This study investigated democratic values of pre-service English language teachers in relation to their teacher self-efficacy perceptions in a Turkish context. It also examined the possible relationships between gender, grade and democratic values and selfefficacy perceptions. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 294 pre-service teachers. Findings show that they had a high level of democratic values while senior students reported the highest rate of democratic values. Results did not show a significant difference between democratic values and gender. Participants also reported a moderately high level of self-efficacy. Lastly, correlation was found between their democratic values and self-efficacy perceptions.
Mentoring' has become the central issue of the 'restructuring programme' in education faculties in Turkey since 1998. This study aims to explore the participants' perceptions and experiences about the concepts of 'mentor' and 'mentoring'. A mentor and six English Language Teaching Department (ELT) students, who were in the final year of their training programme, participated in the study. A qualitative case study methodology was employed and data were collected through semi-structured interviews with faculty students and mentors, semi-structured journals kept only by the faculty students and debriefing notes kept only by the researcher. The findings demonstrate important issues about the nature, functions, benefits, and problems of the mentoring experienced by the faculty students at the particular department such as the need for developing selection criteria and training programmes for mentors and organising regular meetings and seminars about the partnership programme for mutual understanding and sharing opinions. Drawing on the data, recommendations and implications are suggested.
This study aimed at identifying the difficulties of ELT students in analysing literary texts such as short stories and poetry in 'Selections from Western Literature' Elective Course at a Turkish university. Qualitative case study methodology was employed for understanding the students' difficulties and experiences. 42 students, who were in the 4th (final) year of their training programme participated in the study. Data were collected through the presentation check lists kept by the lecturer during student presentations for both giving and getting feedback and the evaluation purposes about the content and the process of the student presentations. The findings demonstrated important issues about difficulties in understanding and interpreting literary texts such as, understanding the relationship between the writer/poet, period of the text, and the theme/s of the literary piece; finding out and interpreting figures of speech; difficulties in suggesting rich variety of classroom implications in relation with using literature in teaching English; and finally the pronunciation and intonation difficulties. Recommendations and implications were suggested to propose solutions to these problems and develop more effective ways about how to integrate literature as a tool of teaching English.
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