Teaching English as Foreign Language

September 30 2015

Memorial Building classroom 303. Indiana University, USA.

Doctor Yucel Yilmaz, Language acquisition research expert.

His research is about second language acquisition, he conducts research with students, about certain target structure and gives intervention and then he provides feedback about the intervention.

He has found that the computer media communication works better in the intervention process. Students feel less aggravated with the feedback in their mistakes

When I asked him about what he would advise to improve teaching or learning, his face just changed and looked happier because he started remembering when he was a teacher in Istanbul, Turkey.

He mentioned the following points:

• Every goal has to be in a government policy, the modifications or innovations must come from the upper level.

• The teachers have to receive proper training, at least some weeks per year. The training has to be focused in the use of the language. The teachers have to speak and master the language. It looks like an obvious statement to have or to ask, but it is true. Teachers must speak English in the classroom.

• The students have to receive a lot of input, they have to listen, to read and to practice a lot of input in the language, not about the grammar rules or the form, just the language as in real situations.

• The students have to be engaged in the learning of the language and they must have a motivation in their own learning.

• The students must interact in the use of the language, the activities could be task based, discussion tasks, but it has to be a commitment in using the language in the classroom. The students have to speak English by themselves.

• It would be very useful now with the use of the technology to reach students from different countries using Facebook, skype, Edmodo or the Tandem idea. There are technologies that help or support students to interact on line and to practice languages.

This interview was very useful for me, because he also supported the ideas I promote in class, to give a lot of input before asking for output, to communicate in the language and the teacher skill level that a teacher must have in order to teach English.

I did not know the word or platform Tandem and I am starting to use a similar one for android phones that is called Hello Talk for google account users. It is a helpful application to learn and practice different languages and I would say it is very successful.