructor regarding a CBI-oriented English language course material developed by the researcher for the computer and software engineering students at a foundation university in Türkiye. The study also aims to find out the evaluations of the participants regarding the in-class implementation of the material and investigates its effects on the students' English language skills and on their content knowledge. For the purposes of the study determined, both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from 40 software engineering students studying at the same foundation university and from the instructor of the course who was the developer of the CBI-oriented language course material and the researcher of this thesis study. Therefore, the present study employed mixed-method research design. The quantitative data were gathered through the Materials Evaluation Questionnaire (Işık & Altmışdört, 2010), students' scores in the content sections in the midterm and the final exam of the course, and in the English Language Placement tests. The qualitative data, on the other hand, were collected from semi-structured interview sessions and the instructor's reflective journals. The findings demonstrated that students and the instructor were mostly satisfied with the course material and its in-class implementation. The material had positive effects on the students' content knowledge and their English language skills, except for their speaking skills, though.
The effects of flipped instruction through authentic videos on Turkish EFL learners' use of speech acts and willingness to communicate
Teaching speech acts from pragmatics in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has been one of the neglected areas for several concerns such as limited class hours and inauthentic textbook content. Flipped classroom in which the instruction stage is completed before the class through communication technologies allows to allocate more in-class time for practice, especially for speech acts. Also, the inauthenticity of ELT textbooks could be compensated with authentic videos containing the use of speech acts. At this point, it could be remarkably useful to adopt flipped classroom instruction with authentic videos in teaching speech acts. Therefore, this quasi-experimental study that adopted mixed method design investigated the relation between teaching through flipped classroom with authentic videos and the EFL learners' performance on the use of speech acts. The participants who were 50 Turkish EFL students studying at Preparatory Department of English at a state university were divided into two groups as experimental (N=25) and control (N=25). The experimental group had flipped instruction on speech acts with authentic videos for 5 weeks while the control group were instructed in traditional classroom through the textbook as normally. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was administrated to both groups in pre-test and post-test stages, and the experimental group were administrated a Perception Questionnaire and semi-structured interviews (N=5). The findings revealed that the experimental group outperformed those in the control group in terms of using speech acts. The data for Perception Questionnaire and semi-structured interviews also suggested that the experimental group had a positive perception towards flipped classroom and using authentic video-clips. It was also revealed that the participants in experimental group had an increased willingness to communicate after the treatment through flipped classroom and authentic videos.
Grammar teaching in the 21st century: A comparative study between experienced and inexperienced Turkish EFL teachers' beliefs at secondary school level
Today, it is an undeniable fact that each EFL teacher has their own unique ways of teaching the foreign language. In these varying ways of teaching, there are numerous factors directly affecting the language acquisition. One of these factors is grammar teaching. The importance of grammar teaching when teaching English differs for every teacher. EFL teachers' beliefs about the importance of grammar teaching have been investigated multiple times in the past and countless significant findings have been presented by these studies. However, only a few studies took the teaching experience factor into consideration, thus there is not ample amount of research that compares experienced and inexperienced teachers regarding their beliefs about the importance of grammar teaching. This study aims to fill this particular gap in the literature by comparing experienced and inexperienced secondary school Turkish EFL teachers' views on the significance of grammar teaching when teaching English. The data of the study were collected from 155 in-service EFL teachers, currently working at state and private secondary schools, located in a large city in Turkey. In addition, open-ended questions and semi structured interviews were also administered to a certain number of participants. The findings of the study reveal that Turkish secondary school EFL teachers view grammar teaching important, and that this view is not affected by the teaching experience. Moreover, the study also points out that teachers tend to use explicit grammar teaching ways slightly more, and this also does not differ for experienced or inexperienced teachers. Despite a number of limitations, this study proves its significance in terms of allowing experienced and inexperienced EFL teachers to be aware of their beliefs about grammar teaching when teaching English. Keywords: Grammar teaching, teacher beliefs, teaching English as a foreign language, EFL
The impact of machine translation on creativity in writing tasks in EFL classes
Due to the fact that there is a limited number of research on machine translation as a learning tool, it is still controversial whether it is effective or not. The aspect of those studies is also narrow. Most research approaches machine translation in terms of its impact on grammar and lexis or the perceptions of the users and the strategies they generated. However, a very important point is neglected: creativity. The concern of how to flourish creativity in EFL classes has long been investigated in the field of education. The current study combines the literature of these two different subjects – machine translation and creativity- and scrutinizes the impact of machine translation, Google Translate in this research, on creativity of beginner learners in writing tasks in EFL classes. It was conducted in a state Anatolian high school in Bursa, Turkey between September 2, 2019 and February 29, 2020 in the first semester of 2019-2020 educational year. It had a one-group quasi-experimental design with 35 beginner EFL (English as a foreign language) voluntary learners, whose parents had given a consent form. The study lasted for ten weeks including a training session, pre-and post-tests. Quantitative data were collected through a pre and post-test design and were analysed in terms of both creativity, grammatical and lexical errors with paired samples t-test and Wilcoxon test. The inter-rater coefficient alphas in the CAT analysis are found to be .86 for the pre-test and .85 for the post-test. In addition, the differences between the fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration scores between the pre and post-test are statistically significant while no differences are detected between the grammatical and lexical error scores. Qualitative data were gathered through a semi-structured interview and the responses show that the students have a positive perception of implementing Google Translate in their writing classes.
A comparative analysis of teachers' beliefs and practices on the assessment of 4th grade-efl students in Turkey, Italy and Finland
With the recent changes in Turkish educational system, English language teaching program has been redesigned taking the learners' needs into consideration. The new curriculum focuses on communicative skills more and includes some methods such as student portfolio, self-assessment and peer-assessment for evaluation. However, in the studies from Turkey and different parts of the world, the results indicate that in the assessment of young learners' foreign language competence, the content of tests is still based on grammar and vocabulary items and most of the assessments ignore listening and speaking skills. The aim of this study is to find out what foreign language teachers' beliefs and practices are with regard to the assessment of primary school EFL students and discover whether there are matches or mismatches between the expected quality of assessment and the reality in Turkey, Finland and Italy. A total of 89 English teachers in Turkey, 40 English teachers in Italy and 41 English teachers in Finland constituted the sample of the study. For data collection, a questionnaire consisting of two main parts and a semi-structured interview with ten open-ended questions were used. The qualitative data obtained through interviews were subjected to content analysis whereas the quantitative data collected through the questionnaire were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and one-way ANOVA. The results of the study indicated that the use of assessment practices of teachers varied across countries according to the curriculum and the book they followed, their beliefs, classroom size, students' characteristics and the materials. Despite its variety from classroom to classroom in different countries, the difficulties teachers face in assessing young learners were mainly stemmed from learning environment, instructional technology and material, students, parent perception, class hours and assessment tools. Also, according to the analysis of the interviews, teachers tended to use ready-to-use exams taken from the course books as well as additional materials for the exams and most of the teachers suggested that using formative types of assessment were more appropriate for young learners.
The impact of "Teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling" (TPRS) method on the anxiety levels of adolescent turkish efl learners
"Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling" (TPRS) is a living and evolving method of foreign language learning created and developed by Blaine Ray in the late 1980s. The method utilizes highly interactive and personalized stories shaped by interesting, bizarre and even absurd details to provide comprehensible input. One of the claims of the method is that it helps the creation of a more relaxing learning environment by minimizing anxiety and stress. Even if there is a growing amount of research on TPRS, its effects on anxiety experienced by language learners have not been adequately researched so far. The primary purpose of this research is to investigate the efficacy of TPRS method on the anxiety levels of adolescent Turkish EFL learners. With the purpose of identifying the effect of TPRS on foreign language anxiety (FLA), the mixed methods research design was used in this research. The quantitative data were collected through Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) created by E. Horwitz, M. Horwitz and Cope (1986) before and after the implementation of TPRS method into the language classes. TPRS method was used in all language lessons during eight weeks. Whether FLCAS mean values differed after an eight-week treatment process was investigated and analyzed through SPSS 23.00 program. Additionally, the qualitative data were obtained from the semi-structured interviews carried out with 10 volunteers chosen among 71 students. The content analysis and color coding techniques were utilized in the analysis of these qualitative data. When all of the findings were analyzed, it was seen that TPRS was a highly effective method in terms of reducing FLA experienced by 71 adolescent Turkish EFL learners. Its significantly positive effect was found out on all sources of FLA too. Therefore, the method can be alternatively used by foreign language teachers having encountered with students who are unenthusiastic, anxious and stressful in foreign language learning. Keywords: Adolescent learners, foreign language anxiety, TPRS method.
An analysis of the factors that affect the pec A1 EFL learners' English language self efficacy beliefs
The present study aimed to analyze the factors that affect the PEC A1 EFL learners' English Language self efficacy beliefs. Self-efficacy beliefs of the trainees in Public Education Centers of Bursa province was examined in the context of various variables such as gender, working status, marital status, education level, profession, income rate, duration of course, time of lesson, course period, number of trainees and break time. Three tools were used to collect data: Demographic variables form, Self-Efficacy Scale for English and Semi-structured interview. The first tool demography questionnaire contains twelve questions that will be used as independent variables of the study. These are; gender, working status, marital status, education level, profession, income rate, having child, number of trainees of the course, duration of the course, time of lessons, break time and course period. Self-Efficacy Scale for English was used to investigate foreign language skills of the trainees, and the scale was used for the evaluation of Public Education Centers' A1 level language curriculum. The study included 102-course participants from eight public education centers in Bursa province. A semi-structured interview was conducted to get more reliable data and 10 volunteer trainees were interviewed to gather qualitative data. Quantitative data were analysed by descriptive statistics while qualitative data were analysed via the content analysis process. The findings indicated that self-efficacy of Public Education Centers' trainees did not differ according to their personal traits. Correlation analysis shows that there are strong relationships among number of trainees and break time of the courses and reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. And finally, the results indicate that English language self-efficacy levels of the trainees are moderate, and based on this it can be said that the basic level English course programs at the Public Education Centers provide the participants with the skills at a moderate level. It can be said that this study contributes to the related literature in terms of the results achieved.
Üniversite öğrencilerinin İngilizce diline yönelik tutumlarının İngilizce dersindeki başarılarına etkileri: Bilecik Şeyh Edebali Üniversitesi örneği
The purpose of this study is to find out what attitudes university students hold towards English language in terms of cognitive, affective and behavioral aspects. The study also investigates whether there are any relationships between students' attitudes and their age, academic achievement, their fields of study, the high schools they graduated from, the year of study at the university, types of English courses and their aim for learning English language. In this mixed method research design study, Five-point Likert scale was used to collect quantitative data and semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 students were used to collect qualitative data. The sampling group for the study was 388 students who were enrolled in English courses at Bozüyük School of Applied Sciences and Bozüyük Vocational School of Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University in Turkey. Out of these 388 participants, 253 were females and 135 were males. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS program. The study revealed that participants generally hold positive attitudes towards English. Undergraduate level students had more positive attitudes in general compared to vocational school students' attitudes. Cognitive and affective attitudes of undergraduate level participants were statistically found to be higher than vocational school students' attitudes. Results suggested statistically meaningful differences between genders in terms of their cognitive and behavioral attitudes towards English. There was a statistically meaningful difference between fields of study, year of study, English courses the participants take, their academic achievement in these courses, their aims for learning English and their cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes towards English. However, no meaningful difference was found between high school the participants graduated and their attitudes. The findings of this study may yield to further insights as to the importance of learner attitudes in English language learning. Keywords: Components of attitude, affective, behavioral, cognitive, language learning.
The effects of a reflective training program on the awareness of Turkish pre-service EFL teachers' oral corrective feedback strategies
The provision of oral corrective feedback is one of the most complicated issues in language teaching and among the in-class decisions which cannot be planned beforehand and thus have to be made instantly. Although pre-service teacher education programs introduce oral corrective feedback strategies in some courses, the research shows that novice as well as experienced language teachers are not aware of those strategies due to the lack of reflective practices. Many studies have demonstrated the effects of reflective practices; however, there are only a few studies investigating the effects of reflection about oral corrective feedback strategies. Recently a research study in a Turkish context was carried out with pre-service EFL teachers who were provided with an online training program about oral corrective feedback strategies and reflected on them through peer observation. The current research study also aims to discover the effects of a reflective training program about oral corrective feedback strategies with face-to-face input sessions and peer observations. The data were collected from 123 pre-service EFL teachers through a pre-test, post-test, pre training semi-structured interviews, post training semi-strucured interviews, self- and peer reflection papers and reflective journals. The findings reveal that the majority of the participants' beliefs about oral corrective feedback strategies changed after the reflective training program. Despite a few limitations, the research proves to be significant as it demonstrates reflective practices could help pre-service EFL teachers become more aware of various oral corrective feedback strategies and use appropriate strategies for different situations.
Investigating prospective ELT teachers' computer anxiety and their attitudes towards the implementation of ICT in English classrooms
As previous research indicates, the attitudes of prospective teachers toward technology integration in the classrooms have been the main focus of the studies that attempted to investigate the factors hindering the implementation of ICT in educational settings. However, the review of the current literature shows that the perceived anxiety regarding computers is usually overlooked as very few research has investigated the issue, and even fewer attempted to examine the issue in the field of foreign language teaching in the Turkish context. Therefore, following a mixed methods research design, the present study aimed to contribute to the existing literature by investigating these issues in the Turkish context. Attitudes Toward ICT Scale (Albirini, 2004) was adopted for the quantitative inquiry, while the qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews. A total of 75 senior prospective ELT teachers participated in the study. The analysis of the data revealed positive attitudes towards the implementation of ICT as well as a lower level of anxiety towards computers among Turkish prospective ELT teachers.