Completed Research Projects
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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’. |
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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. |
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.
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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. |
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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. |
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.
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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. |
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.
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.
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.
