Starting Date: October, 2019

Expires: August, 2022

Sponsor: European Commission, Erasmus Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships

Team: Sumru Akcan (Principal Investigator), Belma Haznedar (Researcher), Elifcan Öztekin (Researcher)

Description: Communities, Languages, and Activities App (ENACT) project is developing a web app to bring culture to life by employing an innovative task-based digital learning pedagogy offering a real-world, interactive learning experience.​ It aims to foster intercultural and intergenerational social cohesion and understanding through two-way knowledge exchange; create inclusive higher education systems through a local learning ecologies approach; and model an innovative task-based digital pedagogy for learning and online (virtual) exchange between communities.The project is led by Newcastle University (UK), and the consortium partners are: Boğaziçi University (Turkey), Cultura Foundation (Finland), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), and University of Helsinki (Finland). Project website: https://enacteuropa.com/

Starting Date: November, 2017

Expires: December, 2020

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Sumru Akcan (Boğaziçi University), Yasemin Kırkgöz (Çukurova University), Ceylan Yangın-Ersanlı (Ondokuz Mayıs University)

Description: This study investigates English teachers’ socialization to the school, their behaviour in classrooms and attitudes towards their profession within the first years after graduation. Recent graduates face many difficulties in their professional environments and many of them lose their contacts with their instructors at universities (Farrell, 2012). The new graduates quit their jobs as teachers with a rate of 10% within the first year of recruitment, and with a rate of between 25 and 50 % within the first three years in the field (Öztürk, 2008, p.20). Many students lack motivation towards learning English and have a resistance against learning a foreign language in Turkey where English is not used outside the educational settings (British Council, 2003). This particular situation causes teachers a burden and result in teacher burnout within the first few years of their professional involvement in the field (Güneş & Uysal, 2014). There are few studies on the difficulties and the socialization period of newly appointed teachers with a rather limited sample representation. Therefore, it is essential to determine the difficulties teachers face in the field and investigate ways to facilitate these processes with a comprehensive study on a large scale. Based on the nature of this study, the study could achieve this aim.

The sample consists of English Language teachers who are serving within the first three years of their profession in cities with high rates of governmental teacher placements. To this end, the number of English Language teachers who have been positioned at state schools since 2013 and are within the first three years of working experience, and the regions and cities where these teachers work are determined by analysing the data provided by the Ministry of Education. 16 cities where there are high rates of teacher placement are selected based on the data received from the Ministry of Education. The study will be conducted in five steps: (1) development of the questionnaire and piloting (2) the administration and the evaluation of the questionnaire (3) development of the class observation schemes and the interview questions to be asked to the teachers based on the results of the questionnaire, and piloting, (4) entrance to the field, conducting the observations and the semi-structured interviews and (5) the analysis of the elicited data and writing up the report.

The field work will last for a full academic year, and the teachers will be asked to take regular notes about the challenging situations they face during their lectures in the classroom. 30 English teachers will be contacted from three cities within the sample (İstanbul, Adana, Samsun), and their lessons will be observed at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the semester. The teachers will be interviewed at the end of these observations. Each week, there will be two hours of observation and interviews will take place at the end of the classroom observations. It is aimed in the current study that both qualitative and quantitative data will be used so that they support each other. Upon the statistical analyses of the data, the areas in which the teachers have difficulty during their socialization period will be determined and presented in a corpus so that it will help us gain further understanding about the behaviours, emotions and attitudes of English Language teachers in the school environment by portraying the beginning English Language teachers’ roles in curriculum and language teaching activities in the classroom. The present study will provide some suggestions about pre-service and in-service teacher education programs and thus contribute to the development of educational curricula for these programs.

The classification of issues that arise during the socialization period of teachers can help create a corpus to utilize while developing materials for use in pre-service and in-service education. The results of the present study can provide significant implications for in-service teacher education programs and pre-service education curricula at universities. A course named “Teacher Socialization: Introduction to Teaching” could be included in the curricula of teacher education programs at universities in order to raise pre-service teachers’ awareness and knowledge about possible difficulties they could face in the field and help them implement their teaching skills effectively in classroom through reinforcing their mechanisms to cope with these difficulties. With respect to its structure and purposes, this study could form a bridge between the pre-service and in-service foreign language teacher education programs.

Starting Date: September, 2015

Expires: September, 2018

Sponsor: Erasmus + Programme of the European Union

Team: A.M.C. Cruz & M. Sosinski (University of Granada), N. Faux (Virginia Technical University), B. Haznedar (Boğaziçi University), R. Naeb (University of Northumbria), A. Rohde (University of Cologne), M. Suni (University of Jyväskylä), M. Young-Scholten (Uni

Description: EU-Speak3 is a three year project (2015-2018), focussing on the needs of teachers who work with immigrants with little or no education (LESSLA learners) in their mother tongue. The Project partners from seven universities aim to make a difference in the educational outcomes for immigrants through the development of free international on-line teacher training modules with special reference to bilingualism/multilingualism, vocabulary acquisition, literacy development in a second/third language. Six on-line modules are being designed and developed by the partners in six countries and offered twice from 2016 to 2018, in English and German, Finnish, Spanish and Turkish. The Boğaziçi team has been working with Syrian Refugee children and adults.

Starting Date: July, 2016

Expires: July, 2018

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Leyla Marti (Principal Investigator), Nur Yigitoglu (Co-Principal Investigator), Yasemin Bayyurt

Description: The project aims to investigate undergraduate students’ academic literacy practices in their first languages (L1s) and second languages (L2s).

Starting Date: December, 2015

Expires: June, 2017

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Nazik Dinçtopal Deniz (Principal Investigator), Didar Karadağ (Research Assistant)

Description: The project aims to investigate the role of phrase lengths in silent reading in Turkish and whether or not phrase lengths interact with syntactic parsing strategies in modulating human sentence processing routines.

Starting Date: February, 2016

Expires: March, 2017

Sponsor: Boğaziçi Research Council

Team: Aylin Ünaldı (Principal investigator, Şebnem Yalçın

Description: The study focuses on specific linguistic indicators that can be attributed to developmentally noteworthy changes in writing performance, and also investigates whether linguistic improvement is related to argumentation capacity and whether improved critical thinking ability fosters argumentation construction in L2 advanced writing.

Starting Date:October, 2012

Expires: June, 2016

Sponsor: The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK)

Team: Ayşe Gürel, Nesrin Kutlay, Serkan Uygun

Description:This project investigates the representation of multimorphemic words in the mental lexicon. The project includes psycholinguistic experiments (e.g., online lexical decision paradigms) in Turkish and in English. The studies aim to examine whether the mental representation of/access to words is different in native and nonnative speakers.

Starting Date:

March, 2014

Expires: September, 2015

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Ayşe Gürel (principal invesitgator), Hande Karakaplan (researcher)

Description: This study aims to investigate the role of priming in adult second language (L2) acquisition of morphology. More precisely, the purpose is to explore whether (un)grammatical priming plays a role in adult L2 speakers’ (in)accurate use of an inflectional morpheme in English (i.e., the third person agreement –s). To this end, two experiments were designed to investigate whether grammatical and ungrammatical morphosyntactic priming has any impacts on L1 Turkish-L2 English learners’ subsequent production of the third person singular -s. The study also explored the duration of priming. The study involved a pre-test-post-test design and the data was based on oral production. Participants were asked to describe pictures shown on a computer screen subsequent to different prime sentences they heard from the researcher in the confederate-scripting paradigm. Participant’s correct and incorrect use of the target morpheme in their descriptions of the experimental items were then analyzed and quantified to identify priming effects in immediate and delayed post-tests.

Starting Date:

March, 2014

Expires: September, 2015

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Ayşe Gürel (principal invesitgator), Hande Karakaplan (researcher)

Description: This study aims to investigate the role of priming in adult second language (L2) acquisition of morphology. More precisely, the purpose is to explore whether (un)grammatical priming plays a role in adult L2 speakers’ (in)accurate use of an inflectional morpheme in English (i.e., the third person agreement –s). To this end, two experiments were designed to investigate whether grammatical and ungrammatical morphosyntactic priming has any impacts on L1 Turkish-L2 English learners’ subsequent production of the third person singular -s. The study also explored the duration of priming. The study involved a pre-test-post-test design and the data was based on oral production. Participants were asked to describe pictures shown on a computer screen subsequent to different prime sentences they heard from the researcher in the confederate-scripting paradigm. Participant’s correct and incorrect use of the target morpheme in their descriptions of the experimental items were then analyzed and quantified to identify priming effects in immediate and delayed post-tests.

Starting Date: January, 2011

Expires: January, 2015

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Principal Investigator), Pınar Ersin, Zeynep Sena Abaylı

Description: The aim of this project is to fill the gap in the research context of identity studies by shifting the focus from second language learning contexts to foreign language learning contexts. This project, specifically, aims to investigate Turkish English as a foreign language (EFL) learner identity in the Turkish setting. The project aims to answer the following research questions: Will an EFL learner experience an identity change after learning English? If yes, what type of changes will s/he experience? If yes, what are the factors affecting this change? The study will be carried out at the English Preparatory School (prep school) of a highly competitive, English-medium state university in Istanbul. Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected from an advanced level learner enrolled in this program to better understand the process that s/he experiences while learning English in a foreign language learning context along with his/her thoughts and feelings as s/he engages with both formal (i.e., classroom) and informal (i.e. outside the classroom) language practices. Quantitative data will be collected by a background survey to learn how many advanced level students use English outside the classroom and how many of them would be interested in a research project and qualitative data will be collected by the following sources: journals that are written by the participant, video recordings of the participant’s classes, transcripts of stimulated recall, interviews conducted with the participant, interview with instructors, and researcher journal. To collect data, a video-recorder and a digital audio-recorder will be used. Data will be analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods. For quantitative analysis, data obtained from the background surveys will be analyzed by frequency counts. For qualitative analysis, data gathered from video and audio recordings will be transcribed. Then, they will be coded for themes or categories. Transcription (Subscriber transcription program) and analysis (Atlas.ti scientific software) of the data will be done by using a computer and related software programs. Before the project starts, consent from the institution, the participating learner, and his/her instructors will be taken indicating they are voluntarily participating in the project. During the study, there will not be any content that will harm the institution, the participant or the instructors or degrade their legal rights. None of the content of the research project will be used for commercial purposes. At the end of the project, all the data and the information gathered from the institution, the participant.

Starting Date: March, 2010

Expires: March, 2014

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Principal Investigator), Leyla Martı, Senem Yıldız

Description: Academic writing curricula should emphasize students’ awareness towards becoming more expressive and clear when they write in Turkish and in English. For example, they should learn when and where hedging is appropriate. Writing instructors in English programs should be aware of this so that they can be alert to the possible influence of students’ L1 on their L2 writing, and arrange appropriate instructions if this be the case. There is not much research done on hedging in academic writing in the Turkish context. Therefore, this study aims to close this gap and provide the academic audience with the details of university students’ academic writing practices in Turkish and English. In order to do that a larger corpus of Turkish students’ academic writing in Turkish and in English should be compiled and the occurrence of metadiscoursal features should be analyzed for pattern and significance. This project will establish the basis of the Boğaziçi University English Language Learner Corpora (BUELC), which will be the first organized written corpora of English language learners/users in higher education instutions in Turkey.

Starting Date: October, 2010

Expires: May, 2013

Sponsor: The Scientific & Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK)

Team: Cem Alptekin, Gülcan Erçetin

Description: The role of working memory capacity in reading comprehension has been well established by numerous studies in the first language and few studies in the second language. Working memory is measured by various span tests such as reading span and operation span. A common feature of these tests is that they require processing and storage of information at the same time. Research has shown that the type of WM test that has the highest correlation with reading comprehension is the reading span test. However, the methodological inconsistencies in the development of reading span tests make it difficult to generalize the findings from these studies. One such inconsistency is the language used to measure working memory capacity in the second language. While reading span is measured in the first language in some studies, it is measured in the second language in others. Moreover, the type of task used in processing the sentences is also inconsistent. While some tests require judging syntactic accuracy of sentences, others require judging semantic veracity. The aim of this study is to investigate whether such inconsistencies in the measurement of reading span affect the validity of reading span tests. Criterion-related validity and construct validity are two main dimensions of test validity. The former can be investigated through correlational data whereas the latter involves examing test takers’ mental processes while they take the test. Since the available conventional techniques used to investigate test takers’ mental processes interfere with the natural test taking process, recording test takers’ eye movements while they complete the test overcomes such weakness. This method provides valuable information about test takers’ strategies, thus is an alternative method in construct validation. Examining eye movements in construct validation is a new method and has been used in few studies. Thus the main goal of this project is to investigate how methodological inconsistencies in the development of reading span tests affect the validity of these tests through tracking eye movements of test takers in the context of second language reading comprehension processes.

Starting Date: November, 2011

Expires: December, 2012

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Council

Team: Ayşe Gürel

Description: This study aims to examine article use in late second language (L2) learners of English in three different semantic contexts (i.e., [+definite; +specific]; [-definite; +specific]; [-definite; -specific]). To this end, L2 acquisition of English articles by native speakers of Turkish—a language without an article system—is investigated to identify the most problematic semantic context(s) of article use. Findings will contribute to verify previous assumptions that suggest that irrespective of the first language, most adult L2 learners have problems in correctly supplying the indefinite article “a” in [-definite; +specific] contexts.

Starting Date: January, 2009

Expires: December, 2012

Sponsor: European Union, Education and Training, Lifelong Learning Programme

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt, Gülcan Erçetin, Fidel Çakmak, Saadet Tıkaç, Nuri Başoğlu, Hüseyin Şimşek, Nur Başak Karataş

Description: MLARG involves the implementation of mobile learning (m-learning) technologies in foreign language teaching to enhance language learning facilities of students coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (ages 16-17) in vocational high schools. Thus, this project is both innovative – e.g., use of technology in foreign language education, and inclusive – i.e., designed for young people at risk groups . The project involves the development of methodology and language learning materials suitable for mobile language learning (MLL), and its implementation. Therefore, it can be said that the methodology and the content developed for MLL and m-learning infrastructures will be the major outcome of the project.

The aim of the present project is to use mobile learning technologies (MLT) to design language teaching materials and methodology for young people (ages 16-17) with limited financial resources studying at vocational high schools. The main reasons for choosing Mobile learning (m-learning) can be listed as follows: (i) m-learning helps learners to develop positive attitudes towards literacy both in school subjects and technology; (ii) m-learning motivates learners to take part in activities in mobile medium of communication (MCM) via multimedia tools, such as, mediaBoard, portal page, and clips; (iii) m-learning allows “anywhere”, “anytime” and “personalized” learning for everyone (Atwell, 2005). Since during the implementation of the project, the participant will have access to m-learning facilities; it is considered that using m-learning at “anytime and anyplace” will give young people at risk groups a strong feeling of being taken care of, valued, and included in the society. M-learning will also allow them to personalize their way of learning and increase their self-esteem and confidence. Moreover, in the project, through use of m-learning technologies the content will not be presented in a fixed environment but in various environments, such as, PDAs, Cascading Style Sheets and Small Screen Rendering (SSR).

Starting Date: March, 2010

Expires: November, 2011

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Fund

Team: Cem Alptekin, Gülcan Erçetin

Description: The main purpose of this study is to explore the effects of L2-based explicit/implicit knowledge types and working memory (WM) capacity on L2 reading comprehension. In this context, the study also aims to investigate how WM capacity is related to declarative and procedural memory systems, as a thorough understanding of this relationship is essential for the realization of the main purpose. That is, how WM interacts with the declarative system, known to store conscious explicit knowledge, which it handles through controlled processes, and the procedural system, known to store unconscious implicit knowledge, which it handles through automatic processes. The reasons for these investigations stem from two fundamental issues in L2 learning. One involves the (non)interface between explicit and implicit knowledge types, i.e. whether the two types of knowledge are independent of or dependent on each other. Another issue that is of great interest in L2 learning is the role of declarative and procedural knowledge as components of long-term memory in L2 performance. Based on Ullman’s declarative/procedural model (2001, 2004), which points to gradual attenuation of procedural memory and enhancement of the declarative memory after puberty, it is known that those linguistic functions that are subserved by the declarative system in the L2 are regulated by the procedural system in the L1. Therefore, it can be argued that explicit knowledge and controlled processes play an important role in late L2 learning. One wonders, then, how the cognitive reliance on one type of knowledge (explicit) and processing (controlled) affects the development of reading comprehension in the L2. Those linguistic aspects (e.g. morphosyntax) that normally depend on automatic processing as implicit pieces of information in the L1 are handled by controlled processes of explicit information in the L2, thereby imposing unnecessary loads on WM’s limited capacity. This leads to bottom-up processing of a reading text at graphemic, phonological, morphological, lexical, semantic, and syntactic levels. This process takes up so much of the reader’s attentional control that the restricted capacity of WM becomes unavailable or partially available to implement the top-down reading tasks. Consequently, the current study, taking account of these specific issues, examines the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge types with respect to L2 competence. Next, it aims to explore the way each type of knowledge is related to the functions of WM capacity in the L2. Finally, the independent contributions of explicit linguistic knowledge, implicit linguistic knowledge and WM capacity to L2 reading comprehension are investigated.

Starting Date: March, 2010

Expires: November, 2011

Sponsor: The Boğaziçi University Commission for Scientific Research Projects (BAP)

Team: Ayşe Gürel (Principal Investigator), Feride Özdemir

Description: This project aims to identify the language transfer phenomenon in early bilingual children by examining specific linguistic features such as the use of articles. The study compares the spoken data collected from the monolingual English children to the Turkish-English, German-English, and Serbo-Croation-English simultaneous bilingual children aged between 4-7 via three different oral tasks (story telling, puppet game, picture description). The acquisition of English articles (the, a/an and zero article) is analyzed in threee semantic contexts (+definite; +specific; -definite;- specific; -definite; +specific).

Starting Date: September, 2009

Expires: March, 2011

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Sumru Akcan

Description: This study aims to increase the target language awareness of senior pre-service English teachers when they teach English during a practicum. For this purpose, the target language awareness training sessions will be offered by the researcher/supervisor in order to improve the student teachers’ target language use in the classroom during FLED 416 course (Seminar on Practice Teaching in EFL) in the Spring semester of the 2009-2010 academic year. The teacher trainees and the supervisor will work on their grammatical and vocabulary knowledge and examine their own target language use when teaching English in practicum schools. One of the main purposes of this study will be to investigate the challenges that non-native pre-service English teachers experience in their target language use when they do their practicum in actual language classrooms. The data collection instruments will include classroom observations, videotaping the lessons, feedback sessions, and discussion meetings with the teacher trainees. This study will particularly explore the challenges that the teacher trainees encounter while introducing the lesson, giving instructions, implementing an activity, using English for classroom management, and finishing the lesson for the purpose of improved instruction.

Starting Date: January, 2008

Expires: December, 2010

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Leyla Martı (Principal Investigator), Yasemin Bayyurt, Ebru Bağ

Description: This project aims to investigate the interaction patterns of secondary school students in EFL classrooms. In order to understand interaction patterns in a classroom context, it is necessary to analyze the following: duration of the interaction, type of interaction, turn-taking strategies of the participants, interruption, initiation, floor yielding, backchannel responses, roles of the participants. The data is collected via video and audio recordings in the classroom. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are used.

Starting Date: January, 2005

Expires: December, 2009

Sponsor: TÜBİTAK

Team: Belma Haznedar (Proje Yöneticisi), Senem Yıldız

Description:

Starting Date: January, 2005

Expires: December, 2009

Sponsor: TÜBİTAK

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Principal Investigator), Gülcan Erçetin, Şebnem Yalçın

Description: In this study, the English as an International language model offered by McKay(2003) is examined to find out whether the teaching of English as an international language is applicable to contexts where English is taught as a second or foreign language. Interviews, questionnaires and observations are conducted to get their opinions. Results of the study indicate that teachers and students who participated in the study still think that there should be an ideal native speaker of English who is modelled by the learners. This model should be based on either British English or American English. Finally, a case study is conducted and a set of textbooks is content analyzed in order to see how culture is represented and offered to students who learn English via those textbooks. In sum, within the scope of this study, the results reveal that despite radical approaches to English language teaching and culture involvement in the foreign language classrooms, Britain and the USA are still the countries that are associated with so called ‘English culture’.

Starting Date: September, 2008

Expires: December, 2009

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Senem Yıldız

Description: The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using corpora within a data-driven learning approach in teaching V+N collocations to advanced level Turkish learners of English. For this study, data was collected from first year ELT students currently enrolled at a compulsory composition course at Boğaziçi University, Foreign Language Education Department. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through four types of instruments: a V+N collocation test, a collocation judgment test, a self evaluation questionnaire and semi-structured interviews.

Starting Date: September, 2008

Expires: December, 2009

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Senem Yıldız

Description: The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using corpora within a data-driven learning approach in teaching V+N collocations to advanced level Turkish learners of English. For this study, data was collected from first year ELT students currently enrolled at a compulsory composition course at Boğaziçi University, Foreign Language Education Department. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through four types of instruments: a V+N collocation test, a collocation judgment test, a self evaluation questionnaire and semi-structured interviews.

Starting Date: March, 2007

Expires: April, 2009

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Research Fund

Team: Gülcan Erçetin (Principal Investigator), Cem Alptekin

Description: The project aims to explore two main issues: (a) the role of L1 and L2 working memory (WM) in L2 reading and (b) the effects of WM capacity and content familiarity on L2 reading. WM capacity was measured through a reading span task administered both in Turkish and English. Following Kintsch’s (1998) model of text comprehension, L2 reading was operationalized as literal and inferential comprehension. Content familiarity was achieved through textual nativization of an authentic narrative text, which involved the sociological, semantic, and pragmatic adaptation of the textual and contextual cues of the text into the reader’s own culture-specific mental framework, while keeping its linguistic and rhetorical content essentially intact. Participants were 62 Turkish university students with an advanced English proficiency level. The results revealed a significant relationship between L1 and L2 WM capacities. However, only L2 WM was found to play an important role in inferential but not in literal reading comprehension. Moreover, independent and additive effects of WM capacity and content familiarity on inferential comprehension were found. No effects were observed on literal understanding.

Starting Date: March, 2007

Expires: March, 2009

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Ayşe Gürel

Description: This research project investigates sentence processing in Turkish-English bilinguals to identify: 1) how bilingualism affects sentence processing patterns in the mother tongue 2) whether or not late bilinguals demonstrate native-like performance in processing L2 sentences.

Starting Date: January, 2004

Expires: December, 2008

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Principal Investigator), Gülcan Erçetin, Yavuz Gösterişli

Description: Recent research investigating the status of the English language all over the world has proven that it has become more and more essential to raise English language teachers’ awareness and sensitivity towards designing their activities and adjusting their teaching by taking into consideration the current status of English as an international language. However, it is still a myth whether ELT teachers themselves are aware of the importance of English as a world language as far as the concept of ‘culture’ is concerned. This study aims at developing and validating a measurement scale to investigate the beliefs and opinions of Turkish EFL teachers towards the involvement of the target language culture in their classrooms. To find out about the non-native EFL teachers’ perspective on the issue, interviews will be conducted with EFL teachers, both from state and private schools in Turkey. The data obtained from the interviews will be used to develop items for a questionnaire, which will then be administered to a large sample of EFL teachers and the responses will be analyzed statistically and interpreted with reference to recent perspectives and approaches on the status of English as a world language.

Starting Date: January, 2007

Expires: December, 2008

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Senem Yıldız (Principal Investigator), Sibel Tatar

Description: This descriptive study aims to investigate the profile of foreign language teachers and their perceptions of the use of computer technologies in language teaching. Specifically the study aims to explore if and for what purposes and in what forms language teachers use computer technologies in their classes. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from eight private primary, secondary and high schools through a questionnaire and face-to-face or e-mail interviews. ”Approaches of Foreign Language Teachers to Computer Assisted Language Learning” adapted from Levy (1997) was used. Results of the study indicated that foreign language teachers in general have a positive attitude towards computer technologies and that they perceive computer technology as a tool that complements teaching, helps create a student-centered learning environment and increases student motivation. The participants on the other hand pointed out that they could not use computer technologies efficiently due to reasons such as lack of training or lack of access to computers.

Starting Date: March, 2005

Expires: November, 2006

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Sumru Akcan (Principal Investigator), Sibel Tatar

Description: In teacher education research, the interaction between student teachers, university supervisors and cooperating teachers has been widely investigated. The nature of feedback in the post-lesson sessions has been documented to differ across university supervisors and cooperating teachers. Considering the importance of practice teaching in student teachers’ careers and the crucial role the cooperating teachers play in this experience, it is considered important to know the dynamics and the nature of feedback student teachers receive from their university supervisors and their cooperating teachers.
The purpose of the study is to investigate the nature of feedback from university supervisors and cooperating teachers given to the student teachers in a language teacher education program at a university in Istanbul, Turkey. Data for the study were collected from four university supervisors, 25 student teachers and 15 cooperating teachers during an academic semester through (a) interviews between student teachers and university supervisors and student teachers and cooperating teachers, (b) relevant documents such as student teacher journal entries and teachers’ notes. The preliminary findings point to some differences and similarities between the feedback from cooperating teachers and university supervisors.

Starting Date: September, 2004

Expires: September, 2006

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Principal Investigator), Gülcan Erçetin

Description: Recent research investigating the status of English language all over the world has proven that it has become more and more essential to raise English language teachers’ awareness and sensitivity towards designing their activities and adjusting their teaching by taking into consideration the current status of English as an international language. However, it is still a myth whether ELT teachers themselves are aware of the importance of English as a world language as far as the concept of ‘culture’ is concerned. This study aims at developing and validating a measurement scale to investigate the beliefs and opinions of Turkish EFL teachers towards the involvement of the target language culture in their classrooms. To find out about the non-native EFL teachers’ perspective on the issue, interviews will be conducted with EFL teachers both from state and private schools in Turkey. The data obtained from the interviews will be used to develop items for a questionnaire, which will then be administered to a large sample of EFL teachers and the responses will be analyzed statistically and interpreted with reference to recent perspectives and approaches on the status of English as a world language.

Starting Date: September, 2003

Expires: June, 2006

Sponsor: Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) and the Netherlands Academy of Sciences (NWO)

Team: Yasemin Bayyurt (Co-Investigator together with Dr. Ad Backus from Tilburg University, The Netherlands)

Description: This study investigates politeness and gender issues in multilingual societies and in foreign language classrooms from a conversational analytic perspective within the framework of politeness theory. In particular, the study aims to find out whether Turkish politeness norms are transferred to bilingual settings as far as strategies for topic choice and turn taking are concerned.

A coding manual on the basis of both pre-existing coding schemes and some literature study is developed and tested. The data are coded for turn taking mechanisms, topic control techniques (topic introduction, shift, or maintenance) and for those pragmatic functions inherent in speakers’ utterances that seem relevant for topic management (e.g. exemplification, giving an opinion, agreement, strengthening an argument, etc.). The results will be statistically analyzed and interpreted on the basis of politeness theory and conversational analysis.

Starting Date: March, 2004

Expires: March, 2006

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Ayşe Gürel

Description: Previous research findings suggest that linguistic errors observed in aphasic patients and adult second language learners are similar to a large extent. In both cases, some impairment is observed particularly in the morpho-syntactic domain. This project provides a comparative investigation of morpho-syntactic deficits in aphasia and in adult second language acquisition. In this study, data will be collected from monolingual Turkish aphasic patients and adult second language learners of Turkish and English. Results will be analyzed and interpreted with reference to theories on the loss/acquisition of functional categories.

Starting Date: March, 2004

Expires: February, 2006

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Leyla Martı (Principal Investigator), Yasemin Bayyurt

Description: Studies have shown that different norms of verbal behaviour can exist in different cultures. For example, House and Kasper’s (1981) study has shown that German speakers use in general, in requests and complaints, higher levels of directness compared to English speakers. This might serve as an explanation of why native speakers of English usually perceive the verbal behaviour of German learners of English as being rather impolite (for details see; House and Kasper,1981 and also House, 2000). Differences in norms of verbal behaviour can lead to miscommunication. Thus, it seems to be important to investigate norms in different cultures. The main aim of this project is to investigate indirectness and politeness in Turkish requests. Data will be collected from Turkish monolinguals, Turkish-German and Turkish-English bilinguals in order to be able to make cross-cultural comparison. The Turkish of the bilinguals will be analyzed in order to see whether there is pragmatic transfer from German or English into their Turkish.

Starting Date: September, 2002

Expires: September, 2005

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Gülcan Erçetin (Principal Investigator), Ayşe Akyel, Yavuz Akbulut

Description: Since the 80’s there has been a growing interest in the processes second language (L2) readers have used for comprehension. Many researchers, employing think-aloud or verbal reports have examined the types of strategies L2 readers use for comprehension. A recent context of interest has been reading on the computer. Electronic texts read on the computer have radically different features than conventional texts printed on paper. Hypertext, for instance, is organized in a nonlinear fashion and is distinguished by the richness and depth of the information it provides through nodes and links. Hypermedia, on the other hand, incorporates multimedia features and presents information in multiple forms of media (e.g. text, pictures, graphics, audio, video and animation). According to Leu & Reinking (1996), the use of strategies may be more important in reading electronic texts than reading static texts because the reader is involved in making more decisions regarding the sources of information they need use. Thus, this project has two main purpose: a) to investigate what type strategies L2 readers use in a hypermedia environment and whether these strategies are essentially different from strategies involved in reading conventional text, b) to explore the variables that contribute L2 reading comprehension in a hypermedia environment for advanced learners of English.

Starting Date: September, 2002

Expires: August, 2005

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Cem Alptekin (Principal Investigator), Yasemin Bayyurt, Gülcan Erçetin

Description: In Turkey, the duration of compulsory education has recently become eight years, moving the official starting point for foreign language instruction from 6th grade (age 11) to 4th grade (age 9). The number of class hours allocated is two hours per week. However, the reform was affected quite rapidly, within just a few months without no work on developing a new kind of curriculum in the primary grades where virtually none had existed before. The curriculum designed by the ministry of education is a grammatical one whose effectiveness is questionable at this level. Thus, a content-/topic-based curriculum was developed by Bayyurt and Alptekin (2001), which paralleled the content of the curriculum required by the Ministry of Education for each grade level. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the new syllabus is effective in promoting English language development of learners at the primary school level. It is hypothesized that the learners who are taught English using the content-based syllabus will show more development in their reading and listening skills than those learners who are taught English using the grammatical syllabus. This quasi-experimental study is significant in being a longitudinal one.

Starting Date: September, 2002

Expires: December, 2004

Sponsor: Boğaziçi University Scientific Projects Commission

Team: Belma Haznedar

Description: Recent innovations implemented within the scope of Law no 4306 changed the structure and functioning of the institutions offering primary education in Turkey, the most important one being that primary education institutions would offer education for eight years. In regard to innovations concerning foreign language education in Turkey, the new law required the introduction of foreign languages at primary level, with the option of a second foreign language starting at Grade 6. In line with these goals a new curriculum was designed and approved by the National Board of Education. Recent advances in the implementation of the new law have exerted considerable direct influence on both school-aged pupils and the teaching staff and perhaps more importantly on the programs used at education faculties.The aim for this project is to investigate primary foreign language teaching, with special reference to academic training of language teachers. Apart from subjective views that have no scientific basis, one could hardly find any qualitative or quantitative analysis of the way English is taught to young primary school children. The project is, therefore, hoped to contribute a great deal to the specification and implementation of primary foreign language education policy in Turkey.