Büşra Çelen

Esen Metin

INGED (İngilizce Egitimi Dernegi) or ELEA (English Language Education Association) is the association of English language teachers in Turkey. Based in Ankara, INGED basically aims to bring together English language teaching (ELT) professionals from all levels of education ranging from K-12 to tertiary level and to provide them with professional development opportunities since its foundation in 1995. To achieve this goal, the association creates platforms for sharing opinions, experiences, and knowledge such as conferences, seminars, and workshops.

The association is administered by a seven-member executive board, which is elected every year at the annual general assembly. The current president of INGED is Prof. Dr. Aydan ERSÖZ, a renowned scholar in the field of ELT in Turkey. INGED is an affiliate of TESOL International Association and an associate of IATEFL, and it has partnership agreements with several associations from the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Poland, Macedonia, Serbia, and Greece.

INGED’s areas of expertise include but is not limited to in-service teacher training; hence, it substantially contributes to preservice teacher education as well. To serve this purpose, INGED has been carrying out projects zeroing in on preservice English teachers in cooperation with the US Embassy, Ankara. This year’s project event took place on 4-5 May 2019 in Ankara, Turkey. They are titled “Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice: Pre-Service Teachers’ Voices,” the project involved 14 prospective English teachers selected from 7 universities in various regions of Turkey. The primary goal of the project was to equip prospective teachers, who were seniors in the ELT programs with critical thinking and teaching skills to assist them in overcoming challenges they face during their practice teaching so that they would be prepared to deal with the similar problems they might encounter in their teaching careers in a couple of months’ time.

As the first step of the project, a need analysis procedure was followed in order to identify the problematic areas the participants of the project wanted to work on. Afterward, the nature of the workshop sessions, which were planned to last 90 minutes each, was determined. In the end, there was a total of 7 sessions which focused on instruction giving and checking, use of L1 in the L2 classroom, student motivation, teaching productive and receptive skills, language assessment, and culturally responsive teaching.

On the first day of the program, Dr. A. Suzan Öniz from INGED gave a workshop on “Effective Instruction Giving and Checking” in which she encouraged the participants to try out several instruction giving techniques. The second session, “Classroom Interaction: L1 in the Classroom was held by the INGED president, Prof. Dr. Aydan Ersöz. Throughout the session, the importance of using the target language was discussed, and ideas on the advantages and disadvantages of using the mother tongue in the class were shared. The third workshop session, “Enhancing Engagement through Motivation,” was held by Esen Metin (INGED). In the session, several motivation tips were shared through a motivation framework, and the participants were asked to design an engaging lesson design at the end of the session. In the fourth session “Reading and Listening (for input),” M. Akın Güngör (INGED) presented how to give input in reading and listening lessons and provided several examples accordingly. In the session, students also had a chance to analyze parts of the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) language curriculum to design reading and listening tasks.

The second day started with an excursion to Anıtkabir, Atatürk’s Mausoleum. The afternoon sessions were open to the ELT students who registered in advance. The program started with the session called “Motivation and Cultural Responsive Teaching” held by Heidi Saleska, English Language Fellow. In the session, motivation and cultural aspects were discussed, and several cases were studied. Next, Dr. Büşra Çelen from INGED gave a workshop on “The Elephant in the Room: Productive Skills” in which she shared insights on how to teach productive skills, and asked students to design writing and speaking lesson flow. The last session, “Classroom Practices in Language Assessment,” was held by Dr. Nazlı Güngör from INGED. In the session, the participants were provided input on assessment tools, and they were asked to prepare assessment tool charts. All the sessions involved hands-on activities through which students had a chance to take concrete ideas with them to apply in their individual contexts, experience teamwork, and collaboration, and learn from each other. The program is closed with the distribution of the certificates.

The feedback from the participants was collected via an online survey after the program. The collected feedback suggested that the participating student teachers would be able to reach a milestone in their journey to learning to teach English with the rich input they have been provided within this two-day event. All in all, it turned out that the project, funded by the US Embassy, Ankara, reached its goal of creating a platform for sharing ideas-for prospective English teachers this time around.

For further information on INGED, please visit our website http://inged.org.tr/ or find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/INGEDTURKEY/ and on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ingedturkiye/

Büşra Çelen works as a research assistant in the ELT Program at Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey. She has a Ph.D. degree in second language teacher education from the same university. Dr. Çelen has been serving as a board member of INGED Turkey since 2012.

Esen Metin has an MA in ELT from Hacettepe University, Turkey. She is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in teaching Turkish as a foreign language at the same university and works as a lecturer at Çankaya University. Ms.Metin has been serving as a board member of INGED Turkey since 2015.