Job Discussion Forums

[billybuzz]

For about two years I've battled in a private uni which purports to be an English medium one ,but, in my view the profile of the language of instruction is well below what it should be . The administration has admitted that the level of proficiency of the students spoken and understanding of English is, well, all a bit embarrassing really, so they asked "how can we change this"?
Someone suggested an oral test,that idea was promptly stamped on, then they reconsidered and decided to have a pilot test, but, not yet, later .
In the mean time its business as usual,we know theres a problem, but, there are more important issues to think about ,such as , what ?
Does this all sound familar ?
The class room is where its all at isn't it ? We attempt to create a learning environment that is conducive to language teaching, but, we are working under constraints most noteably is that once they leave the classroom the need or obligation to use English stops . Why is that ? If they (students) are under no pressure to use their newly acquired lingustic ability outside the classroom is it no wonder it begins to decline,decay ,dissolve into short bursts of grammar structures at best or total silence at worst . I must be missing something here, why can't the learning and practise continue outside the classroom ? Do all those posters have to be in L1 why not L2? We present more difficult texts to them daily then give them a holiday at the end of every lesson . Couldn't English medium not just be limited to the class ? If they don't see the need to use it outside the classroom why should they bother to retain it ? Just how far should an English medium establishment go to promote the target language in order to justify itself ? Comments ,opinions, anyone !

[justme]

Wow, billybuzz, you just opened a big old can of worms that's been stewing in my mind for some time now.

You situation is exactly like mine, except for one thing, which is that we've been giving oral exams (a mere 2 per year, and one for students who want to get proficiency and pass prep). What's the point, I can't help but wonder, of these oral exams? Students freak out and perform poorly. To the extent that they're able, they just memorize as much as they can of what they plan to say. The tasks only tangentially match the real-world performance that's supposedly expected of them. For example, the professors complained that the students don't ask questions in class, so in the oral exams, they're given a prompt like 'My mother went to the hospital' and they have to ask questions about it. Usually they come up with things like 'Where are you from? Do you like in Turkey?' Logistically, it's impossible to have more frequent or more thorough oral exams, with 500 students and 22 teachers. We'd be doing them every week. As it is now, they're 3-5 minutes per student, and the teachers have to do about 40 students in a row, which lasts as long as 2 1/2 hours. Do they really think we're fairly assessing the 35th-40th students? They're about all the same and you can give them their score pretty much as soon as they open thier mouths. What to do about this? I have absolutely no idea. It's only one issue.

I just saw a poster about to go up here that says 'Make-Up Sınavı,' with the rest of the info in Turkish. What's the point of this? All of the students can understand this information in English, though I suspect anything in English, written or spoken, they just ignore it unless you specifically direct their attention to it, which is why they rarely seem to read instructions on exams. I've discussed this same issue with my director, about English only being in the classroom, and he's actually more concerned about it than I am. Next year, we're getting a new building, and he says when we get to the new building everything-- signs, posters, office conversations-- will be in English. It has also been said that there will be projectors and wireless Internet connections in all the classrooms, 2 teachers to an office, and new computers for everyone, and I really don't know which of these things is more unlikely. The new building is supposed to be for next year, but I'm looking at it right now and it's some abandoned piles of frosty wood that stray dogs pee on.

Granted, it's getting better. The English proficiency of the Turkish teachers is greatly improved from last year, so very few of them are teaching primarily in Turkish. Last year I was the only native speaker, and this year we have around 15. Also, this year's Turkish teachers are much better teachers, with only a few of them occupying all their classtime with Azar photocopies.

Everyone here, including the directors, know that this isn't really an English-medium university-- it's a selling point. The Turkish professors teach in Turkish with some English, and Turkish translations of the texts are more or less available, because there's no reason to teach in English if none of them can understand-- learning their fields is more important for the students than English. I don't know what the native-speaker professors with no Turkish do. Some probably teach their curricula as sheltered English, while others just carry on and ignore the problem or complain to Prep that the students aren't prepared.

There are ideas going around as to how to extend the English environment-- posters in English, clubs, stuff like that. None of it really happens though. Students don't read the posters. They express an interest in or even demand clubs, then don't show up. And really, how can you monitor what they do in the hallways or at lunch? And for the beginner or elementary who come to their teachers with problems, how can they explain and deal with the problems in English? Of course, they're constantly being encouraged to speak English as much as they can, and a few do, but mostly they just say 'Okay Hocam' and continue in Turkish.

I don't think the problem is insurmountable-- it's just going to take some doing and some time...

[molly farquharson]

Yep, the same old problems of lack of practice. However, it is not only here. When I taught in the States, the same language students would hang out with each other and speak their L1, including the immigrant kids. The Spanish-speaking students would complain that they didn't understand the Oriental students, and vice versa. The ironic thing is that most of the English-speaking expats I know here live their lives mostly in English, so are we practicing what we preach?

[Mikana51]

[justme]

That's a hard one-- I think since I do at least some of my life in Turkish, and I've gotten my Turkish to be, if not reasonable, at least not embarrassing anymore for the time I've been here, this makes me doubly impatient with students who refuse to do anything with English on their own. I think 'I'm not particularly clever or hard-working-- if I can do it, why can't you people?'

But it's a different situation-- ex-pats have a greater variety of more interesting and pressing situations to do in L2 than students have. If an ex-pat doesn't learn the language, it's because of a series of daily choices s/he makes, consciously or unconsciously. For most, anyway. Still, the students are making choices too, even if it's something small like 'Shall I watch Star TV or CNBC-E?' and most of them are opting for Star, I'd say.

I think, for a country as closed and more or less mono-lingual as Turkey, it's hard for people to get their heads around the idea of a foreign language-- they have a vague idea of its function, like 'I can get a good job and be successful if I learn English,' but they don't understand about realy knowing a language and all that it entails. Like I think they don't really get that English is for us what Turkish is for them-- that we think and dream and joke and all this in English. It was the same for me in America (another closed and nearly mono-lingual counrty) learning Spanish. I learned what I had to learn for class and I did well, but when I went to Mexico, my illusion of being good at Spanish crumbled-- what was good in class was useless in Mexico, aside from reading menus or whatever. If you're mono-lingual, you tend to look at foreign languages as incomplete versions of your own language, or as a memorizeable code of different words that correspond one-to-one with the words in your language. That's why, for example, many Turkish students fail to understand why you can't say 'He lived many difficulties' in English-- they're matching it one-to-one, but refuse to accept that the code is also totally different in terms of syntax and underlying meaning.

And so few students are even interested enough to work this out...

[Otterman Ollie]

Hi
To a large extent I can identify with Billy,it must be because we work at the same kind of place and the kids really have no sense of focus or even responsibility .I do ,however ,lay some of the blame at the feet of our so called fellow professionals who don't give the kids a chance to practise the language and instead decide to practise their Turkish on them .
In the space of time working here the number of kids who have asked me for an office hour (basically a one to one free lesson ) I could count on the fingers of one foot .Why ? They want this time in Turkish (god knows how this helps them ) and too many others including bi-lingual xpats will oblige .
The idea of extending the classroom environment has a lot of merit and why can't menus be in English and the people who serve should be able to use some as well ,we get most of our webmails in Turkish yet we have a translation and interperetion department ,its a mess really .

[justme]

This was the first year I've had enough Turkish to use it much with students. I try to avoid it, but when they were zero-beginners and asked me things about homework or what a word means or where their meeting was being held, I answered it in Turkish. After a couple of weeks, I continued letting them ask in Turkish but then I'd answer in English.

Horrible mistake. Total laziness and wrongness on my part. Okay, a little was just because Turkish had become more automatic for me and I wouldn't always notice the language of the conversation, especially if I was busy or distracted. But now they don't even ask the simplest of questions in English, and I'm having to undo the bad habits I helped to create.

[Otterman Ollie]

Thanks ,that emphaises my point really . The simplest of sentences are not even tried,now we have the case where a teacher(s) holds court with a group of students his Turkish is coming on a storm but next term I have to confront them and he hasn't even taught them how to ask to leave the classroom . Thanks mate ! I could shaft you and name you but I don't think anyone gives a %&^Ğ otherwise you would have got it a while ago. I doubt he even knows the existance of this forum .

[justme]

Totally agree with you Ollie. Teachers who do this are really annoying-- and usually they're not just practicing their Turkish, they've realized it's a way of endearing themselves to students. So in the end they get great reviews from students (even though the teacher may not even be all that good and the students' English is crap), while the ones who try to stay in English get comments like 'The teacher is cold and unfriendly, unhelpful, etc...'



Now I'm one of them, except for the part about being endearing. No one would mistake me for that. I'm very annoyed at myself.

[yaramaz]

Why, because you are not endearing? Well, I think you are very endearing!

[justme]

You're messing with my carefully developed misanthrope persona, yaramaz....

Yaramazlık yapma!

[yaramaz]

You are so endearing when you are sternly misathropic! Aaaaaaaaw tatlım!