2015 Volume 1 (Issue 1)

Journal of Education in Black Sea Region

Volume 1, Issue 1, 2015

ISSN 2346-8246

Volume 1, Issue 1, 2015 Journal of Education in Black Sea Region

UDC (უაკ) 050:37(479.22) უ-77

UDC (უაკ) 050:37(479.22) უ-77

ISSN 2346-8246, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2015

Journal of Education in Black Sea Region EDITORIAL TEAM Editor in Chief Natela DOGHONADZE, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia Web & Media Editor Mehmet SAHINER, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia Assistant Editor Taisia MUZAFAROVA, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia Associate Editors Ilyas USTUNYER, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia Şaban ÇEPIK, Zirve University, Gaziantep, Turkey Editorial Board Members Amir H. SOHELI-MEHR (University of Toronto, Canada) Ivor S. TIMMIS (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK) Ketevan MAMISEISHVILI (University of Arkansas, USA) Feryal ÇUBUKÇU (Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey) Cemal KARAATA (Fatih University, Turkey) Nino UGLAVA (The American University of Middle East, Kuwait) Halil Ibrahim TAS (North American University, USA) Bulent DOGAN (North American University, USA) Chandra WEST-FORT (North American University, USA) John SMEDS (University of Turku, Finland) Kristin BROGAN (North Campus, Institute of Technology Tralee Co. Kerry, Ireland) Malgorzata Z.WISHNIEVSKA (University of Gdansk, Poland) Mariusz MARCAK (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland) Jaroslaw KRAJKA (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland) Wenxia WU (Eastern Virginia Medical School, USA) Sirin BUDAK (North American University, USA) Nikoloz PARJANADZE (International Black Sea University, Georgia) Mehmet SAHINER (International Black Sea University, Georgia) Valeria AVDEEVA (Siberian State Aerospace University, Russia) Delmina Maria PIRES (Politechnical Institute of Bragança, Portugal) Manuel Calesino Vara PIRES (Politechnical Institute of Bragança, Portugal) Sergiy SYDORENKO (National Aviation University, Ukraine) Maria GEORGIEVA (St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria) Design & Printing

Editorial Office Journal of Education in Black Sea Region International Black Sea University David Aghmashenebeli Alley, 13km, No:2, 0131, Tbilisi / Georgia Telephone: (+99532) 2 595 005 Fax: (+99532) 2 595 008 E-mail : jedu@ ibsu.edu.ge Web : http://jebs.ibsu.edu.ge/ ISSN (2346-8246) No responsibility for the views expressed by the authors in this journal is assumed by the editors or by Journal of Education in Black Sea Region (JEBS).

JEBS (Journal of Education in Black Sea Region) is published semiannually and funded by International Black Sea University.

Copyright ©2015, JEBS. International Black Sea University

Journal of Education in Black Sea Region ISSN 2346-8246, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2015

CONTENTS Editorial Student-Centered Education in the XXI century ................................................................................................................. 3-4 Natela DOGHONADZE

Articles Comparing the Effectiveness of Form-Focused and Meaning-Focused Instructions in EF Teaching ................................ 5-15 Bunyamin ÇELIK The Case of Mobile-assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia .........................17 -23 Maia CHKOTUA The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education .................................................................................................. 25 - 37 Muhammet KARABAYIR The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability........................ 39 - 44 Aziza KAVLU Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance............................................ 45 - 53 Elvira KORAN Measuring the Degree of English Teachers’ Motivation..................................................................................................... 54 - 64 Selçuk KORAN Applications of Goal Theory to Teaching Mathematics...................................................................................................... 65 - 73 Gulseren SEKRETER, Natela DOGHONADZE The Importance of Raising Teacher Awareness of Culture-sensitive English Language Teaching..................................... 75 - 78 Nino TVALCHRELIDZE Undergraduate Iraqi Students’ Awareness of Social Mobile Media and Their Attitudes to Mobile Learning..................... 79 - 85 Tahsin YAGCİ Strategies to Support the Enhancement of Listening Comprehension.............................................................................. 87 - 94 (A Case of Ishik University English Preparatory School) Naci YILDIZ

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Student-Centered Education in the XXI century Natela Doghonadze More than half of the articles in this issue are in some way related to the topic of student-centered education, this is why the editorial also deals with it. There are various reasons nowadays why education has to be student-centered: • In the market-based economy which is widespread all over the world today, the customer is the king, and who are customers in education if not students (and their parents, for those who are not of-age yet)?

• A democratic society has to involve all education process participants in its management, and who are the most numerous group in the process, if not students?

• According to post-modernist philosophy, the goal of education should be to empower the powerless, and who were the most powerless in the education system until student-centered was introduced, if not students?

• Constructivist educational psychology tells us that knowledge is not transferred from teachers to students by lecturing, but co-constructed by them in the process of collaborative learning, dialogue, brainstorming, team-work, etc.

The Nobel Prize laureate in Economy Michael Friedman (1955) wrote that reforming education according to the laws of market economy would stimulate competition and thus provide the variety of schools and the quality of education. According to Dudley-Marling & Baker (2012): Educational policies in the US and in other countries around the world have been strongly influenced by market-based reforms including accountability, high-stakes testing, data-driven decision-making, charter schools, deregulation, and competition among schools. (p.1) Contemporary society positions itself as democratic. According to Dewey (1916), “a democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experiences”. The best way to develop democratic mentality in society is through education. Educational institutions play a leading role in raising democratic citizens and forming a democratic culture (Apple & Beanne, 2011). In democratic classrooms teachers learn to treat students as partners in knowledge creation and students learn how to make decisions autonomously, how to lead, how to tolerate different opinions, and how to collaborate with and respect the rights of others in the classroom (Matusova, 1997).

First published in Portuguese in 1968, one of the foundational texts in the field of critical and humanistic pedagogy, Pedagogy of the Op-pressed was translated and published in English in 1970.He writes: “Teachers and students (leadership and people), cointent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge” (Freire, 2000, p. 69). According to him, “education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students” (ibid, p. 72). In the traditional, “banking” education (the one in which teacher’s bank of knowledge is poured into the student’s bank of knowledge), according to Freire, the students are “receiving objects”. In the new, “liberational” education, the students are critical thinkers, they are active and committed participants of the educational process, knowl-edge and learning strategies are shared by them. Dialogical relations between teacher and students, as well as among students are essential. Problem-posing is the most important activity: Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers.

Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from 10. Edmund Husserl, Ideas—General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London, 1969), pp. 105-106. 84-PAULO FREIRE the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. (ibid, p. 83) According to constructive psychology, knowledge is constructed: • physically by active learning; • symbolically by the creation of mental representations • socially by sharing understanding; and, • theoretically by explaining things having incomplete understanding. (Tom, 2015, p 23)

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The articles in this issue deal with the following aspects of student-centered teaching: The article by Bunyamin Çelik “Comparing the Effectiveness of Form-Focused and Meaning-Focused Instructions in EFL Teaching” deals with the need to take into consideration the foreign language students’ need in using not only meaningfocused teaching (which is widely ad-vocated today, due to the authentic and communicative approach), but also the formfocused approach.

Maia Chkotia’s article “The Case of Mobile-Assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia” views mobile-assisted language learning as a student-centered way of learning, which develop students’ autonomous working skills and prepares students for life-long learning. Learning with mobile devices lets students study anywhere, and removes the classroom boarders.

Gulseren Sekreter’s and Natela Doghonadze’s article “Applications of Goal Theory to Teaching Mathematics” emphasizes the need for the students to have a mastery-approach goal orientation, which requires from students to take the responsibility for their own learning. The performance approach is criticized, as being teacher-centered (even, coursecentered).

In Aziza Kavlu’s article “The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability” one of the most popular student-centered method – projects – is tested for efficiency for reaching reading. It is shown that projects support knowledge co-construction, they develop team work, sharing and developing higher-order cognitive strategies, etc.

Nino Tvalchrelidze’s article “The importance of raising teacher awareness of culture-sensitive English language teaching” underlines the need to take into consideration students’ native culture while teaching English. The comparison of native and target cultures enable students to develop their critical thinking skills, so important for the student-centered education.

Tahsin Yahci’s article “Undergraduate Iraqi Students’ Awareness of Social Mobile Media and Their Attitudes to Mobile Learning”, like Maia Chkotua’s article, underlines the role of mobile devices in autonomous learning.

References: Apple, M., & Benne, J. (2011). Demokratik okullar [Democratic schools]. (Çev.) M. Sarı, Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, Macmillan.

Dudley-Marling, C. & Baker, D. (2012). The effects of market-based school reforms on students with disabilities. Disability Study Quarterly, 32 (2), p. 1-19.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th ed. Continuum: New York – London.

Friedman, M. (1955). The Role of Government in Education. In R.A. Solo (Ed.), Economics and the Public Interest. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, p. 127-124.

Matusova, S. (1997). Democratic values as a challenge for education. European Education, 29(3), p. 65-76

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Comparing the Effectiveness of Form-Focused and Meaning-Focused Instructions in EFL Teaching Bunyamin ÇELIK*

Abstract While meaning-focused instruction is based on the idea that learners learn the second language if they follow the natural principles of �rst language learning, form-focused instruction pays much attention to linguistic form. Two groups were formed and had a five-week extensive reading program in this study. The control group received meaning-focused instruction and experimental group underwent form-focused instruction.

The study found that both form-focused and meaning focused instruction are to a certain degree effective for the increase of vocabulary, grammar and reading proficienc . Though to some extent more efficient than form-focused instruction, meaning focused instruction alone will not greatly raise the mentioned skills, thus a recommendation is given to apply both approaches and to study the efficiency of the mixed approach.

Keywords: Form-focused, language learning, language development, meaning-focused

Introduction Language acquisition is composed of three elements: form, meaning and function (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). Form is how language elements are used in speech or writing.

Meaning is the expression of the word through a language.

Function shows the goal why a language unit is used, such as for offers, requests, etc While teaching reading the question whether learners should give attention to meaning or form arises. Instruction for the second language acquisition is divided into form-focused and meaning-focused instructions (Loewen, 2010).

While form-focused instruction places emphasis on accuracy, meaning-focused instruction places emphasis on fluenc .

The problem is that, when we teach ESL, more reading is actually done by the students than just what is part of educational process, while in ESL, except the most motivated and conscientious students, all reading that is done by students is part of educational process. Thus, reading practice is not abundant enough, to support the development of vocabulary and grammar skills’ development. It makes the choice of dominant approach so important. This article investigates whether form-focused or meaning-focused instruction contributes more to language development of EFL learners.

1. Literature Review 1.1. Meaning-focused and form-focused instruction Rich input and meaningful use of second language in context which leads to incidental acquisition of the second language is defined as meaning-focused instruction (Norris & Ortega, 2001, p.160). Meaning-focused instruction is based on the idea that learners learn the second language if they follow the natural principles of first language learning (Long & Robinson, 1998). Long defines focus on meaning instruction as (1998, p.18): Although the terminology has varied, some have gone so far as to claim that learning an L2 incidentally or implicitly from exposure to comprehensible target language samples is sufficien for successful second or foreign language acquisition by adolescents and adults, just as it appears to be for firs language acquisition by young children.

For instance in natural approach and direct method learners acquire the second language in a natural way. By the same token, meaning-focused instruction stems from teaching the second language naturally. Errors are tolerated and are rarely corrected by the teacher but this view of meaningfocused approach to reading has been criticized because language produced by the learner without any correction will bring about fossilized errors (Seedhouse, 1997).

When learners are engaged in meaning-focused activi-

* MA, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq.

E-mail: celikbey78@hotmail.com

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ties, besides the development of reading skills they enhance language acquisition. Meaning-focused activities bring about “gaining content matter knowledge, skill improvement and enjoyment” (Nation, 2001, p.8). In the same vein, Krashen (1989) argues that meaning-focused reading helps learners build vocabulary. In meaning-focused instruction “learners are usually not specifically taught the strategies, maxims and organizational principles that govern communicative language use but are expected to work these out for themselves through extensive task engagement” (Celce-Murcia, Dornyei & Thurrell, 1997, p. 141). Williams (1995, p.12) puts forward the characteristics of meaning-focused instruction as: • They emphasize using authentic language.

• They emphasize tasks that encourage the negotiation of meaning between students, and between students and teacher.

tioned criteria: (i) that learners engage with the meaning of a structure before paying attention to its form, through tasks that ensure that target forms are crucial to the successful completion of the tasks; (ii) that instruction in a particular form occurs as a result of analysing learner needs; (iii) that learners’ attention be drawn to a form briefly yet noticeably, “thus achieving a difficul balance between unobtrusiveness and salience”.

Table 2: Major characteristics of focus on form instruction on

• They emphasize successful communication, especially that which involves risk taking.

• They emphasize minimal focus on form, including: (a) lack of emphasis on error correction, and (b) little explicit instruction on language rules.

• They emphasize learner autonomy.

Table 1: Major characteristics of meaning-focused instruction

Ellis et al., (2001, p.41-42) puts forward the characteristics of focus on form instruction as: • It occurs in meaning-centered discourse.

• It is observable, i.e. it occurs interactionally.

• It is incidental, i.e. it is not preplanned.

• It is transitory.

• It is extensive, i.e. it attends to several different forms in the context of a single lesson.

a

I summarized the major characteristics of meaning-focused instruction in table 1. Form-focused instruction pays much attention to linguistic form but it has been seen that learners who have been good at grammatical structures are unable to communicate effectivel . Yet supporters of meaning-focused instruction are of the opinion that language teaching should be implemented to develop communicative competence which automatically entails both grammar as well as discourse and strategic competence (Canale & Swain, 1980). Form-focused instruction is defined as “any planned or incidental instructional activity that is intended to induce learners to pay attention to linguistic form” (Ellis, 2001, p.2). Long and Robinson define focus on form as (1998, p.23) Focus on form often consists of an occasional shift of attention to linguistic code features by the teacher and/or one or more students-triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production.

I summarized the major characteristics of form-focused instruction in table 2.

Norris and Ortega (2001, p.167) state that instruction may be regarded as form-focused if it meets the below-men-

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Advocates of form focused instruction believe that learners cannot accomplish high level of linguistic competence without form focused instruction, and meaning focused instruction is merely not enough to enable learners to gain linguistic competence.

Accuracy has been considered as essential conditions for effective second language learning by advocates of form focused instruction so linguistic elements have been given priority in form focused instruction. Doughty and Williams (1998) state that “it is likely that focus on form can enhance lexical acquisition. And there is mounting evidence that, in the acquisition of lexical items, as with that of grammatical structures, some interaction is helpful” (p.212). In other words through interaction word and vocabulary knowledge will be reinforced and learners will gain better understanding of how to use the language accurately.

Doughty (2001) points out that “the factor that distinguishes focus on form from other pedagogical approaches is the requirement that focus on form involves learners’ briefl y and perhaps simultaneously attending to form, meaning and use during one cognitive event” (p. 211). Therefore learners’ attention is drawn to form and communication simultaneously. Learners through this method have a chance to study the grammatical patterns.

In focus on form instruction learners learn grammar de-

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ductively and they apply the rules they have learnt to oral production (Nishimura, 2000). However, focus on meaning has been criticized by some researchers because mere exposure to the second language without knowledge of grammar will not lead learners to produce the second language accurately; moreover, learners need to know their mistakes therefore errors should be corrected as soon as they occur (Doughty &Williams, 1998; Higgs & Clifford, 1982; Skehan, 1996; Swain & Lapkin, 1995; White, 1987). Furthermore some grammatical patterns are difficul to comprehend because it occurs in contrast with the learners’ mother tongue so these rules require detailed explanation so that learners can understand them properly (White, 1987; Sheen, 2003). This view shows that meaning and form should be presented to learners in an integrated way because “some sort of noticing and consciousness-raising to target grammar structures in input, and feedback on errors during language use in meaningful communicative activities would facilitate the acquisition of language” (Uysal & Bardakci, 2014, p.2).

(focus on forms) instruction is useful, when learners are having a difficulty about a specific patte

1.2 Focus-on-form vs. Focus-on-forms

Table 4: Major characteristics of focus on forms instruction

A focus on form entails a focus on the formal elements of the language; whereas focus on forms is limited to such a focus, and focus on meaning exclude it. In focus-on-forms instruction, grammar rules are explained explicitly as isolated units and in a sequential manner. Immediate feedback is provided that is an error is corrected right away. Focus on forms instruction is studied in a sequence of “presentation of a grammatical structure, its practice in controlled exercises, and the provision of opportunities for production-PPP” (Ellis, Basturkmen & Loewen, 2002, p. 420). However focus-onforms has been found boring by the learners in that its being teacher centered does not give an opportunity to learners to communicate in the target language.

I summarized the major characteristics of focus on forms instruction in table 4.

Long (1991) distinguished form-focused instruction as focuson-form and focus-on-forms. While focus on form emphasizes meaning-oriented language use, focus-on-forms emphasizes teaching linguistic forms in isolation (Szudarski, 2012). Ellis (2001) distinguishes form focused instruction as incidental and planned form focused instruction. In incidental form focused instruction learners rather than specific samples produce general samples of language and planned form focused instruction focuses on linguistic form selected earlier.

I showed types of form-focused instruction according to Long (1991) in table 3.

Table 3: Types of form-focused instruction according to Long

Focus on forms is the instruction “in which language features are taught according to a structural syllabus that specifies which features are to be taught and in which sequence” (Spada & Lightbown, 2008, p.185). Long and Robinson define focus on forms instruction as (1998, p.16) The learner’s role is to synthesize the pieces for use in communication. Synthetic syllabi, together with the corresponding materials, methodology, and classroom pedagogy, lead to lessons with a focus on forms. Pedagogical materials and accompanying classroom procedures are designed to present and practice a series of linguistic items, or forms.

Grammar rules are presented to the learners in a systematic way in focus on forms. Focus on forms emphasizes language structures selected earlier which are or not contextualized. Doughty and Williams (1998, p.4) stress that “focus on form and focus on forms are not polar opposite in a manner that form and meaning have been regarded.

Focus-on form is the instruction, which focuses on communicative activities, but in case of a need the teacher helps the learners to master it accurately. Isolated form-focused

1.3 Incidental vs planned form-focused instruction Ellis (2001) distinguishes form-focused instruction as incidental and planned form-focused instruction. In incidental form-focused instruction learners rather than specific samples produce general samples of language and planned form-focused instruction focuses on linguistic form selected earlier. Language is learned when such necessity arises (spontaneously, in case of a communication problem).

When learners do not understand a specific form the teacher draws their attention to. When learners make errors, the teacher provides feedback to the learner in an implicit way.

For instance, a learners says “I doed my homework”, and the teacher repeats the error in an exaggerated intonation and gives the correct utterance and says “I did my homework”. Learners pay attention to meaning, and the activities are implemented for communicative purposes, so that language is learned in a natural way.

In planned form-focused instruction learners reinforce a specific form through several examples in the target language, but this is not implemented overtly. It is done in three different ways (Ellis, 2001) a. explicit correction; the teacher corrects the leaner’s mistake overtly b. metalinguistic feedback; the teacher gives the learner information about the form of the learner’s utterance c. elicitation; the teacher tries to get the correct form

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from the learners The main difference between incidental and planned form-focused is “with incidental form-focused, various linguistic forms, namely grammatical, lexical, phonological and pragmatic, compete for the learner’s attention, whereas with planned form-focused, the teacher can select the linguistic form to which the learner should pay attention” (Ollerhead & Oosthuizen, 2005, p.65).

I showed types of form-focused instruction according to Ellis (2001) in table 5.

Table 5: Types of form-focused instruction by Ellis (2001)

from university administration was obtained. The tuition at university undergraduate courses is done in English, although English is a foreign language for the students. This is why a high level of English skills has to be formed in the Preparatory school, which will enable the students to learn their content-matter in English. The students in both groups (20 people in each) were chosen randomly among the volunteers, no additional criteria were applied in forming the groups. It was assured that all learners had the same level of language proficiency to obtain credible results therefore participants were selected from elementary level learners.

The learners were informed that an experiment was going on and that anonymous results would be used only for research purposes and would not harm them in any way. Their consent for participation was received. Also they knew that they could drop out of the experiment if they found it inappropriate for them. None of the, however, used this opportunity.

2.3 Procedure and Data Collection

1.4 Integrated teaching of meaning and form All the above approaches have advantages and disadvantages and correspond to certain educational situations.

Eventually, when meaning and form are integrated “learning will be faster, quantity produced will be greater, and contexts in which the rule can be applied will be extended” (Rutherford, 1987, p.26). Many studies have proven that when grammatical features and communicative activities are presented together, it is better for learners’ second language proficiency because learners through this integrated approach will stand a better chance practicing the grammatical rules they have learnt which will have a long-lasting effect on second language learning (Harley, 1998; White, Spada, Lightbown & Ranta, 1991, Wright, 1996). Grammar knowledge and practice are essential components of second language learning. While form-focused instruction will enable learners gain grammar knowledge, meaning-focused instruction will help learners communicate in the second language. When form and meaning are integrated learners will have the chance of learning the second language in a natural way. Grammar skills that learners gain will be reinforced through communicative activities, such as paraphrasing some statements from the read text, helping peers to understand them better.

2. Research Methodology 2.1 Design of the Study This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods at the same time. Qualitative approach has been used in this study to draw meaningful results from examination scores.

Quantitative analytical approaches enable to report data results in numerical terms which help measure the credibility of research findings. The numerical data were obtained from tests which students wrote on a regular basis (once a week).

2.2 Sample Selection The target population of this study is students of Ishik University Preparatory school, correspondingly a permission

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Learners in their reading classes participated in a five weekresearch in this study. While the control group’s instruction was meaning-focused, the experimental group’s instruction was form-focused, sometimes planned and sometimes incidental. The time spent on reading activities in both groups was equal, to provide the comparability of the approaches.

Learners in the control group were provided exposure to meaningful use of the target language and then were expected to work linguistic elements out by themselves while reading. The activities included only meaning (true/false/no evidence, choose the correct answer, ask and answer the questions, information gap, etc.). When students made language mistakes, teacher did not emphasize or correct them.

Only meaning mistakes were dealt with.

Learners in the experimental group paid attention to linguistic elements so accuracy was highlighted. Learners were taught lexical and grammatical knowledge to enhance language development. Sometimes before the text was read, and sometimes in the process of reading the text, when comprehension problems arose.

The mistakes were corrected by the lecturer. The lecturer explained unfamiliar words and grammatical rules so language instruction was provided. They also worked on the meaning of the texts, so they also fulfilled some true/false/no evidence, choose the correct answer, ask and answer the questions, information gap, etc. But their number was fewer, as students spent tangible time on working with vocabulary and grammar.

Students in both groups had weekly tests including pure reading comprehension, vocabulary, oriented-reading comprehension, and grammar-oriented reading comprehension questions. Questions in the test were prepared from the graded readers learners read weekly. Their scores were analyzed to see how their language development was changing and how the dynamics of results in the two groups differed.

2.4 Findings In table 6 and 7 weekly test scores of learners were provided. Vocabulary-oriented, grammar-oriented and pure reading comprehension test scores of both groups in all weeks along with averages are shown.

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Table 6: Results of Learners in the Control Group

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Table 7: Results of Learners in the Experimental Group

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Figure 1: Vocabulary-oriented Test Scores of both groups

Figure 2: Grammar Test Scores of both groups

Figure 3: Pure Reading Comprehension Test Scores of learners

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Figure 1 demonstrates the averages of vocabulary-oriented test scores of learners in both groups. It was found that learners who had form-focused instruction achieved more stably: their vocabulary skills’ level was constantly growing (71.7  77.9; growth by 6.2 or 8.6%). In the control group the results were also growing, but with a certain fluctuation (between week 3 and 4). The growth was from 62.1 to 69.1 – by 7 points or 11.2%. The control group did a little bit better than the experimental group.

Figure 2 demonstrates the averages of grammar-oriented test scores of learners in both groups. It was found that learners who had form-focused instruction achieved better: from 70.5 to 76.4 or by 5.9 points (8.4%). The control group

results were changing stably from 61.8 to 69.5 or by 7.7 points (10.9%). The control group did a little bit better than the experimental group.

Figure 3 demonstrates the averages of reading comprehension test scores of learners in both groups. Both groups revealed a growing tendency: from 62.5 to 69.4 in the control group – by 6.9 points (11.0%) and from 71.8 to 77.2 – by 5.4 points (7.5%) in the experimental group. The control group again did a little bit better than the experimental group.

In tables 8-13 the paired samples statistics is shown, to see the difference among the same group’s results during the experiment and to decide how trustworthy the results are.

Table 8: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ vocabulary skills week 1 and week 5 results (experimental group)

Table 9: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ vocabulary skills week 1 and week 5 results (experimental group)

Table 10: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ reading skills week 1 and week 5 results (experimental group)

Table 11: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ vocabulary skills week 1 and week 5 results (control group)

Table 12: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ grammar skills week 1 and week 5 results (control group)

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Table 13: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ reading skills week 1 and week 5 results (control group)

Table 14: Vocabulary skills – significance of results - -test

Table 15: Grammar skills – significance of results - -test

From tables 8-10 we see that standard deviations are not high (all below 10) and do not change much (increases by about 4 points for vocabulary and grammar skills and decreases by decimals for reading skills), which proves that the group composition is quite even during the whole experiment and it could not have had an impact on the mean results. The standard error is also low (below 2) and also could not have influenced the results reliability.

From tables 11-13 we see that standard deviations are

not high (all below 10) and do not change much (decreases by about 2 points for vocabulary and grammar skills and decreases by decimals for reading skills), which proves that the group composition is quite even during the whole experiment and it could not have had an impact on the mean results. The standard error is also low (below 2) and also could not have influenced the results reliability.

In tables 14-16 the independent samples’ T-test was used to determine if two sets of data are significantly diffe -

Table 16: Reading skills – significance of results - T-test

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ent from each other/ The significance (0.000) is less than 0.05, which means that the difference is statistically significant. So the control group did do better, however, not so much The significance (0.000) is less than 0.05, which means that the difference is statistically significant. So the control group really better, however, not so much.

The significance (0.000) is less than 0.05, which means that the difference is statistically significant. So the control group really better, however, not so much

3. Discussion and Conclusions Based on the literature analysis above, I summarized the advantages and the disadvantages of both approaches in table 14.

It is easy to see that both types of instruction are advantageous in one way and disadvantageous in another. Besides, there is no meaning without form, so the separation of the two approaches in our experiment was just conditional,

done in order to assess their efficienc (when separated) and to see whether any of them was yielding more success.

Our experiment has shown that both groups increased their results during the experiment: • concerning vocabulary skills, the experimental group’s results increased from 71.7 to 77.9 - growth by 6.2 or 8.6%, and the control group’s results grew from 62.1 to 69.1 – by 7 points or 11.2%.

• concerning grammar skills, the experimental group’s results increased from 70.5 to 76.4 or by 5.9 points (8.4%), and the control group’s results grew from 61.8 to 69.5 or by 7.7 points (10.9%).

• concerning reading skills, the experimental group’s results increased from 71.8 to 77.2 – by 5.4 points (7.5%) and the control group’s results grew from 62.5 to 69.4 in the control group – by 6.9 points (11.0%) So both groups did reasonably well. However, in none of the groups the increase was dramatic, which makes us think that a mixed approach should be more efficien (of course, additional research is needed to make the decision).

We saw that the control group was to a certain degree

Table 17. Advantages and the disadvantages of meaning and form focused instruction

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more successful (and the differe ce between groups’ results proved to be statistically signific nt), however, the difference was not really so big as to ignore the benefits of the formfocused instruction.

Thus, the recommendation that may be given based on the study is to apply both approaches – sometimes the form-focused and sometimes – meaning focused, to involve the linguistic, communicative and psychological comfort for students.

References Baleghizadeh, S. (2010). Focus on form in an EFL communicative classroom, Novitas-ROYAL (Research on Youth and Language), 4 (1), p. 119-128.

Canale, M. & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, p. 1-47.

Celce-Murcia, M., Dornyei, Z., & Thurrell, S. (1997). Direct approach to L2 instruction: A turning point in Communicative Language Teaching? TESOL Quarterly, 31, p. 141-152.

Doughty, C. & Williams, J. (1998). Pedagogical choices in focus on form. (p. 197-261). In C Doughty & J Williams (eds).

Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Doughty, C. (2001). Cognitive underpinnings of focus on form (p. 206–257). In: Robinson, P. (Ed.), Cognition and Second Language Instruction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

ing. Vol II. (p. 576-592). New York: Routledge.

Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg, & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 39–52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Long, M., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research, and practice. In C. Doughty and J. Williams (Eds.).

Focus on Form In Classroom Second Language Acquisition.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I. S. P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nishimura, K. (2000). Effective ways of communicative instruction in the Japanese EFL classroom: Balancing fluency and accuracy. Retrieved September 15, 2015 from http:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442297.pd Norris, J. Ortega, L. (2001). Does type of instruction make a difference? Substantive findings from a meta-analytic review. Language Learning, 51, Supplement 1, p.157-213.

Ollerhead, S. Oosthuizen, J. (2005). Meaning-focused vs form-focused L2 Instruction: Implications for writing educational materials for South African learners of English. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 36, p.59-84.

Rutherford, W.E. (1987). Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching. NY: Longman, Pearson Education.

Seedhouse, P. (1997). Combing form and meaning. ELT Journal, 51(4), p. 336-344.

Sheen R. (2003). Focus on form-a myth in the making? ELT Journal, 57(3), p.225-233.

Skehan P 1996. A framework for the implementation of taskbased instruction. Applied Linguistics, 17(1), p.38-62.

Ellis, R. (2001). Investigating form-focused instruction. Language Learning, 51, (1), p. 1-46.

Spada, N.; Lightbown, P. (2008) Form-focused instruction: isolated or integrated? TESOL Quarterly, 42(2), p. 181-207.

Ellis, R., Basturkmen, H., & Loewen, S. (2001). Preemptive focus on form in the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35(3), p.407 – 432.

Szudarski, P. (2012). Effects of meaning- and form-focused instruction on the acquisition of verb-noun collocations In L2 English. Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research. 1(2), p. 3 – 37.

Ellis, R., Basturkmen, H. & Loewen, S. (2002). Doing focuson-form. System, 30(4), p.419-432.

Harley B. (1998). The role of focus-on-form tasks in promoting child L2 acquisition. (p. 156-174). In C Doughty & J Williams (eds). Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Higgs, T. & Clifford, R. (1982). The push toward communication. (p. 57-79). In T Higgs (ed). Curriculum, Competence and the Foreign Language Teacher. Skokie, IL: National Textbook Krashen, S. (1989). We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: additional evidence for the input hypothesis.

Modern Language Journal, 73, p.440–464.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Long, M. (1991). An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research. New York: Longman.

Laufer, B. (1998). The Development of Passive and Active Vocabulary in a Second Language: Same or Different? Applied Linguistics, 12, p. 255-271.

Loewen, S. (2010). Focus on form. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching And Learn-

Swain M & Lapkin S. (1995). Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: Astep towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 16(3), p.371-391.

Uysal, H.H. & Bardakci, M. (2014). Teacher beliefs and practices of grammar teaching: Focusing on meaning, form, or forms? South African Journal of Education, 34 (1), p. 1-16.

White, L. (1987). Against comprehensible input: the input hypothesis and the development of second language competence. Applied Linguistics, 8(2), p.95-110.

White, L., Spada N., Lightbown, P. & Ranta, L. (1991). Input enhancement and L2 question formation. Applied Linguistics, 12(4), p.416-432.

Williams, J. (1995). Focus on form in communicative language teaching: Research findings and the classroom teacher. TESOL Journal, 4, p. 12 – 16.

Wright R. (1996). A study of the acquisition of verbs of motion by grade 4/5 early French immersion students. Canadian Modern Language Review, 53, p.257-280.

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The Case of Mobile-assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia Maia CHKOTUA *

Abstract Mobile learning is one of the developing areas in educational field. Power of computers and laptops has changed the way learning happen and made it easy to access all materials and resources. A rapidly growing amount of literature in the area of mobile learning depicts the increasing use of mobile technologies for learning. Mobile phones as a new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. The main aim of the study was to find out university students’ attitudes towards mobile learning in Georgia and the potential of it to enhance the English language proficienc . The methodology used for the study was an online questionnaire. The results revealed that most of the respondents have positive attitudes towards mobile learning and believe that mobile phones could be used to enhance the English language proficienc .

Keywords: English language, language learning, mobile learning

Introduction The digital age is characterized by the rapid growth of information and communication technologies. Among all communication mediums, mobile devices, such as as cell phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and smartphones are very effective, as there is no need for language learners to be in class or to sit at a computer to receive learning materials. Therefore, educators have been attempting to provide a learning environment through mobile devices and aiming at developing mobile learning (m-learning) tools for educational purposes (Miangah & Nearat, 2012). As the demand of acquiring foreign languages increases and people’s free time decreases, mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) offers an effective solution. This paper focuses on finding out the suitability of m-learning among the university students in Georgia, Tbilisi by selecting the target audiences as university students of the BA cycle.

Mobile Learning and Its Characteristics There is no proper definition of mobile learning, as many authors have derived with various definitions. The understanding of mobile learning will itself influence the progress and direction of mobile learning and its perception and acceptance by the wider educational community. According to Traxlor (2005, p.262), mobile learning is “any educational provision where

the sole or dominant technologies are handheld or palmtop devices”. This definition may mean that mobile learning could include mobile ‘phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and their peripherals, perhaps tablet PCs and perhaps laptop PCs, but not desktops in carts and other similar solutions’ (ibid, p. 263).

Few studies have been concentrated on identifying the use of mobile technologies in use of English language learning. A study done by Al Aamri and Kamla Sulaiman is an example of it. They have studied the current use and practices of mobile phones in the process of learning English Language

by Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) students. The existing uses and practices were identified through a questionnaire and it was stated that students use mobile phone in learning, but in a very limited way (Aamri& Suleiman, 2011). Another study has been done by Burston (2011) on realizing the potential of mobile learning for language learning by identifying the obstacles in mobile learning, such as intrusiveness, cost, practical and technological constrains and theoretical & pedagogical foundations. In sum, as mobile phone features have increased, while their cost decreased, attention has increasingly focused on them as an ultra-portable language learning tool. Above all, what has attracted interest in the use of mobile phones as learning devices is their potential to support anywhere and anytime (Burston, 2011).

The essential characteristic of the mobile devices for learning is their size and weight which make them portable.

* Assoc. Prof. Dr., International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia.

E-mail: mchkotua@ibsu.edu.ge

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Maia CHKOTUA , The Case of Mobile-assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia

Thus, in MALL there is no need for learners to sit in a classroom or at a computer to get the material. Keypad vs. touchpad, screen size and audio functions are significant as input and output capabilities. Depending on them, Miangah and Nearat (2012) considered mobile devices as extensions, but not substitution for existing learning devices, for not all learning contents and activities are applicable for mobile devices (Gay, Stefanone, Martin & Hembrooke, 2001).

Mobile phones, PDAs and smart phones offer various additional uses beside the phone and Short Message Service (SMS), including Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), voice messaging, video recording, cameras, internet and wireless access and, therefore, file-sharing between teachers and students and amongst students themselves. The obtained data, if needed, can be transferred easily to the PCs. Further, some of the PDAs and smart phones have a handwriting recognition feature. Nevertheless, the future success of these devices, according to Beatty (2003), is tied to their ability also to accommodate voice recognition. Such differen features in the market are compatible to the different needs of the users. Their costs also vary. But the basic activities can be performed by all mobile phones. Thus, teachers need consider the costs and devices.

Learners’ skills in using mobile devices must also be taken into consideration. Besides, learners’ prior knowledge and experience in using mobile devices for learning is crucial. Their attitudes towards learning via mobile devices play a vital role in learners’ output quality. The attributes of mobile devices as inexpensive and sophisticated ones have increased the number of its users. The World Bank conducted a study in 2012 that revealed that around three quarters of the world’s inhabitants have an access to a mobile phone (Russell &Cieslik, 2012).Urmia University (AL-Qudaimi, 2013, p.3) in Iran carried out another study indicating that 44% of mobile phone owners browse the internet via their mobiles. This manifests the potential of the application of such devices for learning and urges educators to provide tools and software for learners in teaching contexts.

M-learning and teaching The communicative potential of mobile devices can be seen as a crucial prerequisite for m-learning.

Thus, the application of m-learning in teaching draws the foreground of the sociocultural dimension. At the same time it impacts the cognitive dimension of learning, besides, it permits to decrease the amount of ready-to-use information (Pachler, 2009).Such effects of m-learning can occur in the process of either in-classroom or out-of-classroom application of mobile devices in teaching. In-classroom utilization it activates close interaction, conversation and decision-making among students due to m-learning activities, especially if students are divided into small groups. Such learning experience can hardly be achieved out of the classroom.

Numerous methods of teaching can be assisted by mlearning either inside or outside the classroom. One method is game-based learning, in which the materials are designated to be integrated with aspects of the physical environment.

In this kind of learning environment, activities are easier to fulfil by using the mobile technology serving as a link between a real world of knowledge and the visual world of the game.

For example, TimeLab is a game about the changes in the climate and its effects. Players succeed in getting informa-

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tion about the introduction of the possible new environmental laws via their mobile devices in different locations as they progress in the game. The results of the games are discussed in the classroom (Kukulska-Hulme, 2009). Another method that can be aided by m-learning is the collaborative approach, in which different learners exchange their knowledge, skills and attitudes through interaction. This encourages learners to support, motivate and evaluate each other and, therefore, obtain substantial amount of learning. Miangah and Nearat (2012) believe that learners who are good at using mobile phones would be successful in this respect. Besides their pedagogical utilization, mobile devices have been used as a flexible means of student-teacher communication for practical or administrative matters, such as course updates and reminders. Likewise, student-student synchronous and asynchronous communication can beheld via mobile devices to portray the social interaction that is mediated by cultural tools (Pachler,2009).

In addition to communication as a practical matter, mobile devices have been used as referrals to related websites and up-to-date instructional resources (Levy & Kennedy, 2005). As an example, Thornton and Houser (2003) developed a web page for PDAs and smartphones to support the English course.

Via collaborative, communicative, and knowledgeable activities and games with and supported by mobile devices, m-learning has the potential to meet the required conditions for effective learning, particularly as a process of cognitive and social development, whether occurring face-to-face, distance or online. Colpaert (2004) signifies that developing aMALL environment must precede deciding the role of mobile devices in the learning process. In other words, devices are basic equipment of learning on condition that the learner has adequate skills for using them. In this respect, Salaberry (2001) agrees with Colpaert and opposes ‘technology-driven pedagogy’, but he overstates by declaring that modern technologies have not offered pedagogical benefits as obvious as traditional second language instruction. Beatty (2003, p. 27) provides a further exaggerated caveat by claiming that “teachers need to be concerned about investing time and money in unproven technology” .A fair and reasonable opinion is stated

by Chinnery (2006), who considered technologies, including mobile devices, as instruments and instructional tools in language instruction, but not instructors. Hence, the effectiv use of any instructional tool in language learning requires a thoughtful application of second language pedagogy.

Mobile devices, as instruments, contain various activities to the different skills of language learning, such as vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, grammar, listening and speaking.

Different activities are supported and performed by mobile devices, depending on the used model and its facilities.

Method A mixed type of online questionnaire was implemented for university undergraduates for eliciting the data. The questionnaire was composed with the help of the survey software package (www.surveymonkey.com). Students’ responses were gathered within four weeks. A total of 48 questionnaires were completed and returned.

The objective of the questionnaire was to collect general information about the awareness of mobile learning, information related to the respondents’ mobile usage, learning prefer-

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ences, andattitudes towards mobile learning.

Results Question1: What is you gender?

1. Male

2. Female

Figure 3: Frequently used mobile features

Question 4: Do you use your mobile phone for browsing the Internet?

Figure 1: Respondents’ gender

The majority of the respondents (83.33%) taking part in the survey were female students compared to males (16.67%).

1. Yes, frequently 2. Yes, rarely 3. No, I am not aware of it 4. No, I do not have that feature 5. No, I am not interested in using the Internet

Question2: Do you have a mobile phone?

1. Yes

2. No

Figure 4: Internet browsing via mobile

Figure 2: Respondents’ mobile possession

All the respondents responded positively to the question concerning mobile phone possession. Consequently, the percentage was 100%.

Question 3: Circle the features you mainly use in your mobile phone.

1. Playing games 2. Watching video 3. Listening to music/radio phone calls 4. Taking photos

5. Sending MMS 6. Sending SMS 7. Giving

The results were as follows: none of the respondents skipped the question. The majority of the students (79.17%) responded that they use the mobile phone for sending SMS, while the minority (6.25%) uses it for sending MMS. 72.92% uses it for giving phone calls, 68.75% - for listening to music/ radio. More than half of the respondents (54.17%) use it for taking photos, 39. 58% - for watching a video and 22.92% uses it for playing games.

According to the results, all the respondents have the Internet browsing feature in their mobile phones and all of them are interested in it, whereas only 4.26% is not aware of browsing the Internet at all. 70. 21% frequently uses the mobile phone for browsing the Internet, while 25.53% does it rarely.

Question 5: Rank the following options with respect to your learning style.

1. Listening for instructions 2. Watching video 3. Role play 4. Games 5. Interacting with friends 6. Questions and answers 7. Text 4 respondents out of 48 skipped the question.

The goal of this question was to identify whether respondents were visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic learners.

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Maia CHKOTUA , The Case of Mobile-assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia

Figure 5: Respondents learning habits

32.56% of the respondents placed listening to instructions as their first preference regarding their learning styles.

29. 55% preferred text as learning style. The 3rdpreferred option was watching a video with 13.64% followed by interacting with friends (11.36%). Role play (6.82%), questions and answers (4.55%), and games (2.27%) were given the 5th, 6th and 7th places, respectively.

Figure 7: Respondents’ opinions about the preferred skills to enhance

Question 8: Are you aware of mobile learning?

1. Yes

2. No

Question 6: Does your English language knowledge affect your other studies?

1. Yes

2. No

Figure 8: respondents’ mobile learning awareness

When asking about the awareness of mobile learning, 80.00% of the respondents answered positively, while 20.00% - negatively.

Figure 6: Respondents’ opinions about English language effect on other subjects

When asking the question with regard to the impact of English language on other studies, 79.17% of the respondents feel that language knowledge affects their knowledge of other subjects, while only 20.83% of the students do not feel so.

Question 9: I believe mobile phones could be used to teach/learn English language.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

Question 7: Which of the language aspects would you like to enhance?

1.

2.

Reading Writing

3. Listening 4. Speaking

When asking the respondents their opinions about the language aspects they want to enhance, the result was as follows: 75% - speaking skill which follows with 47.92% of listening skill. Writing skill is preferred to be enhanced by 33.33%, while only 18.75% focuses on reading skill.

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Figure 9: Respondents’ expectance regarding mobile learning

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None of the respondents disagrees strongly with the idea that mobile phones could be used to teach/learn English language. 56.52% agree with the idea, but only 6.52% agree strongly with it. 32. 61% provided a neutral answer and only 4.35% disagree with the given idea.

Question 10: I would purchase a mobile with advanced features if it helped me to improve my English language learning.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

Figure 10: Respondents’ attitudes about purchasing a mobile with advanced features

As it was expected from the answers to the previous question, more than half of the respondents (51.11%) were ready to purchase a mobile with advanced features if it helped them in improving English language learning.

26.67% strongly agreed with the given idea, while 6.67% disagreed with it and 15.56% had neutral position.

Question 11: I would like to install a learning application in my mobile to improve my language proficienc .

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

Nobody disagreed strongly with the idea of installing a learning application in the mobile to improve language proficienc . The lowest percentage (4.35%) of the respondents had a neutral position regarding the statements. 6.52% disagreed with the statement, whereas the highest number (56.52%) agreed which was followed by 32.61% of the respondents strongly agreeing with it.

Question 12: I would pay for the Internet connection for my mobile if I could learn through it.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

Figure 12: Respondents’ attitudes on having additional expenses for the Internet connection

When asked the question about additional expenses for the Internet connection, 40.00% of the respondents agreed with the statement meaning that they would pay for the connection if it helped them to learn language through it. 26.

67% strongly agreed with the idea. A little bit lower number - 24.44% - had a neutral attitude towards the idea. Quite a low number of the respondents (6.67%) disagreed with the statement followed by 2.22% of the respondents disagreeing strongly. It is clear that students are so eager to use mobile applications to enhance their language proficiency that they are ready to have additional expenses for it.

Question13: Learning through mobile devices will help me to utilize my time productively.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

Figure 11: Respondents’ attitudes on installing a learning application

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

Figure 13: Respondents’ opinions about utilizing time productively

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Maia CHKOTUA , The Case of Mobile-assisted Language Learning among Undergraduate Language Learners in Georgia

An equal number of the respondents had a neutral (17.78%) and strongly agreeing (17.78%) position towards the idea. In contrast, the highest number of the students (53.33%) agreed with it, again supporting the importance of mobile learning. Only 11.11% disagreed with the statement and nobody (0.00%) disagreed strongly.

Question 14: I think I can improve my speaking skills through a mobile phone.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

through mobile phone

Responses to the statement that mobile learning will not provide any advantages for the learners were as follows: 42.22 % strongly disagrees with the statement, 13.33% disagreed, 24.44% had neutral positions, 17.78% agreed and only 2.22% agreed strongly. It is clear that the majority of learners are sure that mobile learning will provide advantages for them.

Conclusions This paper attempted to identify the learners’ preferences for mobile language learning in Georgia, although the research was a small-scale one. The analysis of the results revealed that most of the students were aware and had positive attitudes towards mobile learning believing that mobile phones could be used to enhance English language proficienc . The results showed that learners had a great desire to enhance it via mobile phones.

The conducted research has limitations (the number of participants), but it does reveal the general tendency and can be used as a basis for the future research.

Figure 14: Respondents’ opinions about improving speaking skills through mobile phone

When asked question 8 about the language skill the respondents wanted to improve, the majority (75%) preferred it to be the speaking skill. Consequently, in the given question the majority of the respondents (48.89%) agreed with the given idea. 31.11% had a neutral position, 11.11% strongly agreed and 8.89% disagreed with it. None of the respondents disagreed strongly with the idea that they could improve their English speaking skills through a mobile phone.

Question 15: I believe mobile learning will not provide any advantages for me.

1. Strongly agree 2. Agree 3. Neutral

4. Disagree 5. Strongly disagree

References Aamri, S.K.(2011), Theuse of mobile phones in learning English Language by Sultan Qaboos University students: Practices, attitudes and challenges: Canadian Journal on Scientifi & Industrial Research, 2(3). Retrieved July 25, 2015 from: http://stu.westga.edu/~bthibau1/MEDT%208484-%20Baylen/final%20report/13.pd AL-Qudaimi, K. (2013, May 14). Mobile-assisted language learning: Literature review. Retrieved July 23, 2015 from: https://www.academia.edu/6369026/Mobile-Assisted_Language_Learning_A_Literature_Review. pdf.

Beatty, K. (2003). Teaching and Researching ComputerAssisted Language Learning. England: Pearson Education Limited Burston, J. (2011). Realizing the potential of Mobile Phone Technology for Language learning.

The IALLT journal, 41(2). Retrieved July 24, 2015 from: http:// www.moblang.mobi/moblang.eu/Burston_RealizingPotentialMobilePhoneTechnologyForLanguageLearning_2011.pdf Chinnery, G. (2006). Going to the MALL: Mobile-assisted language learning. Language Learning and Technology, 10, 9-16. Retrieved July 26, 2015 from: http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num1/emerging/default.html Colpaert, J. (2004). From courseware to course wear? Computer Assisted Language Learning, 17(3-4), 261-266

Figure 15: Respondents’ opinions about improving speaking skills

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Gay, G., Stefanone, M., Martin, M., &Hembrooke, H. (2001).

The effects of wireless computing in collaborative learning environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 13 (2), 257-276

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Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2009). Will mobile learning change language learning? ReCALL 21 (2). p. 162.

Levy, M., & Kennedy, C. (2005). Learning Italian via mobile SMS. In A. Kukulska-Hulme & J.Traxler (eds.) Mobile learning: A handbook for educators and trainers (pp. 76-83).London: Taylor and Francis.

Miangah, T., & Nearat, A. (2012). Mobile-assisted language learning. International Journal of Distributed and Parallel Systems, 3 (1), 309-319 Pachler, N. (2009). Research methods in mobile and informal learning: Some issues. In G.Vavoula, N. Pachler, & A. Kukulska-Hulme (eds), Researching Mobile Learning: Frameworks, tools, and research designs (pp. 1-16). Switzerland: Peter Lang Russell, C., & Cieslik, N. (2012, July 17). Mobile phone assess reaches three quarters of planets population. The World Bank. Retrieved July 20, 2015 from http://www.worldbank. org/en/news/press-release/2012/07/17/mobile-phone-access-reaches-three-quarters-planets-population Salaberry, M. (2001). The use of technology for second language learning and teaching: A retrospective. The Modern Language Journal, 85, 39-56 Traxlor, J. (2005). Defining mobile Learning: IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2005: Retrieved July 20, 2015from: https://www.academia.edu/2810810/Defining_m bile_learning Thornton, P., & Houser, C. (2003). Using mobile web and video phones in English language teaching: Projects with Japanese college students. In B. Morrison, C. Green, & G. Motteram (eds.), Directions in CALL: Experience, experiments & evaluation (pp. 207-224). Hong Kong: English Language Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education Muhammet KARABAYIR *

Abstract The aim of this research is investigating the role and the mission of fairy tales for the elementary school children and finding out what kind of contribution they might have for pedagogical sphere in general. Four fairy tales and their pedagogical components have been studied. Brief summaries are presented. We tried to show that fairy tales, when selected carefully, play an important role in developing children individually and socially and thus can become an important aspect of children’s education. Children who are the main factor of the educational process may become more successful when they play an active role in this particular process rather than being a participant of the ‘classical’ teaching methods when the knowledge is being presented directly by the teacher. Fairy tales, which are one of the most important aspects of active involvement in learning, form a fundamental ground for children’s involvement in the process of acquiring knowledge. Children can identify themselves with a hero of a particular tale, thus having an opportunity to experience the events presented in that tale. This allows a child to gain permanent knowledge and decreases the possibility of forgetting the acquired information.

Keywords: Creative thinking, culture, education, folk fairy tales, harmonic personalities, Turkmen language learning / teaching, values

1. Introduction The goal of education is causing certain types of changes in human personality in order to contribute to his/her lifetime process in a positive way. There are various types of defin tions of education, which is one of the primary needs for humans. Education aims at bringing up an individual according to a certain plan and goal, protecting and developing his/her spiritual and physical health (Sezgin, 1991, p. 5).

Education, in its broader sense, prepares an individual for a civilized way of living, with all social processes involved within (Kale, 2001, p. 6).

thoughts, feelings and fantasies in an artistic and effectiv manner (Turkish Language Society, 1969, p. 621).

Human being is the central subject in literature as well as in education. Accordingly, there is a close link between literature and education. Time periods spent by mankind throughout its history have been studied in a multidimensional manner. These approaches examine the types of relationships that humans engage in with their surroundings.

The most important characteristics of human being that separates him/her from other living creatures are the ability of thinking and creative activity. Creativity is a feature that exists on all levels and reveals itself on all stages of a human life, it varies from everyday life to scientific activities, is a source of artistic masterpieces and is especially the way of behavior and attitude (Sünbül, 2002, p. 164).

Literature plays a crucial role for children and the process of their education, as they make their first steps in life. It helps young individuals in acquaintance with the environment which they live in. It also helps them in finding their own ways in life, in learning to know themselves, in changing their perspectives towards a right direction. Literature carries a great importance in the process of children’s education, as it encourages creative activities and develops them as harmonic individuals (Kantarcıoğlu, 1991, p.13).

Human being, possessing an ability of thinking and reflecting, can create perfect outcomes using his/her creativity.

One of the most important aspects that makes this kind of creative self-expression possible is literature.

Children and education, since the invention of their own abilities, have become an important aspect of human life and have gained even more significance throughout the history of mankind, creating the phenomena of “children’s literature”.

Literature is defined as a mastery of expressing one s

Children’s literature encompasses fantasies, feelings

* Inci Educational Consulting. Ankara, Turkey E-mail: karabayir1806@hotmail.com

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

and thoughts of a young individual, which are expressed orally and in written form. Fairy tales, stories, novels, reminiscences, biographic writings, journey writings, poetry, nature descriptions, etc. form the genre of children’s literature (Oğuzkan, 2000, p. 3).

One of the most important components of children’s literature are fairy tales, which are of a great significance for educational process. The colorful and magic world of fairy tales is the sphere, which children enjoy most of all. Fairy tales take children to the places unknown for them, transfer them to the world of wonders and miracles and make them experience the events and hero personalities of those stories.

Each of us has listened to the fairy tales told by our grandmothers sitting on their knees during the hours before falling asleep. Those very fairy tales have been born within the folk consciousness and have reached till nowadays passing from generation to generation orally. As Necati Birinci explains: “Fairy tales are the product of verbal folk literature, which tell us about ordinary and supernatural heroes and elves, jinns, titans, dragons and creatures like those“(Kantarcıoğlu, 1991, p. 13).

Fairy tales are basically the type of verbal genre in which we come across supernatural heroes and events; they are transmitted from old generations to the next ones and carry their specific features and characteristics (Oğuzkan, 2000, p.

17).

Fairy tales are generally based on “supernatural” events.

At the same time they contain some type of practical wisdom as well (Kantarcıoğlu, 1991, p. 16).

Fairy tale, which is actually an objective realm for the child to live in, makes a great contribution to their educational process. They teach children to love their parents and siblings, motherland, its nature, animals, to protect them and live in harmony with them.

At the same time, fairy tales are the primary source of the unreachable dreams and fantasies for children. They also carry significance for children in pursuing their aspirations and dreams, motivating them in achieving any particular goal. Due to this feature, fairy tales obtain a special role in the educational process.

Within the given research education is being studied in close relation with concepts like children’s literature, child and fairy tales. We have examined the role of Turkmen fairy tales deriving a certain type of a conclusion regarding the related topic. By examining the outcomes of our research we tried to give some recommendations as well.

1.1 Statement of the Problem Turkmen fairy tales have been less investigated from the perspective of children’s education.

1.2. Related Problems 2. What can be the contribution of fairy tales within the context of Turkmenian language learning process?

3. What is the level of children’s interest towards fairy tales?

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4. What can be the contribution of fairy tales in developing children’s abilities of creative thinking and harmonic personalities?

5. What are the contributions of fairy tales in language learning process?

6. What is the role of fairy tales in transfering the elemenet of culture from older generations to younger ones?

1.3. Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is finding out the functions and the importance of Turkmen fairy tales from the educational point of view.

1.4. The Significance of the Study Education, which is the sum of the past experiences of mankind, constitutes one of the crucial values. Attitudes and behavioral patterns of an individual within the environment that he/she lives in is closely related with the education obtained.

Education affects all the behaviours of an individual and their assessment as positive and negative.

Along with the progress of society, the recognition of significance of education has become a crucial point. So, accordingly, the importance assigned to it has increased dramatically, for all societies strive for improving their systems of education thus creating the ground for a better future.

The conditions of those societies which do not attach a primary significance to education is quite clear. The disability to reach the modern standards shared by other civilized nations and taking an active part in this process causes for underdeveloped nations problems like poverty, instability, terror etc. The most advanced and developed states are the ones which acknowledged the human being as the center of life itself, the ones which realized the impossibility of progress without education.

Children are the ones who carry particular nations to the future. Nations who are concerned with their own futures assign a great importance to their younger generations seeing them as the guarantee for their existence. As scientific world has discovered the importance of children, it has studied them from all perspectives creating specific types of approaches.

As the result of new findings the children’s education has gained a great significance (Oğuzkan, 2000, p. 26) In order for future generations to be healthy and reassuring, it is crucial to assign the necessary significance to the process of education, as it has become an undeniable aspect of human life in general. By applying spiritual and physical training, it is easier to understand the child’s role and function in life. Accordingly, permanent research is being conducted in order to develop new methods and techniques (Kantarcıoğlu, 1991, p. 17).

Especially the child’s harmonic attitude towards the values of the society which he/she belongs to is one of the most important inhibitory factors of the disappearance and degradation danger of these very values. One of the values which are taught to children by means of education is culture. As for literature, it appears as the means of transferring these values expressed in verbal and inscriptive elements of culture.

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Literary writings reflect and introduce the cultures of native and non-native nations building the bridge between their past and the future. It is a mirror which reflects the human being, his/her relations with the environment, other people, expectations, problems, common and distinctive points.

Among the general goals of literature there are aspects like settling the typical features and characteristics of a particular society, accepting the requirements of an epoch which society lives in. It opens perspectives for comprehension of good, beauty and righteousness, educates individuals for protecting past values while obtaining new ones.

Childhood is the most exciting period of human life. Children live in their own worlds and they would like others to live in the same world as well. During childhood individuals live in the magic realm of fairy tales and accordingly, perceive this very realm in terms of a fantasy world. This specific inner realm of a child coincides with the fantasy world of fairy tales.

For this reason fairy tales should be used in the process of children’s education which will contribute to the development of their creativity.

Within the given research the significance of fairy tales from the perspective of teaching children such concepts as kindness, beauty, human values, love of one’s nation and motherland, being loyal to the cultural values is being studied. Also such an aspect of fairy tales as favouring their native language, expressing feelings and thoughts in a proper manner by children has been explored. Other issues which we have investigated within the framework of the given work are: the place of fairy tales in the human life, types of tales, child’s interest towards fairy tales, the link between children and tales, the development of fairy tales within the literary framework, conclusions derived from fairy tales, contradictory points of views regarding fairy tales and characteristics that are expected from fairy tales.

1.5. Children’s education Childhood is a period in human life when the person is inclined to learning and being educated. A child becomes prepared for life with the help of his/her family, school and the environment he/she lives in, acquires the behavior patterns, customs and tastes. By means of this, he/she gets a chance to become a member of the society contributing to its functioning (Sünbül, 2002, p. 91).

Education helps family and teachers to bring up a harmonic individual, with healthy feelings, a proper mind and a strong body. Besides, the socialization of an individual helps them to be an equal member of a society. While realizing this process, individuals acquire all the necessary skills needed for socialization. The most important aspect in the process of socialization is cultural heritage. Culture provides the link between the past and the present, preparing the younger generations for the future life.

Educational program contributes in creating such a social web of interactions where the members of a society closely cooperate with each other in a harmonic manner and thus helping each other in direct or indirect ways. Such types of interactions, be it on an individual or on a collective level, makes it possible to create a particular system, based on traditions, moral and religious values, which are the basic elements of any educational system. Therefore, culture should be transmitted from older generations to younger ones continually (Sezgin, 1991, p. 66).

All nations strive to bring up their younger generations in accordance with their own system of values. This is why all nations have realized the role of education in protecting their existence and try to keep their younger generations from the negative effects of alienation to their own culture, history and traditions very sensitively (Sezgin, 1991, p. 68).

National culture consists of the practices of the older generations, traditions and written literature, language, music, religion, moral values, aesthetic and economic bearings (Gökalp, 1976, p. 96).

1.6. Children’s Literature in Turkmenistan Children’s literature consists of two basic components, which are children and education. Children are defined as the offsprings of human being between birth and adolescence. Besides the point of view which considers this period from birth to 15 years, in the United Nation’s Convention on Children’s Rights (UNICEF, 2015, article 1) it is defined in the following way: “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”, so it expands childhood age to eighteen years.

As for literature, it is the ability of expressing one’s thoughts, feelings and fantasies in an artistic manner. Literature depends on a particular language and language is the common value of a nation which carries a feature of national identity.

As for children’s literature, it is the literary sphere, which is intended for younger generation in order to develop their ability of comprehension, stimulating their power of imagination and general development, love for reading books. In other words: “Children’s literature is the genre which is intended to contribute to children’s educational process developing their abilities of imagination, emotional sides and mental activities presenting information in an entertaining manner” (Yalçın, 2008, p.100). According Yalçın, as a child has two types of needs – physiological (nutrition, shelter, hygiene, health...) and socio- psychological (achievement, love, security, affi ation to a particular group, belief, learning, aesthetic needs), literature meets the second type of needs. It is possible to put together the reasons why children need literature in the below given points: 1) Literature purifies the soul, refreshes it, gives power to life.

2) Literature helps a child in understanding and exploring life, makes him/her creative.

3) Literature helps a child in knowing him/herself and guides through life.

4) Literature entertains a child and, while doing so, it presents the needed knowledge.

5) Literature teaches children their native language in an artistic manner.

6) Literature meets children’s aesthetic needs.

7) Literature prepares a child for the future, teaches how to react to the surprises and challenges of life and how to stand against these challenges with dignity, becoming successful by striving.

All these apects are of a great significance from the ed cational point of view. Besides, taking these aspects into a consideration and examining them within the context of chil-

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

dren’s literature, it would not be wrong to assume that literature contributes to the child’s abilities development in adapting to life conditions, developing them spiritually, making them good citizens. Nations, which have realized this and give a special importance to the children’s literature, have created a good foundation for their younger generations. It should not be forgotten that today’s successful states are the ones which have paid a special attention to their children’s literature. These states have created literary works that reflec their own culture and traditions, transfering the knowledge of these components to their youth. From the beggining, literary works were verbally transmitted from generation to generations, nowadays the written form of these literary genres have gained actuality. In the late periods verbal literary works have been transfered into the written form with new elements added.

In the West children’s literature has started in terms of cradlesongs, fairy tales and so forth. Story and fairy tale tellers appear as the ones who protect and carry the values, culture and traditions of a particular society. The structure which originally constituted oral literature has been transfered to the written form and lately formed the genre of children’s literature. Literary patterns that formed the basics of the genre after transfering to the written form constitute question-answer tehcniques that are presented in terms of songs, rigmaroles and so forth. İt can be said that the children’s literary genre has gained importance because of the fact that the writings which were originally intended for adults were being read by children as well. Therefore, it can be said that the genre of children’s literature does not have a long past. In fact, there was no such literary direction which targeted younger generations in particular untill the 16th century neither in Turkey nor in other countries.

Turkmen children’s literature, just like other nations’ literatures, has emerged on the basis of verbal and classic periods, for Turkmens, because of their living style and because of the fact that they have started writing lately, have paid a great attention to the verbal literary genre. That is the reason why Turkmens have a very rich verbal literature which consists of eposes, fairy tales, puzzles, aphorisms, song-poems and so forth, which explain and reflect the life-style, traditions and customs of ordinary Turkmens. It would be very difficu to understand the current Turkmen children’s literature if we do not examine its past. If we take look at the history of Turkmen children’s literature, we would be able to figure out three basic sources which this literary genre is effected by and takes nourishment from. The first of these two factors is the genre which goes back to the time when literature was constituted from folk elements only, the second one is the period of classic Turkmen literature and written texts phase, and the third period, when the children’s literature of other nations has been translated into the Turkmen language (Tanriguliyev, 1980; Veliyev, 1988).

First one of these constitutes works which reflect the people’s artistic creativity, these are literary patterns which are of a very old origin, but are still being worked up nowadays.

Fairy tales are one of the most important products of this literary genre. They are the oldest examples of human artistic imagination. People have always reflected the issues of the epochs they lived in and preserved the fasiry tales till nowadays.

Fairy tales are of a great significance from the point of view of educating people and especially children, expanding

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and enriching their worlds of fantasies, giving them aesthetic enjoyment (Tanrıgulıyev, 1980: 45). Today intensive work is being done in this field of literature. Certainly, the above given information is not enough to view the Turkmen Children’s Literature exhaustively. It would be impossible to examine the whole historical procces of development of Turkmen children’s literature which has a rich and deep past of verbal and written literary works. The purpose of the given study is to introduce in general Turkmen children’s literature.

2. METHOD 2.1. Goal The given research aims at the examination of Turkmen fairy tales from the point of view of children’s education.

2.2. Data Turkmen fairy tales constitute the material for the research.

Their text will be analyzed.

2.3. Data Collection Tools The data of research has been collected by the researcher from the books and various publications regarding Turkmen fairy tales. The collected material has been translated into Turkish by the researcher.

2.4. Application of the Research The given research has been conducted in Turkmenistan.

Before collecting the fairy tales the method of collection of fairy tales and their sources had been chosen. During the research it was crucial to select exemplary (from the research topic viewpoint) fairy tales. The center of our research was the Ahal region of Turkmenistan and its main city Abadan.

After being collected and translated, fairy tales were printed. During our research we found out that the interest toward fairy tales has dicreased, especially because of the growing influence of television in our and children’s lives. Nowadays people prefer spending hours sitting in front of the TV screens instead of an old way of gathering together while reciting and listening to folk tales.

2.5. Data Analysis During our research four fairy tales had been collected. These fairy tales were recorded without any essential changes. The material obtained was examined according to criteria determined before as well as their contribution to the children’s education has been studied.

3. FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS In the given chapter issues like the role of Turkmen fairy tales in children’s education and the common criteria related with fairy tales are being examined.

As a rule, Turkmen fairy tales carry the typical charac-

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teristics of Turkish fairy tales. The smallest of the characters is stronger and smarter than any other character of a tale.

Animals play an important role in fairy tales and they speak human language in most of them. Characters are very strong.

The most intensivelly used numbers are “seven” and “fourty” (Kara, 1992: 669).

3.1. Texts of Fairy Tales and their Study from the Point of View of Children’s Education 3.1.1. Lazy Ovez Text of the tale In the old days there lived one poor man. He had a son named Ovez who used to spend all of his time at home doing nothing and living at the expense of his parents. Ovez lived in this way till the age of eighteen. People gave him a nickname Lazy Ovez and in the end Ovez, not being able to tolerate this attitude of people, said the following: ’’I am a human too, everybody is doing some kind of job earning their living. I should do the same!’’. After this Lazy Ovez joined caravans of tradesmen in order to earn some money and went travelling to other cities. In one of the days of his travelling Ovez reaches one city. After having a rest that day he went to the bazaar to earn some money as a porter. One of the merchants said: I will give a thousand manats monthly to him whoever asks for illegal money and will pay one Lira to him who wants legitimate money. The merchant was walking around screaming ’’May he come to me whoever wants to become my potter’’.

Ovez approached the merchant and asked for legal job of one manat salary. He stayed and worked at a merchant’s place for one month and got his salary of one manat.

Ovez searched for someone who was going to his village. He saw a caravan going to his village as he entered the bazaar. He went to do some shopping. As he could not buy anything with the money, he finally he bought a cat. He gave a cat to his acquaintances in order to take the cat to his home.

The leader of a caravan put the cat in a bag and took it to the village. Ovez went back to the merchant to continue his job.

After reaching one of the villages, the travellers decided to have a good rest. There were so many rats in that village that they even started to eat their food. Villagers were begging the leader of the caravan for the cat. Caravan’s leader replied: This cat is not mine, it was entrusted to me to get it to the home of one person. After this the elders of the village have gathered: Hey you, the leader of the caravan, we will give you the amount of gold that fills that very bag which you carry the cat in, you only sell us the cat, that is the only thing we want from you. After hearing this the leader of the caravan sold the cat for that amount of gold and took the gold to Ovez’s home, giving it to his parents. Ovez worked for one month earning another one lira. Again, he went to bazaar to buy something with that money but could not find anything that cheap. At last he bought one dog with that money and went to see someone who was going to his village. When he woke up the next day he saw a big dragon lying next to him.

Hey you, I am the only son of the leader of all dragons. A long has time passed since I left my father’s house, as I had a quarrel with him. Now, if you can reconcile us with each other, I will help you in fulfilling your dreams, otherwise I am going to eat you. Ovez got scared and, not knowing what to say, replied the following: “As you wish, I will reconcile you with your father. Following me immediately. After walking awhlie the dragon said to Ovez: While walking on the road, there will appear huge snakes, but don’t be scared by them, as long as

I am with you, they won’t harm you. After you reconcile me with my father he may ask you ‘’what do you want from me‘?

Then you ask for one ring that he has, don’t accept anything else from him. After walking a long distance they were met by huge dragons saying ‘’look, master’s son is coming‘’. Ovez and the dragon approached the King of Dragons greeting him respectfully. Afterwards Ovez started to speak: “Hey, the king of the dragons, you are the biggest and the strongest of all, you have only one son of yours and you are in conflict with him, this is not the way that the king of all dragons should behave towards his son, you are the one who should resolve disagreement if it occurs”. After these words the king of dragons got influenced and reconciled with his only son. The king of the dragons and his son got very happy with this and arranged a big feast which lasted three days and nights. After enjoying the feast Ovez decided to return to his village. The king said to him: “You were so kind to reconcile me with my only son and now I want to pay back with the same kindness, you can ask whatever you wish from me”. Ovez replied: “The only thing I wish is your wellbeing, but if you wish to pay me back with the same kindness, you can give me the ring that you have”. The king got very disappointed with the wish of Ovez, but eventually he gave his ring to him. Ovez said goodbye to the dragons and went back home. He explained all that he had experienced to his parents. Ovez told about the ring which he took from the king of the dragons and the cat which he had sent home. Afterwards Ovez sent his mother to propose to the daughter of the padishah. Padishah of that city was a merciless man and a tyrant. Ovez’s mother was afraid to go there. Ovez said to his mother: “Mother, go and propose to the padishah’s daughter, we will give them any amount of money that they will ask from us”. There were many who wanted to marry the padishah’s daughter. But as the padishah asked for too much money for that, nobody could afford to get engaged to her. Ovez’s mother went to the padishah’s palace with fear in heart and explained the reason of her visit to him.

The padishah got angry with her as she was from a poor family. He asked for a big amount of money from her: “Tomorrow when I wake up in the morning there should be a castle made of gold, within the castle there must be two parts where in one of them should be the season of Spring and in the other there should be Winter. If you fulfill this will of mine, your son may marry my daughter, otherwise you will die”. Having heard this, Ovez’s mother got very sad and returned home. Ovez asked his mother whether she was successful or not. Mother replied her son: “What are you asking about, son? The padishah asked for such a thing that it is impossible to get it done for you. And if we do not make it, he will kill us”. Ovez replied: “Mother, don’t you worry about that, you will see, not he but we will destroy him. We are able to do those things that the padishah has asked from us”. Ovez asked from the magic ring to get those things done and it was fulfilled immediately.

Ovez married the daughter of the padishah and arranged the wedding during seven days and nights. He arranged great feasts for the people. The padishah got surprised with this: “Various padishahs and nobles were not able to marry my daughter because of my requirements and now one poor man could get those things done taking my daughter away. There is some kind of mystery in this. So he started to think about it. The padishah’s daughter knew her father’s character very well and she started to warn her husband about the dangers that could come from him as he was going to punish Ovez.

The padishah wondered: how could a poor man get such difficult things done? His wife said to Ovez that it would be better if they change their living place and thus getting rid of the dangers that could come from the angry padishah. Ovez took his wife’s words into consideration, gathered all his belongings, took his dog with himself and commanded to his magic ring to take them to another place that would be safe for them. The

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

padishah learned about the magic ring which Ovez has got.

He ordered to bring the magic ring and promised an award of thousads of gold. One old woman heard of this: If you take me to the other side of the world, I will try to get it done. The padishah ordered to take this old woman to the other side of the world so she was taken there. An old woman lay down near Ovez’s house pretending to be ill. After a while Ovez saw this: “Mother, why are you sitting here crying?” She replied: “Who should cry if not me? I had one and only son who used to take care of me. The padishah ordered to kill him and then his men brought me here, to the other side of the world. Now I don’t know where to go and what to do. Ovez took her to his house saying that she would help his wife as she was bored there being alone. The old woman stayed in their house for a couple of days. They made good friends with each other. Ovez used to go hunting every day. One of the days the old woman told Ovez’s wife that he does not love her. “He does not trust you” – she said. “If he trusted you, he would give his magic ring to save”.Her words made the young woman’s heart wonder. When Ovez came home after hunting she asked him to give her the ring. Ovez gave his ring to her warning to care for it well. On the other day Ovez went hunting again. The old woman, seeing the magic ring on her fi ger, said: “You go and prepare water for a bath, a young and beautiful woman like you should always be clean”, so Ovez’s wife went to prepare a bath. After boiling the water for a bath, Ovez’s wife took the ring off her finger and put it under a pillow. The old woman was watching her. The magic ring was the only thing she was interested in. After a girl has left the ring, the old woman took the ring and put it on her finger: “Hey, magic ring! Kill Ovez immediately and make his wife deadly ill, than take me to the padishah!” Everything was done like the old woman commanded to the magic ring. The cruel woman gave the magic ring to the padishah and left for home, taking the award with her.

Ovez’s dog and cat decided to go to the other side of the sea in order to find their master’s magic ring. So the dog took the cat with him and went to the other side of the sea. Soon they learned that the ring is in the hands of the padishah. The cat told his friend to wait outside while he was going to enter the padishah’s palace. The dog agreed and stood waiting outside. The cat entered the palace and found the padishah. The padishah was sleeping and while sleeping he used to hide the magic ring under his tongue. As the cat stood thinking about how to get the ring from the padishah’s mouth, suddenly a mouse jumped out of his hole and was captured by the cat.

The cat said to him: “If you make the padishah sneeze, I will let you go. The mouse agreed. He soaked his tail and put it into padishah’s nose. After this the padishah sneezed intensely, throwing the ring out of his mouth. The cat captured the magic ring immediately and ran away. At that very moment the padishah woke up. He started to cry for the magic ring but could not find a solution. The dog and the cat took the ring back. The dog asked the cat to give him the magic ring. The cat said to him that he could drop the ring into the sea and it would be impossible to find the ring. Despite this, the dog took the magic ring from the cat and hid it under his tongue. When they approached the other part of the sea the dog forgot that he was hiding the magic ring under his tongue and while drinking water he dropped it into the sea. The dog did not notice this. As they came back the cat asked the dog: “My friend, give me the ring back”. As the dog remembered about the ring, he started to search for it, but could not find it anywhere. He said: “I think I must have dropped the ring into the sea while drinking some water. The cat got very upset with it: “All our endeavors turned out to be in vain”. Now we cannot empty the sea in order to find the magic ring which you have lost”. So they started to cry because of the loss. The dog

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said to his friend that there was no sense to get depressed and reminded that the level of the sea was lessening day by day. “Let us check the stomachs of those fish close to the coast”. As they started catching those fish and eating them, the cat found the magic ring in the stomach of one of them.

They got very happy and took the ring to Ovez’s wife immediately. Ovez’s wife commanded to bring Ovez back to life and heal herself. Ovez came to his wife and she was healed as well. They started from the beginning. Ovez’s wife explained all that had happened: that the dog and the cat brought the magic ring back, that the old woman had bad intentions towards them. Ovez said: “I have heard from the elders that the most precious thing in life is the one which is gained through big difficultie and it appeared to be true. I worked hard and bought this cat and dog and now they have helped us in a difficul situation”. He hugged them. Than he ordered to the magic ring to destroy the padishah and the old woman. “Bring all of the property of my parents here”. The magic ring fulfilled all the desires immediately. Afterwards they arranged a big party. People loved Ovez and he wife very much. Friends have overcome the difficulties caused by their enemie 3.1.1. Examining the Fairy Tale from the Educational Point of View 1. The fairy tale given above emphasizes the importance of work in a person’s life, dealing with the difficultie of life at the same time. In this context the messages regarding the benefits of working and the disadvantages of being lazy are sent to children. For this reason the importance of working with all its benefits have been explained and also the need to make good things in life has been emphasized.

2. The fairy tale emphasizes the fact that the good done by a person does not get lost and returns with its possitive consequences. In such a way the fairy tale teaches the virtue of the good.

3. Again, the fairy tale teaches children that if they will conduct their affairs in a moral way and with good intentions, they will protect themselves from the negative things that may occur in their lives.

4. In order to stand against cruel people, a person must use a greater strength. In this fairy tale children are taught to take sides by those who are behaving in the right way, not by those who are unjust; protecting those who have suffere from injustice imposed on them unfairly. In this way children are inrtoduced the concept of “Justice”.

5. Children are taught the rules of narration when being introduced with the structure of the fairy tale.

6. In this fairy tale the need for loving and being loved is shown to children, as it teaches them that people can sacrifice many things for their beloved ones 7. When reading the fairy tale, punctuation signs help children in mastering the general rule of correct writing as they get acquainted with different punctuation rules within the text of a fairy tale that is easy for children to comprehend.

3.2. Expelled Vezier 32.1. Text of the Fairy Tale Once upon a time there lived one padishah. He had one vezi-

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er. Because of some reason the padishah had expelled his vezier taking all his virtues from him. The vezier got upset with that. One day the vezier was walking in the streets, when he met children playing padishah and vezier. The vezier enjoyed their game very much and started to watch. At that moment the padishah was passing by with his cavalry and he tried to take one child’s belongings. The boy playing the role of the vezier said to the padishah: - Are you an ignorant padishah or are you a cruel one?

– asked the boy.

The padishah replied ti the boy: - I am the just one.

The boy said: If you are the just one, that take all that I posses, but give me back those years that I have spent serving you.

The padishah has left the children. The vezier got very surprised with the child’s speech. He thought to himself: “It would be great if i had said the same words to padishah. That boy turned out to be smarter than I am”. Then he wrote a letter to the padishah: “My padishah, you took all my possessions from me but I won’t say a word about that, as when you hired me to the position of a vizier, I was only an ordinary poor man gaining all the wealth with your help. Now you have the right to take those possessions back from me, but I spent many years of my life serving you honestly. If you are the just one, than give me those years back which I have spent in your service”.

The padishah got very impressed by his vezier’s letter and sent his servants to bring the vezier back to him. The padishah put the vesier back to his office After some time the vezier confessed that he took the example from the boy who played the role of a padishah and they laughed al lot.

3.2.2. Examining the Fairy Tale from the Educational Point of View 1. The fairy tale introduces a child with the concept of the struggle between the good and the evil.

2. The fairy tale teaches that children should not be mistreated.

3. It teaches children making the correct judgment and comparison of events and situations, developing their ability of interpretation. It expresses the positive side of a just behavior while emphasizing the negative aspects of being unfair.

4. The fairy tale develops the ability of listening as it attracts children’s attention.

3.3. Akpamuk

they saw a bow and arrows in front of the door and said:” God did not give a sister to us” and, depressed, they went to the cave of a mountain for hunting again. “Let our parents be here, until we get a message that we’ve got a sister.”

Parents gave the name of Akpamuk to the newborn girl.

They missed their seven sons. One day passed, one month passed, one year passed but they still did not come back. At last, parents lost their hope. They could not go for searching for their sons, as they were too old for that and they also did not tell about their sons to their daughter. Time passed, the girl grew nine years old. One day neighbours gathered to do some handicraft. They asked for permission for Akpamuk from her mother. Mother replied to the neighbours: - She can come if she wants to.

Akmapuk wanted to join the neighbours and so she went with them. One of the brides tried to test Akpamuk and reveal her secret: - She, who has a brother let her sit on the side of ashes and she, who has no brother let her sit inside the ashes.

- After this Akpamuk set inside the ashes with those ones who had no brothers. One of the old womens said to Akpamuk: - Girl, you go up.

Akpamuk replied: - Mother, I have no brothers.

- Poor girl, if others have one or two brothers you have seven tiger like brothers, so stand up and sit in the place which belongs to you.

Akpamuk got suprised: - I have not heard about this till now from my parents – she said.

Woman replied: - They are too old to go to search for your brothers and they do not want you to go either. Your bothers are in the cave of a mountain. I will tel you how to make your mother speak out. When you go home you say to her: - Mother, cook me some braised meat. When she makes it and passes it to you, you say to her “give it with your hands” and when she passes her hand you must hold her hand strongly and ask about your brothers.

3.3.1. Text of the Fairy Tale

Akpamuk went home:

In the old days one old man had seven sons. They used to go hunting every day. They did not have a sister. One day their mother became pregnant. When time for giving birth has come, the seven brothers went hunting, saying to their father:

- Mother, I have a headache.

- If a girl is born, put a doll in front of the door and if it is a boy, then put a bow and and arrow there.

When they left, their mother gave birth to a girl. Father put a doll in front of the door, but jealous neighbours took the doll and replaced it with a bow and arrows.

When the seven brothers returned home from the hunt,

- What would you like to eat and drink?

- Can you please cook braised meat for me?

Her mother started to cook.

- Mother, give me some of that meal to taste.

The woman passed a piece of the meal to her daughter: - No, give it to me with your hands.

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

The poor woman passed the food with her hands. Akpamuk squeezed her mother’s hand firml . Mother said: - Hey, my hand aches.

Akpamuk asked: - Mother, do I have brothers?

Her mother could not stand the pain and said: - Yes you do, but they left before you were born.

- Are they alive?

- It is believed that they live in the cave of one mountain.

Akpamuk set her mother free: - I am leaving – she said.

The mother said: - You cannot find them yourself. I will cook a small bread, make it roll and follow wherever it rolls. Your brothers will be in the place where it stops. Akpamuk followed the rolling bread. One of the cats followed Akpamuk during her journey.

When Akpamuk decided to have some rest her cat ate a small piece from the bread. Akpamuk could not continue her journey and started to cry. Then she decided to fill the bread with wet clay and she was successful. She continued her journey.

She entered a cave of one mountain. The cave was full of bloody clothes and meat pieces. She cleaned bloody clothes and started to cook from those pieces of meat. That moment she saw some men coming towards her and she hid herself.

When brothers came, they saw their dirty clothes cleaned up and food being cooked. That night brothers changed their clothes, had a good supper and went to sleep. The other day brothers went hunting as usual. Akpamuk cleaned their dirty clothes and cooked food, again hiding away. When brothers came, they saw everything in order and got very suprised.

They said: - Let one of us stay and watch who is doing this. The firs was the eldest of brother, but he fell asleep. At that moment his sister came out and did her job. The same happened with other brothers too. Then turn came for the youngest of the brothers. He cut his finger in order not to fall asleep from the pain. When his sister came out for her duty, he said: - Who are you, a nymph or a jinn?

Akpamuk replied: - I am neither a nymph, nor a jinn, I am your sister.

So they got acquainted with each other. They cooked food untill the rest of the brothers came. The sister met her brothers in order to give a happy message. The brothers got very excited, when they saw their sister and treated her very well. Some days passed after their meeting. While doing her work at home, Akpamuk found some grapes and called the cat to pick them. When she saw that the cat did not reply, she ate them. The cat asked her: - Why did you call me?

- I found some raisins and ate them.

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- Did you?

- Yes, because you did not come.

- Than I wil pour water onto the fire – said the cat Akpamuk replied: - Please don’t, next time I find it, I will call you Again, one day, when cleaning the house she found one oleaster. She called the cat. But the cat did not appear. So she ate it again.

The cat appeared: - Why did you call me?

- I found one oleaster.

- Where is it?

- I ate it.

The cat said: - Than I wil pour water onto the fire – and the cat extinguished the fire Akpamuk tried to make a fire with stones but she could not. She would not be able to cook food on time. She looked around and saw a smoke coming out from one place. She went towards the smoke to get a fire. When she saluted and entered the house there was one giant sitting.

The giant said to her: - If you hadn’t saluted me before entering, I would have eaten you. Then the giant asked her to take care of his hair.

When Akpamuk did it, she said: - I came to take a fire and go back The giant replied: - Then hold your skirt. He put some embers onto her skirt, sending her home.

Akpamuk went back home, but on the way her skirt got burnt and the embers fell down on the ground leaving traces.

Akpamuk did not notice that and cooked food for her brothers. Next day Akpamuk’s brothers went hunting again. As the giant found burning embers on the ground, he followed their traces and came to the place where Akpamuk and her brothers lived. When Akpamuk saw the giant, she locked the door and sat there waiting for brothers.

The giant said: - Pick out your finger from the hole of a doo .

Akpamuk did what the giant said. The giant cut her finge and sucked some blood from it: - If you tell this to your brothers, I will eat you – and went away.

Akpamuk got frightened and did not say anything to her brothers. The giant was coming every day sucking her blood.

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One day her brothers asked: - What is wrong with you?

- There is nothing wrong with me – she replied.

Her brothers said: - Let us see what is going on. And they hid near the cave, pretending that they went hunting.

When Akpamuk finished her work at home, she locked the door from inside and waited for the giant to come. When the giant came to suck her blood, her brothers attacked him and killed the giant. But the head of the giant said: “I will multiply” – and started to roll on the ground. The seven brothers could not follow the head of the giant and after a while it multiplied, becoming many giants and they ate all of the brothers leaving only their bones. Akpamuk hid in the skin of a deer.

She took revenge of her brothers, collected her brothers’ bones and went to search for the old woman asking everyone about her place. Then she came across that old woman.

The old woman said to her: - If the giant killed your brothers, you can take revenge, but it will be too hard for you.

- I don’t care if it is a hard thing to do, you just tell me how to do it.

- There is one female giant called Akmaya, if you sprinkle her milk to your brothers, they will turn alive.

Akpamuk started to search for Akmaya. At last she found one of Akmaya’s children. When the giant-child saw Akpamuk, he approached, her jumping and playing. Akpamuk treated the giant-child well and explained her purpose.

He said to her: - I can help you, but if my mother learns about this, she will kill both of us. You better hide inside my wool. When I start drinking my mother’s milk, you can collect some of it too. So she hid inside the giant-child’s wool and did exactly what she was told, so she got some milk from the giant called Akmaya.

Akmaya said: - I can feel the smell of human – and started to search for one.

- The giant-child said to his mother: Mother, there can be no human here, trust me – and continued to drink her milk.

When Akpamuk filled her vessel, she left without being noticed. She reached her horse. At that moment Akmaya saw her. Akmaya chased Akpamuk, but could not capture the girl.

Akmaya said to her son: - Why did not you turn into stone? – And at that very moment her son turned into a stone.

Akpamuk poured Akmaya’s milk on her brothers’ bones, wrapped them into a carpet and hid it carefully. After a while her brothers were alive: - We slept a lot – they said

Akpamuk explained everything she had done in order to get them back to life. This made her brothers proud of their sister. But the elder brother lacked one of his bones and he was in pain. The seven brothers continued hunting again. After some time they all got married. They all wanted to have daughters. Their wives said: - Our husbands do not love us like they love their sister – Akpamuk. We have to do something about it. The elder brother’s wife said: - Let us do some harm to Akpamuk. Everyone agreed on this, except the elder brother’s wife. Other wifes threatened her. So they did what they intended to do. They harmed Akpamuk, so that she was deafened and silenced. Akpamuk became weak, as the time passed.

Her brothers said: - What is wrong with you? – and she was silent.

The elder sister-in-law said: - I know what is wrong with her.

Brothers: - If you know, than tell us.

- She wants to marry.

Brothers: - May she marry who she loves.

The elder sister-in-law said: - Let us send her on a camel, and let he who falles in love with her be her husband.

The brothers prepared a camel and sent Akpamuk to meet with her love. At the same time the padishah’s and the vezier’s sons were hunting. When they saw the camel, the padihah’s son said: - What is inside, let it be mine.

The vezier’s son said: - What is outside, let it be mine.

When they looked closer at the camel, they found a beautifull girl sitting on it. They asked her: - Wonderfull girl, are you a nymph or are you a jinn?

When they did not get any answer, the padishah’s son said: - I will mary her, even if she cannot speak. And so he married her. After one year passed she gave a birth to a boy.

When the boy became four years old, his mother was still silent.

The padishah’s son said: - I will marry once again – and started to search for a new wife.

Akpamuk thought: “This will cause me trouble everytime

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

and everywhere”.

Her son said to her:

I have an uncle with one shoulder bone lacking

- Mother, give me some bread.

My golden spoon, let me find him now

Akpamuk did not even give bread to her son as she was sitting there, depressed. The little boy got angry with his mother: - Mother, I said give me some bread!

At that moment a stone, which her brothers’ wives had put, slipped out from her throat, and she started to speak fl ently.

After this she asked her son: - Hit me on my ears too.

Her hearing returned to normal, as her little son hit her on her ears.

The padishah’s son found another woman and was going to marry her. At the moment when the new bride arrived, Akpamuk was cooking the dinner. At the very moment , the food started to pour out from the kettle and as the padisha’s new bride saw this, she said: - The food is pouring out.

Akpamuk replied to the woman, who she was still on the horse: - Look at the new bride! She has a long tongue. Her fi gers are on her eyelashes. Her eyes are on the oven.

- Padishah’s wife started to speak! - Everyone heard the news. As padishah’s son saw this, he sent away the newfound bride immediately, without taking her down from the horse.

At that time Akpamuk’s brothers were wondering about their one and only sister, where could she be. Was she all right?

– She was our beloved sister, she was so kind to us, fiv years passed, since she left. Is she alive or is she dead? Let us find it out – they said So all of them went to the city to search for her. The elder of the seven brothers, who lacked one of his shoulder bones, saw some children playing with spoons and one of them was holding a golden spoon. This was the spoon which Akpamuk made for her son. The child was repeating the following as he was throwing the golden spoon: - I am the son of Akpamuk, I have an uncle with one shoulder bone lacking My golden spoon, let me find him now Having heard this, his uncle who lacked one bone of his shoulder said to the child: - Say it once more.

The child threw the golden spoon in the air, again saying:

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- I am the son of Akpamuk,

At that moment the elder brother understood that the child was her sister’s son and told him to show him the way to his home.

When reaching his sister’s home, the elder brother recognized her just, as well as she recognized him. They had a long conversation with each other and than Akpamuk told him everything about what she had experienced. When the elder brother decided to go back home, Akpamuk collected spiders and centipedes, filling six bags with them and one bag she filled with snacks and dried fruits - Give every bag to each of your wifes - she said - and the last one is for your wife, elder brother.

The elder brother with one shoulder bone went back to the village and distributed six bags to the six wives, giving the last one to his own wife. When the six wifes opened bags, they were bitten by spiders and centipedes. They could hardly escape death. When the elder brother’s wife opened the bag, there was one centipede put accidentally, it bite her finger and ran away. The elder brother’s wife got vey happy with the present. Her husband told her: - I found Akpamuk, she married the padishah’s son.

Than she told all those things which Akpamuk had experiernced.

The seven brothers said: - If our wives treated our beloved sister in such a way, then we must destroy them all. So they started consulting with each other. They collected much wood and burned all wives except the elder brother’s wife. The six wives were burned to ashes.

Akpamuk got very satisfied when she saw what they have done.

3.3.2. Examining the Fairy Tale from the Educational Point of View 1. In the introduction part of the above fairy tale there are some good examples of rhymes, which give a poetic feature, making it more joyful for children to read and to listen to.

2. The language of the fairy tale is simple and it also helps children of a primary education to enrich their vocabulary.

3. It shows children that elder individuals are more experienced than they are and they have to make use of their experiences when needed. Otherwise children can find themselves in very difficul situations, which may be hard to cope with.

4. It teaches us that there are cunning ones in life that may try to exploit them and children have to be aware of them. Therefore, it emphasizes the importance of being careful against such kind of negative personalities.

5. In this fairy tale children are being taught the meaning

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and the significance of love and caring and they are being educated accordingly.

Earlier or later we will have troble because of him.

Let us get rid of him.

6. One may always meet individuals who will try to spoil the good relationships among people. Children should be aware of such kind of individuals.

So they decided to kill Aldarkose. Aldarkose felt the giant’s bad intention and did not sleep at that place. He slept in another place which was safer for him. The giant dropped a huge piece of rock onto the bed where Aldarkose was supposed to sleep.

7. Children are taught to stand against all kinds of difficulties that may occur in their lives.Everything may happen to a pesron. All challenges may be experienced. The fairy tale shows that he / she who stands against these difficultie with no fear will eventually reach happiness.

3.4. Aldarkose, the Giant and the Fox. 3.4.1. Text of the Fairy Tale There lived one poor man called Aldarkose.

One day he said to his wife: - I will go to find something for us – and went to the desert.

When he was walking around, he met a giant. Aldarkose saluted the giant.

- If you had not saluted me, I would have eaten you immediately – said the giant. - Hey, I want to wrestle with you.

Come and engage! – said the giant to Aldarkose.

- All right then, come and wrestle. But why bother to do that? Let us find another wa .

- What is that way, tell me.

- Let us take a palm of sand and squeeze it strongly so that oil comes out of it. He, who makes it, let him be the winner.

The giant agreed with Aldarkose. Aldarkose buried a chicken egg into the ground without showing it to the giant.

Before starting, he persuaded the giant to be the first in competition.

The giant piched up some sand from the ground and squeezed it two times, but he could not extract any oil from it.

This continued till the giant gave up. Now it was Aldarkose’s turn.

- It is your turn, Kose – said the giant.

Aldarkose began to pick up sand from every place. At the end he captured the egg which he buried into the ground and squeezed it. The broken egg began to leack down from Aldarkose’s fist. Seeing this, the giant got embarrassed - Kose, I saw your strenght, let us be friends – said the giant.

As Aldarkose saw the giant being astonished, he agreed to his proposal.

-

All right, let us be friends – he said.

The giant took his new friend to his home, treated him like a guest, and told about Aldarkose’s strength to his wife. When going to bed, the giant told his wife with fear:

We got rid of Aldarkose. I sent his soul to Hell.

Aldarkose said to himself: ”I better get out of this place as soon as possible. When will I find a solution to this state of mine?

He asked the giant: My friend, what was that in the night that you covered me with? No matter what it was, it was a pretty good for me, as I was feeling cold last night.

After they had breakfast, Aldarkose said to the giant and his wife: Now I would like to returne to my home with your permission, otherwise I will loose my sheep flock When the giant saw Aldarkose alive, he got very scared.

The giant said: He turned out to be immortal. We are not of his level, so we should get rid of him. The giant filled a huge vase with water and decided to give it to Aldarkose: -

All right, my friend, thank you for being our guest.

Aldarkose understood that he would not be able to carry the giant’s present by himself and found a reason not to.

For us, humans, it is a big shame if a host does not help his guest in carrying a heavy load till his living place.

The giant replied: If so, then let me help you in carrying this vase to your place. So he came to Aldarkose’s house. Aldarkose left the giant in his house and went out in order to find the ways of solution to his problem as he was trying to get rid of the giant.

So he gave some instuctions to his wife: I will ask you – will you cut the giant and cook some food from it? – You should reply: Two months passed since you left the house leaving two giants for food. We already ate those two giants long before you came back. Now you brought only one giant with you. Kill him immediately and let us cook some food.

Aldarkose’s wife did like they have decided and she told those things even more exaggeratedly. When the giant heard their conversation, he ran away. Aldarkose chased him for a while and then returned home. When the giant was running, one fox came out from somewhere: - Hey, friend, where are you running away from?

The giant explained all that he had experienced one by one. Then the fox said: - It is Aldarkose, without a doubt. He is not powerful at all.

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Muhammet KARABAYIR, The Role of Turkmen Folk Tales in Children’s Education

The fox wanted to bring the giant back to Aldarkose. But the giant was against this. At last, the fox said to him: - Look, my friend, if I am not right, then you can kill me and eat me. I swear I am telling you the truth and only truth.

The giant agreed to his proposal and went back to Aldarkose’s place. As soon as they approached his place, Aldarkose saw them both and behaved in the following way: - Hey you, a liar fox! Your father promised me to get three giants for food and now you are bringing to me only one.

Come closer, I am going to break your neck!

When the giant heard all this, he thought: As it seems, this fox brought me here to pay his father’s old debts. So, the giant run away from there. As he dragged the fox, who was tied to him with a rope, the latter cried: “I am dying”! But the giant did not hear the fox. The fox which could not catch up with the giant, got strangled. Aldarkose and his family lived a happy life ever since.

3.4.2. Examining the Fairy Tale from the Educational Point of View 1. In this fairy tale there are no special new words and phrases, which children can learn time. Despite the fact that there may not be new phrases and words in the given fairy tale, the style of the prosaic expression contributes to childrnen’s abilities of comprehending comparatively complex texts.

2. The fairy tale teaches children to know the value of those things which he/she possesses.

3. It helps us to be aware of our enemies, who may harm us and to act in an appropriate manner, teaching us to arrange ourselves according to the possible dangers. It shows that there may be some people who may try to harm us because of their private interests. Accordingly, it teaches children to be careful when choosing their freinds.

didactic messages. * In most of the above fairy tales the significance of the family is being emphasized. * In the given fairy tales there are examples which reflec real-life situations as well as events and characters that are the product of imagination and fantasy. * The majority of the given examples are short tales that are kept in the time boundaries which allow children to perceive the contents in a concentrated way. * Generally the prosaic style of narration has been used. * In some of the given examples the significance of friendship is being emphasized. * Most of the fairy tales are presented in such a linguistic form that children are able to perceive and comprehend them easily. * Most of the fairy tales emphasize the significance of children’s ability of being successful. * In most of the fairy tales examples of assistance and solidarity are being presented. * The given fairy tales orient children to thinking and reflecting life situations in a proper wa . * Concepts like the good and the evil have been presented to children, so that they can distinguish between right and wrong. * In most of the fairy tales the importance of working hard is emphasized. * In most of the fairy tales the bad characters are being punished, while the good ones are awarded. * Most of the fairy tales help children in using their power of imagination.

4. The fairy tale teaches children the dangers of not listening to their parents and going to places which they do not know. It shows that there may be some trouble because of this.

5. It teaches children that it is wrong to seek one’s own advantage at the expense of others. Children must be always on the right path.

4.2. Recommendations

4. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

* the importance of relationships from the contextual as well as from the structural point of view;

4.1. Conclusion While examining Turkmen fairy tales from the point of view of children’s education, we have come to the conclusions given below: * Most of the above fairy tales are the ones which are known in written and oral forms. * The majority of the fairy tales examined by us above are the ones from the Fable genre (Animal Tales). * In some of the given fairy tales some didactic elements are involved in the text, while in the rest of them an opportunity has been given to the reader to figure out the hidden

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Such fairy tales should be selected for educational purposes which are of educational, informative and entertaining character and should teach children:

* patriotic feelings; * to distinguish between such concepts as the good and the evil, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, solidarity and assistance; * the importance of loving his / her own family; * how to overcome difficulties that may occur in lif * to show respect to elders and to be compassionate towards them; * the importance of the nature and its protection, to love animals and live in harmony with them;

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* how to be in harmony with themselves, environment, family and nation.

Besides, the selected fairy tales should: * encourage children to read; * involve language that will be easy for children to comprehend and will develop their linguistic skills, enriching their vocabulary; * meet the spiritual needs of children; * support children in establishing the links with real life and present examples from the real-life situations;

Turkish Language Society. (1969). Illustrated Turkish Dictionary, T.T.K. Publishing, Ankara.

Turkish Language Society. (1969). TÜRK DİL KURUMU (Turkish Dictionary). (1969). Türkçe Sözlük, T.T.K. Matbaası, Ankara.

Yalçın, A.-A. G. (2008). Çocuk Edebiyatı, Akçağ (Children’s literature.). Ankara. Türk Halkları Edebiyattı II, Uluslararası Çocuk Edebiyatı Kongresi, Kafkas Üniversitesi, Bakü, 13-15 Kısam 2008, I. Kitap, Sayfa: 99-103. (Turkish Folk Literature II, International Conference of Children’s Literature, Kafkas University, Baku, 13-15 November 2008, I print.

* include points like success, security and belonging; * should develop the child’s power of imagination; * should help children in overcoming the feeling of loneliness; * be more often shown on television and be included in computer games, etc.

Taking the above points into consideration, the role of fairy tales in children’s education can be increased, they can be used more intensively and effectivel .

References Veliyev, B. (1988). ). Turkmen Halk Ertekileri (Turkmen Folk Tales). “Ylym” neşiryaty, Aşgabat.

UNICEF. (2015). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved December 7, 2015 from http://www.unicef.org/turkey/ crc/cr23c.html#art1 Gokalp, Z. (1976). ). Türkçülüğün Esasları (Principles of Turkism). Kültür Bakanlığı Milli Eğitim Basımevi, Ankara.

Kale, N. (2001). Eğitime Felsefi ve İdeolojik Yaklaşımlar (Philosophical and Ideological Approaches to Education). Ütopya Yayınevi, Ankara.

Kara, M. (1992). Türkmen Edebiyatı. Türk Dünyası El Kitabı, 3. (Turkmen Literature, Turkish Commonwealth Manual). CiltEdebiyat, Türk Kültürünü Arşt. Ens. Yayını, 2. Baskı, Ankara.

Kantarcioğlu, S. (1991). ). Eğitimde Masalın Yeri (The Role of Fairy Tales in Education). Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, İstanbul.

Oğuzkan, A. F. (2000). Ferhan, Çocuk Edebiyatı (Children’s Literature). Anı Yayıncılık, Ankara.

Sezgin, O. (1991). Üçüncü Neslin Eğitimi (Education of the Third Generation). Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, Ankara.

Sünbül, A. M. (2002). Eğitime Yeni Bakışlar-I. (New Perfectives on Education- I). .Mikro Yayınevi. Ankara.

Tanriguliyev, K. (1980). ). Türkmen Çağalar Edebiyatı (Turkmen Children’s Literature). Magarıf Neşriyatı, Aşgabat.

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The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability Aziza KAVLU *

Abstract Globalization in the 21st century and rapid strides in technology have increased the need for communication in English as is has become a lingua franca. English is also needed as a tool to assist academic advancement, career promotion and information-seeking in general. Hence, good English reading comprehension ability and a sufficien vocabulary range are both vital for university students for these purposes. Therefore, educators have to take into consideration these improvements and attempt to apply various innovative approaches during the education process. Project–Based Learning (PBL) is an approved method that equips learners not only with the 21st century skills (critical-thinking, problem-solving, life–long learning skills, creativity, innovation, collaboration, real-life- setting communication skills), but also has remarkable effects on enhancing learners’ English language skills. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the implementation of PBL and elementary level EFL learners’ reading comprehension ability. The present study investigates whether learners’ reading comprehension ability and vocabulary skills improve with the application of PBL. Forty-five first year Faculty of Education students at Ishik University (Iraq, Erbil) participated in the study, in which the experimental group was taught reading comprehension using PBL methods, while the control group – without PBL. The results confirm that the measured variables (reading and vocabulary skills) showed a significant positive progress in the experimental group. The researcher indicates that reading and acquiring required vocabulary become more efficien and enjoyable for students, when PBL is implemented.

Keywords: English as a foreign language, project–Based Learning, reading comprehension, vocabulary

Introduction Nowadays, due to the rapid development of technology, young people have become the “visual generation” preferring pictures to reading, so students’ reading habits have decreased. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (2007, p. 7), for example, published Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. The study showed that “Americans in almost every demographic group were reading fiction, poetry, and drama - and books in general - at significantly lower rates than 10 or 20 years earlier. The declines were steepest among young adults”.

various teaching approaches are being used to enhance students’ reading comprehension level. Project–Based Learning is one of teaching approaches that enables to integrate the 21st technological age skills with improvement of learners’ reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge in English as a Foreign Language context (EFL). It helps to create an interactive student/s – student/s and teacher – student/s atmosphere.

However, getting accomplishment in university academic life is directly and closely connected with students’ reading habits and reading comprehension level. The problem becomes more serious, when education requires reading in a foreign language. In our case the foreign language is English.

Students’ education at Ishik University (Iraq, Erbil) is completely in English. Hence, to be able to read and understand English written material is significant for students not only academically, but also for personal advancements. Therefore,

Theoretical background PBL (Project–Based Learning) in Language Learning Literature review reveals that the application of PBL in foreign / second language teaching is a fruition of CLT (Communicative language Teaching), which gives students opportunities to master the main principles of language learning and set an authentic language learning environment, where learners

* MA, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq.

E-mail: asumankavlu@hotmail.com

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Aziza KAVLU, The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EF Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability

are able to use the target language and have a purposeful communication with peers, teachers, and experts in order to accomplish the tasks (Eguchi & Eguchi, 2006).

For many years rote memorization was dominant in Iraqi educational system (Eldakak, 2010; Kavlu, 2015; Massialas & Jarrar, 1987), so PBL assists EFL learners to shift from some meaningless drilling, grammar rules memorization and individual work to more real–life-connected language learning in a more collaborative and cooperative atmosphere. According to Richards and Renandya (2002), PBL should be accepted as a multipronged approach for thoroughly integrated language, it enables language teachers to work in different language educational settings such as: GE – General English, EAP – English for Academic Purposes, ESP – English for Specific Purposes, EOP - English for Occupational Purposes, also viable for pre–service and teacher training programs.

Haines (1989) advocated that PBL is an approach that is appropriate to be implemented with almost all language levels, abilities and ages of students.

The application of PBL in an EFL context started 3 decades ago as a vehicle of student–centered learning principles (Hedge, 1993). Eyring (2001) asserted that early researches’ reports in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) field generally emphasized that PBL gives language learners opportunities to have a comprehensible input and to be able to generate a comprehensible output. Furthermore, PBL projects assist learner to develop analytical skills, time management and sense of responsibility. Moreover, PBL is based on group investigating, team working, peer assessment and feedback, which improve leaners’ interpersonal skills, sense of community and cooperation (Lou & Kim MacGregor, 2004; Railsback, 2002). All mentioned skills are crucial and indispensable in the rapidly progressing 21st century (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Saavedra & Opfer, 2012), because English solely is not enough for students to be competent in technological high competitive digital age. The other virtual sides of PBL in an EFL context are being process- and productoriented (Stoller, 1997) in real-life settings. Therefore, learners improve their language skills in an authentic environment, implement their life and hands-on experiences and content knowledge as well as acquire problem-solving and higher–order thinking skills and creativity (Brunetti, Petrell, & Sawada, 2003; Poonpon, 2011; Solomon, 2003). Furthermore, projects enhance learners’ public speaking, presenting, contemplation and information elaborating skills and assists learners to build up confidence and self-esteem

The importance of Reading for EFL students The importance of reading either in L1 or L2 and foreign language acquisition is incontrovertible. Reading is a source of information, clarifying vague points, solution of problems, and it is a target of language acquisition, vocabulary enrichment, culture awareness and academic success. Research has shown that students who read in English a lot get a better English proficiency than students who do not (Floris & Divina, 2015; Hayashi, 1999; Krashen,1993; McQuillan, 1994).

People naturally start listening to speech around them, then it stimulates their speaking, but generally it is not easy to start reading without being taught. Undergraduate EFL students normally somehow can read, but their most vulnerable points are the comprehension of printed material and students’ vocabulary knowledge. When students’ education takes place in English, unless students can understand, synthesize, interpret, and paraphrase the texts encountered in

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academic settings, unless their vocabulary is rich enough, they experience great problems in academic life (Chen, 2014) and further careers. Therefore, undergraduate students’ ability to understand course books written in English influence students’ course achievement.

The majority of EFL learners hardly ever have the opportunity to speak with native speakers (Rivers, 1981), on the other hand, they have an easy access and great exposure to material printed and written in English. Therefore, in an EFL situation, when foreign language input is limited, reading plays an active and vital role in foreign language acquisition (Gorsuch & Taguchi, 2008).

In language teaching reading is viewed as one of the four essential skills (Grabe & Stoller, 2002), at the same time reading integrates and combines many skills. Writing, vocabulary, speaking, grammar, and spelling can be taught through reading (Al-Mansour & Al-Shorman, 2011; Harmer, 2007; Pourkalhor & Kohan, 2013).

The simple explanation of reading comprehension is being able to understand what we read. Proficiency in reading, effective learning and ability to conceptualize are acquired by reading comprehension skills. Richards (1976) noted, that reading comprehension is the only and substantial skill required in order to get access to professional data and information in different subject fields. The significance of good reading comprehension skills for university EFL and ESL students has been emphasized by scholars (Beasley, 1990; Rezaei, Rahimi, & Talepasan, 2012). Johns and DudleyEvans (1991), Jordan (1997) and Hudson (1991) even expressed an idea that because of the principal importance of reading in myriad EFL settings it is a single skill in ESP’s practical purpose.

In spite of such prominence of reading comprehension, most EFL students suffer from incompetence’s in comprehending printed material (Suknantapong, Karnchanathat, & Kannaovakun, 2002).

Aim of the Study The research aims to find effects of PBL on undergraduate students’ reading comprehension.

Research Question Does PBL implementation enhance students’ reading comprehension skills?

Methodology Participants The study participants were 42 – the first-year elementary level students of a private University in Erbil, Iraq. The study was held during January and February 2015. The age range of the study participants was from 18 to 24, including both females and males. The participants were voluntary and their selection and placement to groups was random. 21 student was assigned to the control group and 21 – to the experimental group.

The participants were native speakers of: 29 students –

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Kurdish, 10 students – Arabic and 3 students – Turkish.

Findings and Discussions

Procedure

Table 1: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ Reading Comprehension pre- and post-test results (experimental group)

In the beginning of the academic year, in order to indicate learners’ English level and to generate more or less homogeneous classes, the University implemented the high reliability “Cambridge Placement Test”. The participants, according to placement test’s results, were assigned in two elementary classes, the control one, where no PBL was applied, and the experimental one, where PBL was applied. Otherwise the teaching was in maximally equal conditions – same teacher, same materials, same time dedicating to learning in class, and same teaching methods. The Dean of Faculty and Head of Department were officiall informed and the researcher before conducting experiment obtained department’s permission. It was an intensive course - 10 hours of English each week, out of which reading was taught for 2 hours.

Instruments Three types of tests were used in this study: a. Cambridge Placement Test – which was administrated in order to assign the students to groups of proper level. b. Reading pre-test from course Teacher’s Book Unit tests. Tests are designed by Oxford publishing on a high professional level. Pre-test was implemented in the end of the first month of the first semester. The reading comprehension test included multiple-choice, true – false, and open-ended questions.

A paired samples t-test was utilized to summarize the mean and Standard Deviation of experimental group reading comprehension pre and posttests. The Experimental group pre–test mean result was 77.5 and post–test results -87.6.

Table 1 reveals that PBL had a positive effect and Experimental group’s reading comprehension results show an increase from 77.5 to 87.6.

Table 2: Paired Samples Statistics of Students’ Reading Comprehension pre- and post-test results (control group)

c. Reading post-test from course Teacher’s Book Unit tests, it was implemented in the end of the second month of the first semeste Both pre- and post–tests were administrated in order to check the changes in reading comprehension. Researcher’s in-class observation was also applied.

Materials As a course book – Oxford Elementary level books (Hancock and McDonald, 2013) set were used. PBL projects were assigned correspondingly to books’ topics. Projects were designed in order to enhance reading skills. One of the projects was making up a short video and another - a poster. PBL characteristics, project generation steps and procedures were explained in detail with prepared specimens.

Table 2, on the other hand, reveals that the results in the control group, where no PBL was applied, pre-test mean result was 77.9 and post-test mean result - 69.76. Traditional teaching of reading comprehension not only did not yield a positive effect, but also demonstrated a decrease in reading skills level.

Table 3: Control and Experimental groups’ Reading comprehension post–test statistics

Data Collection and Analysis Quantitative data collection was utilized in order to assess learners’ reading comprehension achievement across control and experimental groups at the beginning and in the end of the study. Quantitative method of data analysis was employed for the evaluation of the gained pre and post–experimental data. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 17 was used to collect data, independent and paired sample t- tests were run to analyze the data.

Table 3 shows the 2 groups’ participants’ results. The control group post-test result mean is 69.8, whereas experimental group is 87.6. Not only did the control group reveal

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Aziza KAVLU, The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EF Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability

deterioration of test results, but also, having an almost identic with the experimental group pre-test results, its students received a worse result than in the experimental group.

To find out whether this trend is significant, the researcher worked out the data in Independent t-test.

Table 4 indicates experimental and control group reading comprehension pre–test results Sig. (2-tailed) are 0.921 - greater than 0.05. So this statistical test confirmed that experimental and control group pre-test mean differences were statistically non–significant, which shows that groups’ initial level was quite equal. The purpose of pre-test was to obtain the data with which the post–test results could be compared.

Table 5 shows the experimental and control group Reading Comprehension post–test results, the value of Sig. (2-tailed) is .000 which is smaller than 0.05, so, it can be inferred that the difference between pre and post–tests of the PBL-implemented group and the control group was statically significant. It confirmed that PBL had a significant positive effect on learners’ reading comprehension.

Conclusion The main purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between the PBL implementation and lack of such an approach, while teaching reading. The analyzed data revealed that there is a positive link between the application of PBL and students’ level of reading comprehension skills. The results of paired sample T-test revealed that at the beginning the control and experimental groups’ reading comprehension pre-test scores are close to each other (Table 3). On the other hand, the control group’s post-test mean is 69,7 (Table 4), which presented a decline, as control group’ pre-test mean was 77.9. The reason for this downtrend is the lack of motivation (without PBL students were quite bored with reading). The difficult level of the texts was increasing, but the students did not make an extra effort. The researcher’s personal observation while implementing research was that students generally do not like reading, as they need to work hard, finding the meanings of unfamiliar words, memorizing them and also trying to keep in mind comprehension questions. The grammatical structure of the text is more important for them and students’ general perception is that reading does not need any strategies or extra time to study. Moreover, Al– Shorman and Bataineh (2004) have remarked that Gulf students set reading aside and for them the developing of other language skills is much more important than reading. With respect to Grabe (2009), their sole concern is to form functional language skills - grammar and vocabulary. Most likely, the experimental group students had had the same consideration as the control group students before the experiment, but doing projects, which they were assigned, helped them to naturally improve their reading comprehension, because to fulfill the required projects, the students needed to read the same text more than 2-3 times, to gain a clear understanding. Besides, they discussed the topic, the unfamiliar words and general context of reading with their group members and also tried to work up a possible solution to the stated problem.

On the other hand, in the control group, where conventional teaching was implemented, the students were supposed to read and answer the reading comprehension questions individually, orally or in written.

The findings of this study were consistent with resent

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researches, such as Soleimani, Rahimi and Sadeghi (2015), who tested and proved statistically the positive effect of PBL not only on intermediate level EFL students’ reading comprehension, but also ascertained that well–designed PBL projects foster learners’ short and long-term vocabulary recall achievement. Shirazi and Larsari (2014) held a detailed study with two experimental and one control EFL leaners’ groups, which revealed that, irrespective of the type and nature of the PBL project (one of experimental group’s projects was making up magazines, another dealt with wall newspapers), the experimental group’s reading comprehension skills’ level far outweighed that of the control group, although both groups were taught by the CLT approach.

Suggestions United Nations recent report (2008) (as cited in Khreisat & Sarjit, 2014, p. 18) indicated that American and British people read for leisure eleven and eight books a year, respectively, which is insufficient However, Gulf region people (Arab World people) on average read for leisure only 4 pages a year, irrespective the literacy level of over 90% in some countries, such as Kuwait and Jordan. Therefore, as educators, who not only assist learners to acquire language skills, but also cultivate learners’ humanistic ethics, should have as one of their aims to make their learners avid readers, because reading is the passkey in each step of educational and personal life. Especially as language teachers we should seek for new educational approaches which will help our learners to construct good reading habits. Project-based learning is one of the possible effective solutions of the problem of enhancement of reading skills.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank you my students that have participated in my study. In addition I wish to thank Dr. Ahmet Demir who gave countenance to statistical calculation and interpretation and for valuable comments of reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Table 4: Reading Comprehension Pre–test significance - t-test result

Table 5: Reading Comprehension Post–test Significance table of t-test resul

References Al-Mansour, N. S., & Al-Shorman, R. E. A. (2011). The effec of teacher’s storytelling aloud on the reading comprehension of Saudi elementary stage students. Journal of King Saud University-Languages and Translation, 23(2), p. 69-76 Ananiadou, K., & Claro, M. (2009). 21st century skills and competences for new millennium learners in OECD countries. OECD Working Papers, 41. Retrieved September 10, 2015 from http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-AssetManagement/oecd/education/21st-century-skills-andcompetences-for-new-millennium-learners-in-oecdcountries_218525261154#page2 Beasley, C. (1990). Content-based language instruction: Helping ESL/EFL students with language and study skills at tertiary level. TESOL in Context, 1(1), p. 10-14 Brunetti, A. J., Petrell, R. J., & Sawada, B. (2003). SEEDing

sustainability: Team project-based learning enhances awareness of sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Canada. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 4(3), p. 210-217 Chen, K. Y. (2014). Vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension: The perspective of college EFL students. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 66, p. 39-52 Eguchi, M., & Eguchi, K. (2006). The limited effect of PBL on EFL learners: A case study of English magazine projects.

Asian EFL Journal, 8(3), p. 207-225 Eldakak, S. (2010). The Modern Effects of Teacher Education on the Arab World. Retrieved September 10, 2015 from http:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED510606.pd Eyring, J. L. (2001). Experiential and negotiated language learning. In Celce-Murcia, M. Teaching English as a Sec-

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Aziza KAVLU, The Effect of Project–Based Learning on Undergraduate EF Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability

ond or Foreign Language, p. 333-344. Boston, US: Heinle & Heinle Floris, F. D., & Divina, M. (2015). A Study on the reading bskills of EFL university students. TEFLIN Journal, 20(1), p. 37-47 Gorsuch, G., & Taguchi, E. (2008). Repeated reading for developing reading fluency and reading comprehension: The case of EFL learners in Vietnam. System, 36(2), p. 253-278 Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a Second Language: Moving from Theory to Practice: Cambridge University Press Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2002). Teaching and Researching Reading. Longman:London Haines, S. (1989). Projects for the EFL Classroom: Resource Material for Teachers. Walton-on-Thames Surrey, U K: Nelson Hankock, M. & McDonald, A. English Result Elementary. Oxford: Oxford University Press Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English. Longman London, UK Hayashi, K. (1999). Reading strategies and extensive reading in EFL classes. RELC Journal, 30(2), p. 114-132 Hedge, T. (1993). Key concepts in ELT. ELT Journal, 47(3), p-. 275-277 Hudson, T. (1991). A content comprehension approach to reading English for science and technology. TESOL Quarterly, 25(1), p. 77-104 Johns, A. M., & Dudley-Evans, T. (1991). English for specifi purposes: International in scope, specific in purpose. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 2, p. 297-314 Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for Academic Purposes: A Guide and Resource Book for Teachers. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Kavlu, A. (2015). Implementation of project-based learning (PBL) in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms in Fezalar Education Institutions (IRAQ). Paper presented at the The Fifth International Research Conference on Education, English Language Teaching, English Language and Literatures in English, Tbilisi, Georgia, p. 206-221 Khreisat, M. K. & Sarjit, K. (2014). English recreational reading habits of Arab Jordanian EFL tertiary students. Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 7(1), p. 17-32 Krashen, S. D. (1993). The Power of Reading. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited Lou, Y., & Kim MacGregor, S. (2004). Enhancing projectbased learning through online between-group collaboration.

Educational Research and Evaluation, 10(4-6), p. 419-440 Massialas, B. G., & Jarrar, S. A. (1987). Conflicts in education in the Arab world: The present challenge. Arab Studies Quarterly, 9, p. 35-52

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McQuillan, J. (1994). Reading versus grammar: What students think Is pleasurable and beneficial for language acquisition. Applied Language Learning, 5(2), p. 95-100 ESP texts. Sino-US English Teaching, 9(3), p. 982-987 Richards, J. C. (1976). Teaching English for science and technology. Singapore University Press: Singapore Richards, J. C., & Renandya, W. A. (2002). Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice: Cambridge University Press Rivers, W. M. (1981). Teaching Foreign-language Skills. University of Chicago Press: Chicago Saavedra, A. R., & Opfer, V. D. (2012). Teaching and Learning 21st Century Skills. Asia Society. Retrieved September 10, 2015 from http://asiasociety.org/files/rand-1012report.pd Shiraz, M. P., & Larsari, E. E. (2014). The Effect of ProjectBased Activities on Intermediate EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 14, 3, p. 38-54 Soleimani, H., Rahimi, Z., & Sadeghi, H. (2015). Projectbased learning and its positive effects on Iranian intermadiate EFL learners’ reading ability and vocabulary Achievement. International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 4(1), p. 1-9 Solomon, G. (2003). Project-based learning: A primer. Technology and Learning. 23(6), 20-26.

Stoller, F. L. (1997). Project work: A means to promote language content. English Teaching Forum, 35(4), p. 2-9, 37 Suknantapong, W., Karnchanathat, N., & Kannaovakun, P. (2002). An analytical study of humanities and social sciences students’ problems in reading English. Songklanakarin Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 8(2), p. 121-132 National Endowment for the Arts. (2007). To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. Washington, D.C. Poonpon, K. (2011). Enhancing English skills through project based learning. The English Teacher, 40, p. 1-10 Pourkalhor, O., & Kohan, N. (2013). Teaching reading comprehension through short stories in advanced classes. Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 2(2), p. 52-60 Railsback, J. (2002). Project-Based Instruction: Creating Excitement for Learning. Portland: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Rezaei, A., Rahimi, M. A., & Talepasan, S. (2012). Exploring EFL learners’ reading comprehension problems in reading

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Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance Elvira KORAN *

Abstract Communicative competence has been a fundamental issue for foreign/second language teaching methodology and a cornerstone of language classrooms for about four decades. Its two essential components - sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, though ubiquitously acknowledged as crucial for language teaching/learning, are not adequately, according to modern methodological requirements, taught and learned.

The present article aimed to succinctly review the main aspects of the two competences as presented by linguists and educators, to draw a line between language performance and competence, to revisit the major forms of testing and assessing language learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, corresponding performance and oral proficienc . It was intended to test sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge and performance of L2 learners; to assess the learners’ overall oral proficiency in the target language and to compare the results of the two above procedures. The aim of the undertaking was to define what relationship exists between the three tested and assessed phenomena, i.e., whether or not acquiring the competence in the target language entails performance and enhances learners’ fluenc . Implementing all the tasks scheduled enabled the researcher to elicit the necessary data and to draw conclusions concerning the interdependence between language competence and performance/pro�ciency; to suggest recommendations for refinement of L2 learner evaluation practice, for improving language programs in terms of teaching/ learning communicative competence and its components and for better understanding of cognitive processes which take place in L2 learners when dealing with performance and competence in the target language.

Keywords: Competence, performance, sociolinguistics and pragmatic competences, testing and assessing language L2 competence/ performance and oral proficiency.

Introduction Several decades ago introduction of the notion of communicative competence shattered foreign/ second language classrooms which were grammar-laden and did not provide real interaction. The effect of the advent was instantaneous.

The triumphant march of the concept as spontaneous as it might have seemed had the ground paved both linguistically and methodologically, and the fundamental trend-setter of the field of teaching foreign/second language methodology was destined to be indispensably connected with it (Canale, 1983: 2).

The term emerged as Hymes’ (Hymes, 1972) counteraction to the Chomskean linguistic competence, i.e. knowledge of language as a system by an individual (Chomsky, 1965), as the logical link of the continuum, as a complement of it. The notion proved to be unwieldy. On the surface though as straightforward and fathomable it appeared at first (meaning for a person to be competent to communicate), so much complicated it evolved to be later.

Communicative competence viewed by linguists for (socio) linguistic purposes was laid out in strict definitive terms.

According to Hymes, “it is competence for language use and not only “the tacit knowledge of language structure” in the Chomskean sense. It is competence of language use appropriate to the other participants of the communicative interaction and appropriate to the given social context and situation” (Hymes, 1972).

Communicative competence involves not only knowing the language as a code of verbal /non-verbal interaction and its syntactic, phonetic, phonological rules and its lexis, but also the knowledge of what is proper and not so in any given context. In other words, it embraces the knowledge of what to tell a particular person, or when to opt for silence, how to talk appropriately in any given situation, how to address people of different statuses, ages and/or gender, how to command, how to express criticism, how to accept or reject offers, how to make requests, etc. Shortly, the term encompasses all aspects of verbal language use, and in some

* MA, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq.

E-mail: elvira.koran@ishik.ed.iq

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Elvira KORAN, Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance

cases non-verbal means as well (posture, gestures, silence, etc.) in specific social contexts (Hymes, 1971).

The notion had a great attraction for educational, namely, foreign/second language teaching and these very fields attached all the possible attributes to it, making the concept multi-dimensional and multi-purpose. Thus, the concept was charged with the maximum of facets as it had to encompass social, cultural, and pragmatic aspects of communication.

At first sight the rhetoric seemed to be a game of words.

Deep down, though, the process of making the concept of communicative competence can be discerned. The most salient trend was certain uncertainty and lack of unanimity where to seed definite language abilities, functions, and variations - into sociolinguistic, pragmatic, strategic, discourse, linguistic or some other competences as essential constituents of communicative competence as a whole, or even to eliminate one at the expense of the other(s).

Canale and Swain in 1980 and 1983 respectively break down communicative competence into four parts: (1) linguistic competence, knowledge of and ability to use the linguistic code, grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary correctly; (2) discourse competence, the ability to maintain coherence and cohesion between segments of discourse; (3) strategic competence, which is the ability to repair and work around communication gaps in his or her knowledge of the target language; and finall (4) sociolinguistic competence, the ability to use language appropriately in various social situations.

Canale and Swain’s model for communicative competence serves to emphasize that partly non-linguistic aspects of language, such as sociolinguistic competence, would be paid enough attention to in the understanding of the broader concept of communicative competence. Despite the simplicity of the model by Canale and Swain, it is used most frequently to defin the term. It has also been dominating the language teaching circles for the last decades, even after another researcher, Lyle F. Bachman, who mostly looked at the concept from language testing perspective, proposed his own model in 1990.

Bachman (1990), proposed a new model of communicative competence which evolved from that of Canale and Swain’s (1983). He preferred to name it communicative language ability, a broader term which included communicative competence and language proficienc . He divided the concept into several components, such as language competence, strategic competence and psychophysiological mechanisms. The article will focus on the language competence. Language competence is composed of two parts: Organizational competence: a) grammatical competence; b) textual competence.

Pragmatic competence: a) illocutionary competence; b) sociological competence.

According to Bachman, organizational competence is subdivided into grammatical and textual competences.

His view of grammatical competence is consonant with the

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Canale and Swain’s model (1983), which in its turn is in line with the Chomskian (1965) view. It includes knowledge of the form of a language and its components such as syntax, morphology, vocabulary and so on. Textual competence is a combination of Canale and Swain’s discourse competence and strategic competences, because it includes techniques for maintaining cohesion in utterances/sentences and conventions for starting, maintaining and closing conversations.

Pragmatic competence, on the other hand, is comprised of illocutionary and sociological competences. Illocutionary competence enables the speaker to convey messages (both spoken and written) serving a variety of functions and a hearer to interpret the utterances/sentences correctly as required of him or her. However, one needs the knowledge of appropriateness based on the speech community he or she finds him/herself in as well, in order to perform an act to intend a certain communicative function. The knowledge of this appropriateness is called sociolinguistic competence and it is the other component of pragmatic competence.

The model was revised later by Bachman and Palmer (1996) in the mid-1990s, though there were no major changes. Illocutionary competence was renamed as functional knowledge, and lexical knowledge which was part of grammatical competence before, now went under the pragmatic competence as a separate component.

The last model that we shall look into is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) 2001 model. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, abbreviated as CEFR is an important document developed by the Council of Europe between 1989 and 1996 in order to standardize language teaching, learning and assessing across Europe. However, it is increasingly being used as a reference in other parts of the world as well. It is a main part of the “Language Learning for European Citizenship” project and was designed to serve as a main guideline in developing language teaching syllabi, curricula, textbooks and testing. It introduces Common Reference Levels, used for rating one’s proficiency level in a foreign language, along with the key concepts in language teaching and learning, necessary skills, strategies and competences a learner acquires when learning a foreign language.

In the CEFR document the confusion concerning the allocation of communicative competence components is solved by seeding abilities and functions separately in order to facilitate using the document as a guideline and reference for educational purposes.

In it communicative competence is divided into three segments: linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences.

Linguistic competence allows clear-cut division into the following sub-competences: lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, orthographic competence and orthoepic (CEFR, 2001:109).

Cases of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences are more complicated, according to the CEFR. Sociolinguistic competence is concerned with the knowledge and skills required to deal with the social dimension of language use. As it was remarked with regard to sociocultural competence, since language is a sociocultural phenomenon, much of what is contained in the Framework, particularly in respect of the sociocultural, is of relevance to sociolinguistic

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competence. The matters treated here are those specifically related to language use and not dealt with elsewhere: • • • • •

linguistic markers of social relations; politeness conventions; expressions of folk-wisdom; register differences and dialect and accent (CEFR, 2001:118).

Pragmatic competences are concerned with the user/ learner’s knowledge of the principles, according to which messages are: a) organized, structured and arranged (‘discourse competence’); b) used to perform communicative functions (‘functional competence’); c) sequenced according to interactional and transactional schemata (‘design competence’) (CEFR, 2001:123).

Or in other terms: • • • • • •

Flexibility Taking the floor (turn-taking) – repeated Thematic development Coherence Propositional precision Spoken fluency (CEFR, 2001:223).

CEFR clearly specifies what sort of performance is expected from L2 learners at all the stages of learning separately based on the sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence aspects listed in the document, e.g., level B1 Sociolinguistic appropriateness • Can perform and respond to a wide range of language functions, using their most common exponents in a neutral register.

• Is aware of the salient politeness conventions and acts appropriately.

• Is aware of, and looks out for signs of, the most significant differences between the customs, usages, attitudes, values and beliefs prevalent in the community concerned and those of his or her own (CEFR, 2001:122).

Flexibility • Can adapt his/her expression to deal with less routine, even difficult, situations.

• Can exploit a wide range of simple language flexibly to express much of what he/she wants.

Turn-taking • Can intervene in a discussion on a familiar topic, using a suitable phrase to get the floor.

• Can initiate, maintain and close simple face-to-face conversation on topics that are familiar or of personal interest (CEFR, 2001:124).

Thematic development • Can reasonably fluently relate a straightforward narrative or description as a linear sequence of points.

Coherence • Can link a series of shorter, discrete simple elements into a connected, linear sequence of points (CEFR, 2001: 125).

Spoken fluency • Can express him/herself with relative ease. Despite some problems with formulation resulting in pauses and ‘cul-de-sacs’, he/she is able to keep going effectively without help.

• Can keep going comprehensibly, even though pausing for grammatical and lexical planning and repair is very evident, especially in longer stretches of free production.

Propositional precision • Can explain the main points in an idea or problem with reasonable precision.

• Can convey simple, straightforward information of immediate relevance, getting across which point he/she feels is most important.

• Can express the main point he/she wants to make comprehensibly (CEFR, 2001: 129).

Long lists of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence components of the CEFR document (p.118-129) are narrowed down to function, social English, politeness in L2 textbooks, language syllabi and curricula.

Interwoven with all modern trends in TEFL/TESL is the influence of sociolinguistics and pragmatics (as sub-fields of linguistics proper established some decades ago) on foreign / second language teaching which has been sized as paramount by researchers. The newly formed sub-fields of linguistics infused fresh blood into language teaching. Neither linguistics nor language teaching methodology stand still; moreover, there is mutual interdependence between the two, the former mostly being a pace-setter (McKay & ‎ Hornberger, 1996; Kasper & Rose, 2001).

The two sub-fields of linguistics with innumerable postulates have updated the language science, which made language educators and researchers revisit what the end product of learning and teaching foreign/second languages must be: Individual knowledge of language is not enough for a speaker to perform speech fluentl . Nor is individual knowledge of sociolinguistic conventions concerning politeness or discourse coherence enough. The fluent speaker must also know how to read listener successfully, during online production of talk, and equally important- the listener must know how to read the speaker. Without such mutual reading ability neither speaker not auditor can act in ways that form an articulated interactional environment for each other. (Mckay & Hornberger, 1996, p. 291) The above-mentioned controversy concerning communicative competence ingredients is further complicated by

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Elvira KORAN, Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance

the competence-performance dichotomy.

Noam Chomsky (1965) drew a distinct line between the terms ‘performance’ and ‘competence’ in his influential work “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax”. In his work he states: “We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his/her language) and performance (the actual use of language in specific settings)” (ibid, p. 4). Thus, competence refers to the knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and other aspects of language, while performance refers to the ability of the actual use of that knowledge. This competence is sometimes referred to as “linguistic competence” (Stern, 1992).

Soon after Chomsky postulated and defined terms “competence” and “performance”, followers of the communicative approach in applied linguistics, such as Stern (1992) and Savignon (1972), disapproved strongly of the concept of using idealized and purely linguistic competence as a theoretical basis for methodology for language learning, teaching and testing. They soon found an alternative to Chomsky’s view of competence in Hymes’s notion of communicative competence, which was accepted as a more complete and realistic view of the term (Savignon, 1972).

Competence itself (conscious knowledge of the language), if opposed to performance (ability to produce utterances), poses a dilemma for language teaching, what threads - mental, cognitive, habitual and other tie the two together? And whether acquiring one automatically presupposes the existence of the other? The answer may be straightforwardly simple - interdependence between performance and competence is individual, on the one hand, and instruction-specific, on the other. If explicit, theorized teaching of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences is exaggerated and outweighs its practice, production, personalization, learners’ competence will exceed their performance.

Method The aim of the study is to review the types of tasks for testing sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences to embrace more components of both and to define what relationship exists between L2 learners’ sociolinguistic/pragmatic competences and corresponding performance and, besides, their overall oral performance, i.e., whether or not acquiring the competence in the target language entails automatically performance and enhances learners’ fluency and .v.

Findings of the research will contribute to: • refinement of E learner evaluation practice; • improving EFL/ESL programs in terms of teaching/ learning communicative competence and its components; • better understanding of cognitive processes which take place in L2 learners when dealing with performance and competence in the target language.

The research was conducted intensively using quantitative methods at all stages: 1. Testing sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge and corresponding performance of EFL/ESL learners.

2. Assessing the learners’ overall oral performance/ proficiency in the target language

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3. Comparing the results of the two above procedures.

The oral assessment stage was partly observational and partly test-based. Literature concerning teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence clearly states what optimal ways of testing the above competences are. These are found as most effective assessment mechanisms: • the Written Discourse Completion Tasks (WDCT), • Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Tasks (MDCT), • Oral Discourse Completion Tasks (ODCT), • Discourse Role Play Talks (DRPT), • Discourse Self-Assessment Talks (DSAT), • and Role-Play self-assessments (RPSA) (Kasper & Rose, 2001 :301, 302).

These tests are organized so that in them different variables, e.g., power, social distance, and imposition are involved and thus create a genuine from sociolinguistic and pragmatic points of view language situations and language itself for accurate assessment of L2 learners. If scrutinized in more details, certain types of L2 learner evaluation are applicable for definite speech acts, functions, etc.

Requests may be effectively assessed through a discourse completion test, whereas apologies may not. Further, apologies that involve such power relationships as a worker apologizing to an employer may be more effectively evaluated through role-play than when the power relationships are different. (Kasper & Rose, 2001: 284, 285 To accurately differentiate between wrong and correct answers, when administering sociolinguistic and pragmatic tests, the following marking method is considered to be most relevant (Underhill, 1987, p. 59). We used this method to rate the answers in the discourse completion activities in our tests.

Marking speech acts like apologizing, requesting, etc.: • appropriate and correct • relevant, but not entirely acceptable • inappropriate or seriously incorrect An additional requirement for better understanding of L2 learner’s sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence and performance and overall oral proficiency is their self-assessment. If properly planned and arranged, this procedure may serve as a reliable method of diagnostic, formative purposes in L2 learning and teaching for learners themselves and for teachers as well. The former in this way critically revisit their L2 learning history, deficiencies of their current language ability. It is also recommended to organize peer-assessment as well, though subjectivity and lack of mutual trust may act as obstacles on the way of obtaining reliable results.

The following methods and principles (Underhill, 1987: 24, 25) are enacted when compiling self-assessment statements and questions: Type 1 – non-defined general scales - the learner rates him/herself from 0 - I speak no English at all to 20 - I am completely fluent Type 2 – non-defined specific scales - invite the learner to consider his/her likely language performance in a particular hypothetical situation. For example, “imagine you need to ask for a pair of shoes to be changed in the shop you bought them from. How well will you cope?” answer from 0 – I could not cope at all to 10 – I would have no difficul .

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Type 3 - defined general scales - these scales have explicit descriptions at every level, but they are expressed in terms of general language abilities rather than specific examples: I can only talk about a very small number of topics. 1-10 I can hold an ordinary social conversation with some difficult , but I am occasionally lost for words. 1-10 Self –assessment scales can take the form of multiplechoice questions, such as: Fluency and naturalness: When you speak English, do you — first

a) always construct the whole sentence in your head

b) frequently have to think about what you are going to say? c) speak with occasional hesitations?

Connecting sentences: How easy it is for you to speak several sentences together in a connected way? a) impossible b) hard c) easy The concern and efforts to compile alongside sociolinguistic and pragmatic tests performance assessment / measurement procedures in order not to have L2 learners’ real (in)ability neglected and not to be misled, while applying various tests during EFL/ESL learning/teaching process and to use them effectively as formative, diagnostic, achievement, progress tests led to the following results: SOPI- Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview, OPI -Oral Proficiency Interview, SOLOM- Student Oral Language Observation Matrix.

SOLOM (Wright, 2010: 162,163) is a frequently used rubric, which facilitates it for teachers to make learners’ oral proficiency assessment during the classroom process, serves formative evaluation purposed and focuses on five aspects of a learners’ verbal abilities: • Comprehension • Fluency • Vocabulary • Grammar • Pronunciation Meticulously detailed are the criteria for assessing oral proficiency of L2 learners, it encompasses: ubiquitous fl ency vs. accuracy issue, the issue of sociopragmatic appropriacy and flexibilit , etc.

• size (how long are the utterances produced?)

• complexity (how far does the speaker attempt complex language?)

• speed (how fast does he speak?)

• flexibil ty (can the speaker adapt quickly to changes in topic or task?)

• accuracy (is it correct English?)

• appropriacy (is the style and register appropriate?)

• independence (does the speaker rely on a question or stimulus, or can he initiate speech on his own?)

• repetition (how often does the question or stimulus have to be repeated?)

• hesitation ( how much does the speaker hesitate before and while speaking?) (Underhill, 1987:96) SOPI and OPI have gained a great importance due to their usage for renowned English examinations. They make examinees face multiple speech acts with a variety of social situations. The performance learners are expected to demonstrate reveal at the same time their sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence (Kasper, Rose, 2001: 245).

All the principles of oral assessment were taken into account when conducting verbal interviews and implementing the SOLOM matrix. During both processes sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences were emphasized and heeded most. Students had to role-play, take part in debates, etc.

Examples of test tasks are given in the appendix.

Participants We selected 36 participants, from two existing classes at intermediate level from Ishik University’s Preparatory School, all of whom took Oxford computerized test, administered by the school, to determine their level before they started their courses at the school. Participation was voluntary. The 36 university prep-school students at an intermediate level in English were tested with various tasks discussed above, evaluating their sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences and performance. Participation was voluntary. Randomness of the selection process was guaranteed by the fact that students’ origin, age, educational background, previous EFL learning experience were not heeded.

Procedure Students were given self-assessment questionnaires to define their level of verbal proficiency and performance in the above competences and had oral interviews with their English instructors. In addition, EFL teachers made observations of peculiarities of L2 learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence, performance and oral proficiency during the educational process. Students were also given a written test containing discourse completion tasks as well as rating questions, where the learners had to rate the statements in accordance with their level of formality, politeness, alongside proverb completion tasks, and a task involving interpretation of the tone of the statement.

Results As a result the following picture was obtained (Table 1).

The average 1≥3 can be viewed as positive for items 3-10, while the average 3≥5 – negative, so the results on the whole are good enough, however, many enough students feel they can talk on a limited number of topics (average 2.5)

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Elvira KORAN, Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance

and have some difficulties while speaking (average 2.47 Table 1: Students’ Self Assessment, Part I (1-Strongly Agree, 2Agree, 3-Neutral, 4-Disagree, 5-Strongly Disagree)

From the socio-pragmatic test it is evident that students cope with congratulations best of all, compared with all other speech acts – 25 % produce appropriate and correct versions of it; requests, apologies and invitations present no obstacles as well and relevant, though not entirely acceptable forms of it are used by L2 learners – 52 , 50, 63 % respectively; however, the number plunges dramatically, when it comes to requesting, apologizing, and inviting appropriately- 0, 2.7, and 8.3 % respectively.

The test, which involves recognizing and differentiating between styles, reveals even a worse picture and discloses the lack of explicit conscious sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge among L2 learners; greeting and thanking forms are easily seeded into groups (average of 7.3 correct answers out of 10 items and 3 correct answers out of 4 items respectively), while politeness strategies are harder to grasp - the average of 1.69 points out of maximum 5, and finally, completing a well-known saying and guessing the tone of a speaker makes them fail altogether – average 0.6 and 0 points out of 5 and 2 respectively.

Table 2: SOLOM - student oral language observation matrix

The lower the average, the more self-confident the students feel. We can see that the students feel most confident at introducing themselves (item 6, average 1.77, while they are least confident, expressing agreement and disagreement (item 8, average 2.02). Thus, functions that get low points should be paid more attention to, to improve the situation (Table2).

SOLOM and self-assessment test act as cross- or double-check mechanisms for teachers, they clarify what stands behind the façade of students’ speaking L2 - whether there are mental, self-confidence or emotional issues students struggle to cope with, e.g., the second part of students’ selfassessment indicates that students experience fear that they will not be able to speak at all- 13.88 % think so, while 58 % find it complicated to manage, 22.23 % construct the whole sentence in their head (supposedly trying to translate the flow of words from their L1, which greatly hinders speech production), 61.11 % monitor their speech as they declare that they often have to think before uttering something which inhibits spontaneous speech; understanding difficultie is made even easier for teachers as they have at hand scores of all the aspects: vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, fl ency and comprehension which either hinder or enhance speech production (Table3,4).

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Discussion One of the first conclusions that can be made based on the testing and assessment results is that L2 learners develop sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences and corresponding performance in a haphazard way, i.e., either by means of various activities (not necessarily aimed at learning/ teaching these aspects) at an L2 lesson or acquire them outside it through extensive listening or reading, which indicates the lack of consistency and consecutiveness in teaching and acquiring the above competences and performance. It was deduced and reconfirmed by the teacher observations and the analysis of the data obtained from individual learners.

Student self-assessment revealed that whereas learners are confident about performing simple speech acts like introducing oneself (the mean of 1.92 - see table 1), they are still hesitant whether they can manage a flow of several sentences connected - 72 % find it either hard or impossible (table2).

Learners are formidably deficient in social English, i.e., they lack sociolinguistic competence, socio-cultural knowledge of the target language. Presumably many of the correct responses are given at the expense of universal pragmatic knowledge, i.e., what is ubiquitous in the modern world for communication among contemporaries, what is

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Table 3: Students’ Self-Assessment, Part 2

Table 4: Socio-pragmatic test – part 1

Table 5: Socio-pragmatic test – part 2

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passed from language to language, no matter what cultural patchwork the language is sewn from. The proof of the conclusion is found in the fact that in discourse completion tasks more learners give relevant, but not entirely appropriate answers than fully appropriate ones - 52, 50, 63 % and 0, 2, 8 % respectively; supposedly, they intuitively transfer their universal knowledge to L2 and lack the cultural knowledge in it. The conclusion can be reinforced by the fact that “completing an English saying” part was done poorly by students (although the teaching contained these proverbs). Such prefabricated expressions can serve as a way out when being in a dialogue and create the impression of native-likeness from the speaker, however students and/or teachers tend to ignore them.

Fluency development is not entirely tied to refining socio-pragmatic competence, i.e. L2 learners achieve an average degree of fluency at the expense of ignoring sociolinguistic and pragmatic conventions of L2 usage. Or, formulated otherwise, speaking more or less fluently does not necessarily mean that learners observe socio-pragmatic rules and do not violate them, the tests indicate that the opposite is the truth. The students’ level of comprehension revealed to be solid, their grammatical competence is sound as well (table 5) that indicates grammar-orientedness of L2 classrooms. So, as the communicative goal has been more or less reached, students and even teachers tend to disregard the importance of sociolinguistic and pragmatic conventions of L2 usage.

For students formulaic expressions like greeting and thanking are the easiest to cope with (tables 3 and 4), whereas politeness strategies, skills of congratulation and apology usage are feeble and speech acts like invitations and requests are the most complicated for them. This fin ing points to failures that L2 classrooms experience in terms of teaching communicative competence. None of the students was able to answer the question how they perceive certain utterances -humorous, serious, ironic, etc. It means that they acutely lack the skill of understanding the intonation, the situation, etc., which indicates deficiencies in the pragmatic competence. Slightly better, still an extremely low point 0.6 out of 2 was obtained in testing proverbs and wellknown English sayings, again indicating competence deficiency in cultural aspects of L2.

Recommendations • Sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence need purposeful teaching, it is rarely created automatically while dealing with linguistic competence.

• It is highly recommended to use the suggested tests and assessment to complement each other and to elicit a more realistic picture of L2 learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic performance and competence, to use them as formative, diagnostic, progress tests. It is essential to avoid a superficial assessment of L2 learners’ communicative competence and not to miss many nuances of it.

• It can be observed that fluency precedes sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence, which means that a non-native English speaker will inevitably be hindered when facing real interaction requiring cultural awareness, knowledge of rules of interaction and the ability to interpret a speaker.

• It is highly recommended to include sociolinguistic and

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pragmatic tests in the format of those English examinations which due to organizational difficultie do not comprise oral interviews with examinees. Such tests with high probability measure the real level of language learners’ speaking skill.

Conclusion There is a clear interdependence between sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences and corresponding performance and oral proficiency in learners as the detailed analy-sis of individual learners’ results revealed. The best ones score the most points in most aspects and vice versa, the weakest learners score low in most aspects. If the compe-tences are taught systematically and consecutively, hence, develop appropriately with proper activities in learners, the process will entail equal improvement of corresponding per-formance and overall oral proficiency.

References Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bachman, L.F., & Palmer, A.S. (1996). Language Testing in Practice: Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford: OUP. Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to com-municative language pedagogy. In R. W. Jack C. Richards, Language and Communication (p. 2-27). London: Longman.

Canale, M. S. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, p. 1-47.

Canale, M. (1983). A communicative approach to language proficiency assessment in a minority setting. In Rivera, C. (Ed.), Communicative Competence Approaches to Lan-guage Proficiency Assessment: Research and application, p. 107-122. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

CEFR - Common European Framework of Reference for Lan-guages: Learning, teaching, assessment. (2001).

Language Policy Unit, Strasbourg www.coe.int/lang-CEFR Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.

Cam-bridge, Massachussets: MIT Press.

Hymes, D. (1971). Competence and performance in linguistic theory. In R. Huxley & E. Ingram (eds.) Language Acquisition: Models and Methods (p.3-28). London: Academic Press.

Hymes, D. (1972). On Communicative competence. In J.B. Pride & J. Holmes Eds., Sociolinguistics (p. 269-293). London: Penguin.

Kasper, G., Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. McKay, S., Hornberger, N.H. (1996). Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Savignon, S. (1972). Communicative Competence: An Exper-

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iment in Foreign Language Teaching. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development.

Stern, H. H. (1992). Issues and Options in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Underhill, N. (1987). Testing spoken language. Cambridge: CUP. Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners, research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia: Caslon, Inc.

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Measuring the Degree of English Teachers’ Motivation Selçuk KORAN *

Abstract Teacher motivation is essential for quality teaching. There are motivation measurement mechanisms devised by researchers and used in education in general and particularly in English language teaching. The presented research aims to create an effective mechanism of defining motivated, less motivated and demotivated English teachers. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, a survey triangle of English as foreign/second language teachers, of administration/supervisors and of L2 learners is suggested. Ten university English teachers at a large private university in Iraq were surveyed, using a questionnaire in order to reveal their level of motivation. Each statement/question in the survey was based on the postulates of different researchers, mainly psychologists, concerning human motivation. L2 learners were asked to �ll in the questionnaires concerning their teachers’ successful teaching practices and commented on the teachers’ behavior in and outside the classroom. The research outcomes validated the suggested survey model for detecting motivated vs. demotivated English teachers. During the study many assumptions about teacher motivation were reexamined and confirmed. The research results are reflected in recommendations for administration in educational institutions and for English teachers concerning various issues of motivation. Hopefully, the article will contribute to better teaching/learning practices by means of enhancing English teachers’ motivation.

Keywords: English teacher, language teacher motivation, methods of measuring teacher motivation, teacher motivation

Introduction How much is an English teacher motivated? How to measure his / her level of motivation when training L2 (second language) learners? The latter question presents no lesser a dilemma than the former one. Human motivation is the Gordian knot of conscious and subconscious motives related with myriads of types of behavior. Despite the complexity of the phenomenon, motivation still yields to scrutiny and, if properly researched, is not altogether unfathomable. Understanding how motivated an employed teacher is, is absolutely crucial for any institutions’ administration, as it assists: • to apply appropriate employee-satisfaction measures; • to eliminate inadequate administrative practices causing dissatisfaction among teachers; • to predict possible outcomes of teaching / learning at the institution.

Literature review Teacher motivation has a great impact on the quality of

teaching. Consequently, there is a lot of research in terms of measuring teacher motivation and the relevance of measurement is extremely important. Social and educational psychologists, perceiving the demand, suggest various methods of assessing a teacher’s motivation discussed below.

These measurement mechanisms are designed in such a way that they are flexible; so that they can be modified to fit various situations and hence, purposes.

The latest one is focusing on cognitive, affective, and behavioral measures of motivation and distinguishes between two dimensions of motivation (outcome-focused and process-focused) (Touré-Tillery and Fishbach, 2014).

Intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) is a multidimensional measurement device, intended to assess a person’s subjective experience related to a particular activity. It estimates a person’s interest / enjoyment, perceived competence, effort, value / usefulness, felt pressure and tension, and perceived choice while performing a given activity (Deci et al, 1994).

Motivation scales for teachers, like such scales in general, are based on different theories of motivation, e.g., Herzberg’s factor motivation, which differentiates between selfdetermined and controlled types of motivation (Akdemir and Arslan, 2013).

* MA, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq.

E-mail: seldadas@hotmail.com

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Selçuk KORAN, Measuring the Degree of English Teachers’ Motivation

WTMST (Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers) was created to measure five motivational constructs (intrinsic motivation, identified, introjected and external motivation and amotivation) towards six work tasks (teaching, evaluation of students, class management, administrative tasks, and complementary tasks). The principle of multitasking is taken into account in this case (Fernet et al, 2008).

One of the most efficien ways of measuring levels of job satisfaction and motivation is the ESM - Experience Sampling Method. Teachers are asked to write a diary during five days and five times a day, eliciting their attitude towards accomplishing certain teaching activities. In this way ESM aims to obtain a complete picture of the emotions that instructors experience before, during and after work (Bishey, 1996).

Another measurement - English Teacher Motivation Scale (ETMS) - reveals English teacher motivation as being multidimensional which comprises four main factors: teacher effica , school leadership, negative influences, and intrinsic compensation (Choi, 2014).

Literature on motivation differentiates between many theories of motivation. Different theorists suggest different notions of motivation itself. Ryan and Deci (2000:54), for example, define motivation in the following way: “To be motivated means to be moved to do something”. To Gibson, Ivancevich and Donnelly (2000), on the 0other hand, motivation is a word used to describe the forces acting on or within a person to initiate and direct behavior. Coleman (1998:106), in his turn, emphasizes the influen e of motivation as a driving force behind a person’s actions. Dessler (2001) also defines motivation as the intensity of the person’s desire to engage in some activity. To Harmer (2001:51), motivation is “some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something”. He also says that a person is internally driven when the goal is sufficientl attractive.

Mullins (2007) defines motivation as the degree, to which a person desires, wants, and chooses to be involved in a specific behavior. In other words, it is a desire which causes individuals to act in order to fulfill their needs and expectations. Thus, any behavior results from the individual’s wants, expectations and desires.

There are many factors that initiate, energize and maintain human behavior. These factors can be needs, beliefs, goals, social means, interests, curiosities, incentives, etc. All of these driving forces of motivation are classified into two groups: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic factors are related to the context or environment in which the job is performed (Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, 1959). Extrinsic motivation occurs as a result of environment, external to a job and it is usually created by others. It can be inspired by external rewards or tangible results (Tileston, 2004).

Intrinsic motivation stems from the internal factors and it is generated by the doer. Certain behavior is performed by a person because it gives him / her pleasure and a person gets a psychological rather than a physical reward. Intrinsic motivation is seen as the motivation to engage in an activity primarily for its own sake, because the educator perceives the activity as an interesting, involving, satisfying and challenging (Hugo, 2000: 144).

Below the most distinguished and renowned theories of motivation are discussed.

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Maslow’s study of motivation dates back to 1943. His hierarchy of needs theory is one of the most widely cited and recognized motivation theories. Maslow (1943, 1954) believes that individuals have a set of basic needs they are motivated by. He developed a hierarchy of separate levels of needs, ranging from the lowest point to the highest in order of their importance. He defined those basic needs as: physiological needs, security needs, affiliatio needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. According to Maslow, once a person’s need on one level is satisfied, the need at the higher level of hierarchy motivates employees.

Herzberg et al. (1959) in his eminent Herzberg’s twofactor theory states that the factors that have a significant influence on the job performance are mainly intrinsic factors and they are usually effective in the long run. However, other factors, which are usually related to specific achievements, are short-lasting. Herzberg and his adherents call the factors which are related to the extrinsic aspects of the job “hygiene factors”, which include physical working conditions, pay, benefits, and security. They name other factors, which are related to the intrinsic aspect of the job “motivators” or “satisfiers”. Those factors include aspects, such as: the work itself, achievement, growth, responsibility, and recognition.

The theory points out those primary motivating factors are intrinsic factors obtained from the job itself.

McGregor, in his influential book Human Side of Enterprise (1960), observed that managerial practice is based on two deep assumptions of human nature. He named the two assumptions “Theory X and Theory Y”. According to him, there are two kinds of employees in any work environment.

One of them is a person who lacks ambition, dislikes work and change, avoids responsibility, and wants to be told what to do. He called this type of person Theory X. The only motivator to work for this kind of a person is the need for security and control (Steyn, 2002; Wan der Westhuizen, 1991, 2002). Thus, such employees must be controlled by means of close surveillance, punishment or threat, so that they work effectivel . In terms of administrating, they need a manager who is all-powerful and autocratic. On the contrary, Theory Y says people work because they like to work. This kind of employee displays self-realization and self-motivation to complete the task successfully. McGregor saw that kind of employee as a dynamic, self-activating person, unlike the one who needs control or force like threat or punishment to work. Theory Y managers value employees’ decisions, freedom, responsibility and involvement in achieving goals in terms of their management style.

Expectancy theory, one of the process theories of motivation, was developed by Victor Vroom in 1964. It postulates that individuals consciously choose a specific behavior among others in order to make the most of pleasure and reduce pain. According to this theory, individuals are usually motivated to strive for their best in their work situation, when they believe there is success and their performance will be rewarded.

Equity theory was developed by Adams (1963). According to this theory, individuals are motivated, when they are fairly treated for their efforts and accomplishments. When an employee perceives that she / he is underpaid, she / he may reduce performance and even this perception might make them have hostile feelings towards the organization. Van Fleet et al (1991:61) argue that motivation comes from the desire to be treated fairly.

Achievement Motivation theory was initially introduced

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by Atkinson in 1957. It is define as the individuals’ internal desire to reach success and achievements, and this desire is usually stimulated by the feeling of hope for success or the fear of failure. Rabideau (2007) defines the theory as individuals’ definite need for achievement and excellence.

All viewed theories are applicable to all teachers as to ordinary humans; however, implications for understanding the peculiarities of their level of motivation are highly dependant on their profession, in general, and more particularly on the subject taught by them.

The major researches on language teacher motivation were carried out by Pennington (1991, 1995), Kim and Doyle (Kim and Doyle, 1998; Doyle & Kim, 1999), Shoaib (2004), etc. These studies viewed teachers as being a key determinant source of motivation for language learners, thus, teachers are expected to enhance learners’ motivation for better language learning due to the positive impact of the links existing between teacher and student motivation, moreover, provided that teacher and student are both motivated, good quality of learning outcome is guaranteed.

Pennington (1995: 139–140) concludes that “ESL practitioners are motivated in a positive direction in their jobs and careers by intrinsic work process and human relations factors”. These findings demonstrate that teachers are motivated by means of the opportunity for professional development, sense of achievement, self-respect and responsibility.

They obtain their satisfaction through the teaching process since they believe the very process of teaching is enjoyable and class participation brings its own reward.

Most language teachers who participated in Kim and Doyle’s study claimed that their primary motivating factors were intrinsic drives in teaching and helping students to learn. However, according to their findings, the reasons leading to job dissatisfaction were mainly external factors, such as: salary, lack of respect, work conditions, lack of advancement opportunities, etc. (Kim and Doyle, 1998; Doyle and Kim, 1999). They also report administration-related pressure that hinders teacher autonomy and limits choices for teachers to select their material, so that they can design their own curriculum, standardized tests and mandatory attendance, all of which were viewed to lead to job dissatisfaction.

Shoaib (2004) conducted large-scale interviews with teachers in Saudi Arabia and concluded that there exist three main levels of motivation change - the teacher level, the managerial level and the institutional level. Further, she suggested important strategies on each level to motivate language teachers and the list of recommendations for the enhancement of teacher motivation.

The table below summarizes the indicators of motivation mentioned by all or the majority of researchers, in order to further reflect them in the questionnaires made up for and used in the research.

Table 1: Parameters of motivation to be measured

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Selçuk KORAN, Measuring the Degree of English Teachers’ Motivation

Method This research aims to work out a rational method of differe tiating between motivated, less motivated and de- or unmotivated English teachers.

The hypothesis of the research is that a three-fold survey (of English teachers, administration-supervisors, and students) and cross-examination of the survey results is necessary in order to differentiate between motivated vs. less motivated vs. demotivated English teachers. If the results coincide, it will serve as a highly probable indicator of the researched phenomenon.

Unlike the previous researches concerning measuring teacher motivation this one is not intended to simply measure the level of English teacher’s motivation, but to classify them as motivated, less motivated and not at all motivated. The research is quantitative (Likert scale was used to measure how much the respondents agree with the offered statements) Teachers of English as foreign / second language at university level were surveyed with a questionnaire made up for the research and based on the analyzed in the article measurement tools. The questionnaire had to reveal their level of motivation. Each statement/question in the survey was based on the postulates of different researchers summed up above.

The higher points each question/statement obtains, the more motivated a language teacher can be considered.

Biographical information obtained also contributed to fuller understanding of teachers’ motivation variation, e.g., novice teachers at the start of their career are generally highly motivated (Greenhaus and Callanan, 2006: 541), unmarried educators successfully outrival married ones, as they fin more time and energy to devote to their job, female teachers naturally outstrip male colleagues as nurturing and caring is innate for them. As all the teachers surveyed are university lecturers, it increases their motivation, since the job is regarded as highly prestigious.

Statements included wage / salary contentment, colleague affiliation personal self-esteem, professional selfeffica , working conditions, opportunities for professional development, freedom / autonomy granted at work by administration, respect / adequate treatment from administrative bodies, and successful practices of teaching used by teachers (providing students with feedback and additional material, using innovative ideas in the classroom).

The following statements and, hence, responses to them are noteworthy: • Whether the job is vital for a teacher’s survival.

• Whether an English teacher has other officia responsibilities connected with the profession in or outside his / her job.

• Whether a teacher keeps up-to-date in his / her profession. ties.

• Whether the teacher works at the peak of his/her abili-

• Whether a teacher dreads to be criticized and be considered a bad instructor.

• Whether a teacher feeling discomfort and hence, dis-

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sonance, during the teaching process tries to change the situation for better teaching practice and outcome.

• Whether a teacher in his/her mid-career stage feels she / he has achieved much The two other angles of the survey triangle – administration and students also answered consequent questionnaires. Acting according to the university policy and regulation requirements, enthusiastically participating in various departmental activities, working in agreement in a team and enhancing its morale, being disciplined and thus, reliable these criteria were used for teacher assessment by the administration; moreover, academic points gathered by these teachers during two teaching years and lesson observation notes based on Likert scale were obtained for reconfirmatio of the truthfulness of the above teacher evaluation questionnaire results.

Besides, English learners – students at prep school of a large private university in Iraq were asked to fill in the questionnaires concerning their teachers’ successful teaching practices, commendable behavior in and outside the classroom, positive and acceptable attitude towards learners.

Ethical aspects of the research The research was conducted, following the guidelines of the code of ethics that psychologists, sociologists, social psychologists and educators have to obey worldwide when surveying, experimenting, etc. It means that a researcher • Must take steps to avoid harming their research participants.

• All participants must be informed that they are free to withdraw from a study at any point.

• All information obtained from individual participants must be held in strict confidence, unless the consent of the participants is obtained to make it public (Aronson et al., 2010, p.53).

It was provided that the results of the survey would not harm participants’ career prospects in any way and will not create negative attitudes by administration and supervisors towards them (the questionnaires were anonymous). However, the major principle of ethics in psychological and sociological studies - informed consent - had to be rejected, as otherwise English teachers might have fully comprehended the purpose of the survey and outwit students and administration by creating wrong impressions. Thus, an accepted procedure - deception - was chosen in order to survey teachers who knew there was research, but were not cognizant of the purpose of the research. Finally, another widely-used principle - debriefing - was put into practice – all the persons surveyed were fully informed about the purposes and aims of the study, after it was concluded (Aronson et al, 2010: 53).

Results Below is given the survey of three university English teachers at a large private university in Iraq who were selected by the researcher out of the ten surveyed as the most typical representatives of the three categories of educators according to

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their motivational level for better illustrating their peculiarities in general. Based on the results of the ten teachers surveyed, to split them in the three groups more or less proportionately, the following ranges of categories were used: Teacher A – motivated – average answers between 4.0 and 5.

Teacher B – less motivated – average answers between and 2.9 and 3.9 Teacher C – demotivated – average answers between 1 and 2.8

Table 2 below concerns teacher self-assessment.

All the questions deal with high motivation, more precisely, the more points in items 1-16 teachers obtain, the more motivated they can be regarded, a positive answer to question 17 also reveals high motivation and answer “yes” to question 18 and plus, the first version of the answer “try to change it” indicate that the teacher is motivated; answers “always” to questions 19 and 20 demonstrate high motivation in a teacher again , “sometimes” a lower level of the variable and “seldom” even lower.

Table 2: Rate how much does the following statement correspond to the truth in your case - (1 point - least, 5 – most)

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Selçuk KORAN, Measuring the Degree of English Teachers’ Motivation

As it is evident from the table, the teachers’ answers to various questions did not contradict each other in terms of their motivation level, demonstrated a certain consistency and reconfirme one after another with just one or two exception. Thus, the conclusion could be made that the questionnaire is valid for further use by any teaching institutions’ administration and supervisors.

The fact that the questionnaire can be effectively used on its own was validated by means of student and administration/supervisor surveys as well.

The three teachers were rated by supervisors and administration staff, based on their observations and officia evaluation by students in the following way.

Tables 3 (general observations) and 4 (lesson observations) deal with teachers’ assessment by administration.

The tables above demonstrate that the highly motivated teacher is graded on Likert scale with a grade good in terms of complying with the university administrative policy, rules and regulations, activeness in class observation, flexibility towards undefined work, and with grade - very good as a university activity and meeting participator, as a person working in harmony with colleagues and contributing to sustaining team spirit and as a disciplined instructor. On the whole the assessment is between very good and good (4.55).

The moderately motivated teacher gathered good assessments in exactly half of these criteria and fair assess-

Table 3: Questionnaire answered by the head of the administration concerning teachers evaluation

based on lesson observation (Scale: 5=very good, 4=good, 3= fair, 2=poor, 1=not satisfactory)

Table 4: Academics’ points collected in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 teaching years by the teachers, and lesson observation notes (The scale applied for lesson observation was: 5=excellent, 4=very good, 3=fair, 2=poor, 1= very poor).

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ment in another half, on the whole the assessment is between good and fair (3.44).

The least motivated teacher collected a good assessment in one item, half of fair assessments, three poor assessments and even one dissatisfactory assessment. The least motivated teacher obtained on average 2.55 points which is in between grades fair and poor.

The minimum requirement for academic points is 50 per year, so we can see that the teacher leading in the evaluation collected 145 academic points during two teaching years, which is 45% above the requirements, the less motivated teacher collected 135, which is 35% above the requirement, whereas the person with least favorable assessment - the lowest – 105 points, which are still within the requirements. It reveals that all teachers care about maintaining the job and try to satisfy the requirements.

An analogous picture is drawn as a result of lesson observations - the first excelling instructor is very good (4.1 points) when teaching, the next mediocre one is on the verge of grade-average (3.66) and the last one nears grade poor (2.66).

Eventually, the three teachers were assessed by the administration verbally in the following way: Teacher A - Highly efficient enthusiastic, distinguished English teacher.

Teacher B - English teacher with steadily good or medium evaluation, though less enthusiastic and zealous.

Teacher C - the English teacher lacking joy and enthusiasm of teaching, often having a low assessment.

The last, but definitely not least teacher assessment was held by students taught by them. Higher level of motivation among teachers is invariably associated with good teaching practices and vice versa. The questionnaire for students was compiled so as to elicit how much learners liked their EFL/ESL teachers, their behavior in the classroom, their attitude to learners, their enthusiasm, efficien teaching methods and approaches used by them, effectiveness of activities planned and implemented by them. Totally 55 students volunteer participated in the assessment of the three teachers.

As a result we got the following picture seen in Table 5. * For reverse (with negative assessment) questions the average results were calculated reversely (1 as 5, 2 as 3, 3 as 3, 4 as 2 and 5 as 1; as for decimals, they were calculated, by subtracting from 5 the given number, e.g., as 1.2 = 4.8, 3.6 = 2.4, etc.

In the above questionnaire for students questions 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 24, 26, 27 deal with positive assessment of the teacher, while items 3, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 with the negative evaluation of the instructors.

The efficien and, hence, highly motivated teacher is rated with the mean of slightly or solidly above 4 as a clear explainer, enthusiastic about teaching, trusting learners, a good listener, as a patient person, the one being aware of classroom intricacies, using authentic language material, understanding learners’ needs and nice to communicate with. In all these aspects moderately and scarcely motivated

teachers were rated as less equipped with the mentioned qualities (the means of above 3 and 2 respectively) with the exception of being communicative and trusting learners in which both have similar assessments: 2.62 and 2.05 / 3.43 and 3.1 respectively. Items concerning negative assessment of teachers again define them into three distinct categories - the highly motivated teacher is seen as least hostile, least dissatisfied and bored, rarely sitting at desk, checking homework, not assigning much of it, very seldom coming to lessons late (rated with the mean of slightly or solidly above 1), unfavorable assessment increases with a point or two or even three in case of moderately motivated and least motivated teachers. The latter “leading” in this respect in all aspects, except being hostile.

Thus, the higher the language teachers’ motivation, the more efficientl they perform their professional duties in and outside L2 classrooms, the better administration and student evaluation they obtain and consequently, the more advanced teaching outcomes they have. It is evident from tables 3 and 4 that there have been yielded analogous results in terms of teacher evaluation from students and administration, i.e., the highly motivated teacher is assessed equally positively by both, whereas the level of evaluation diminishes gradually with less and least motivated teachers, e.g., the students, when asked about the positive aspects of their EFL teachers’ characteristics mostly answer with agree (4 points) when it concerns teacher A (highly motivated teacher), they are typically neutral (point 3) when assessing teacher B (moderately motivated teacher), and generally disagree (point 2) in case of teacher C (demotivated teacher); as for the administration evaluation - teacher A has either very good or good ratings, teacher B is in the middle of good and fair stages, and teacher C is in between grades fair and poor; moreover, the correctness of the teacher assessment is confirmed when these very teachers are surveyed in order to determine their level of motivation- in the questionnaire where more points meant higher level of motivation, the highly motivated teacher got 4 points on average out of 5 maximum, the moderately motivated instructor -3, and the least motivated one - 2,6.

The results of all three surveys are summed up in Table 6.

Though the numbers do differ and students seem to be the strictest assessors, the general classification with the ranges mentioned (5 ≥ A ≥ 4; 3.9 ≥ B ≥ 2.9; 2.8 ≥ C ≥ 1) reveals congruence. It is possible to say that the above statistics confirmed our hypothesis

Discussion The results of the teacher questionnaire serve as a proof of the main postulates of language teacher motivation it was based on, e.g., there is a person who is dissatisfied with the level of autonomy granted to language teachers at work, moreover, this instructor regards him/herself as inadequately treated by the administration or supervisors, and assumes that s/he lacks opportunities for professional development.

This very person demonstrates the lowest level of motivation according to the survey results.

The three teachers discussed in the research rely on the job for their annual income and feel secure at work: the mean for item 5 - this job is necessary for my survival – is 4 in all cases and for item 9 - I feel secure in this job - the mean of 4 was obtained in all cases, though their motiva-

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Table 5: Questionnaire answered by the students on their teachers’ attitudes in and outside the classrooms. (1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= neutral, 4= agree, 5= strongly agree)

tional levels diff r. It might indicate that these aspects are not as crucial and external factors have no significant impact on their behavior.

One more interesting finding is that the least motivated teacher feels no discomfort / dissonance at work (question

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18) and if s/he does, tries to get used to it and assumes s/ he has achieved much in the profession and career (item 14 - 4 points out of 5), while highly motivated and moderately motivated teachers have in this item 3 and 2 points out of 5, respectively), which shows that self-contentment makes people relaxed, less concentrated, professionally aimless

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Table 6: Summary of teacher motivation surveys

and therefore, less motivated to excel at work.

Suggestions • The suggested method of detecting motivated vs. less motivated vs. demotivated teachers of English proved to be valid and reliable. Thus, the survey triangle - teachers, administration, and students - can be used for understanding language teachers’ motivational stance.

• Administration of any teaching institution have to reexamine their employment practices from time to time not to have certain teachers’ motivation, enthusiasm and energy for teaching stagnated, and thus not to cause worsening of the quality of teaching and learning at their school, university, etc.

• Such a study will enable administration to eliminate practices of unfair treatment, neglect, abuse (if any) towards teachers and will support the creation of a friendly and collaborative atmosphere at work.

• The suggested teacher questionnaire enables detecting cases of subjectivity from teachers, e.g., if one teacher sees working conditions as good and another views the same facilities, conveniences, attitudes as unsatisfactory, the problem is a prejudiced attitude towards the institution and not the existing reality.

• The suggested procedures can be used not only to evaluate teachers, but also to diagnose imminent cases of teacher demotivation.

• It is highly recommended to use the above method not for dismissing demotivated teachers, but in order to critically reexamine administrative measures that cause dissatisfaction among teachers, as the suggested matrix allows such a revisit.

• It is advisable to complement students’ evaluation of teachers with the surveys of administration and supervisors for further confirmation of the results of the former and to

conduct L2 teachers’ assessment of their own level of motivation to eliminate subjective practices at any institution.

• For teachers’ interest and benefit it is important to inform them about the results of the surveys so that they can understand what may cause their dissatisfaction, and subsequent loss of motivation. Recommendations could be made, for example, to take measure to redress unfavorable trends in their career, teaching practice and professional development.

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Applications of Goal Theory to Teaching Mathematics Gulseren SEKRETER* Natela DOGHONADZE **

Abstract The aim of this research is to examine the impact of Achievement Goal motivation Theory on students’ academic success. Research asserts that possesing mastery-learning oriented motivation has a positive impact on students’ academic achievement. This study may be useful for students, teachers and administrators in the identi�cation of college students who are considered at risk for math failure or students who are on the verge of dropping out of college. The research applies a quantitative method of study. Quantitative data have been analyzed using Elliot’s AGQ (Achievement Goal Questionnaire). In the case study of a private Suleyman Sah University, Turkey, the focus of the AGQ has been derived from the central research question: How and why applications of Achievement Goal Theory affect students’ success in mathematics at university? In order to identify students’ goal orientation, Elliot’s AGQ was given to 53 students who were selected randomly in math classes.

Their course exam results were compared to their motivational types. Based on the quantitative data analiysis, the research suggests that the best way to change one’s thinking during a testing situation (and hence reduce or elminate one’s anxiety) is to intentionally change one’s performance goal and performance-avoidance goal into only a mastry-learning goal.

Keywords: Achievement goal theory, motivation, mastery goal, performance-achievement goal, performance-avoidance goal

Introduction Motivation is a key factor of education which plays a critical role in success. It is a driving force behind human behaviour, therefore it is related to genuine interest, persistence, and engagement. It has long been known that motivation and academic achievement are interrelated closely (Murphy & Alexander, 2000; Alexander, Wigfield, & Eccles, 2000; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Abd-El-Fattah & Patrick, 2011; Rotgans & Schmidt, 2012).

According to educational psychology, there are two basic types of motivation - intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people are internally motivated to do something. For example, students who love reading are intrinsically motivated to read - there is something about reading that they enjoy and that makes them want to do it even if there is no “reward” for it. Intrinsic motivation brings pleasure, learners think that the task is important, or they feel that what they are learning is significant for their improvement.

As for the extrinsically motivated students, they take action to satisfy an external influence, such as to satisfy the requirements of a course, to please the teacher, earn good marks or stay out of trouble with parents. Even though extrin-

sic motivation does not effectively promote life-long learning, sometimes teachers need to use it as well. For instance, when the task is uninteresting to students, extrinsic motivators can help to motivate students to take action. If a student is not really interested in the activity for its own sake, s/he cares only about what s/he will gain at the end of the activity.

The essential difference between the two types of motivation is the students’ reasons why they engage in academic work (reason for acting = goal orientation). Students engage in an activity, because they freely choose the activity based on personal interests (intrinsic motivation), or because someone or something else outside is influencing them (extrinsic motivation) (Reeve, 1996).

Literature Review Goal theory originated early in the 20th century. It became a particularly important theoretical framework in the study of academic motivation after 1985. Developers of goal theory assert that all human actions and behaviours are motivated by some goal. It is a social-cognitive theory of achievement motivation. Specifically, learner’s achievement goals and their relation to achievement behaviours are emphasized

* MA, Independent Researcher. E-mail: aksekreter@hotmail.com ** Prof. Dr., International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia. E-mail: nateladoghonadze@ibsu.edu.ge

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Gulseren SEKRETER, Natela DOGHONADZE, Applications of Goal Theory to Teaching Mathematics

in researches. Several different approaches have emerged based on this theory.

For instance, Bandura (1997) and Schunk (1990) have shown that specific, proximal, and somewhat challenging goals promote both self-efficacy and improved performance.

However, in order to provide self-efficacy and improved performance, an efficient goal must have four components: proximity, difficulty, specificity and feedback.

• Proximity: An ideal goal is a goal where the time between the reaching out and the end state is close, because human beings are more motivated to act, when there is a reward at the end of the performance of a task or a behaviour.

Yet the reward should be clearly stated.

• Difficulty: An ideal goal is moderate in difficulty, neither too easy, to present some challenge, nor too difficult, so that success seems possible.

• Specificity: An ideal goal should be specific. The individual must understand what is expected from him / her, to start out for the goal. A specific goal gives direction of focus to that specific goal and away from distractions.

• Feedback: Measuring progress towards the goal is the integral part of setting an efficient goal. Feedback makes it possible to know whether the level of efforts is adequate and in the proper direction or needs corrections.

Nicholls and his colleagues (Nicholls et al., 1990) defined two major kinds of motivationally relevant goal patterns or orientations: ego-involved goals, which seek to maximize favourable evaluations of students’ competence and minimize negative evaluations of competence (will I look smart? and -can I outperform others? - reflect ego-involved goals) and task-involved goals. With task-involved goals, individuals focus on mastering tasks and increasing their competence (how can I do this task? and what will I learn? - reflect task-involved goals).

Dweck (1999) provided a complementary analysis, distinguishing between performance goals (like ego-involved goals) and learning goals (like task-involved goals). Ames (1992) distinguished between the associations of performance goals (like ego-involved goals) and mastery goals (like task-focused goals) with both performance and task choice. With ego-involved (or performance) goals, children try to outperform others, and are more likely to perform tasks they know they can do. Task-involved (or mastery-oriented) children choose challenging tasks and are more concerned with their own progress than with outperforming others.

Related with this, Mensah and Atta (2015) asserted that long-term goals with mastery emphasis are pivotal to achieve students’ learning goals. However, their results showed that students’ classroom goals were more performance and less mastery-oriented, unfortunately. According to their study, there are some key classroom experiences in motivating medium achievement level students to reach their learning goals. These experiences are indicated as follows: • more engaging classroom lessons; • teacher’s positive disposition and personality; • teacher’s personal connection with learning experience;

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• application of varied instruction technics, • relationships with supportive teacher (Mensah & Atta, 2015).

All these classroom activities assist students to gain mastery-oriented learning characteristics. Because of all these reasons the set of mastery-oriented learner characteristics are strongly associated with positive patterns of learning, achievement, student characteristics and performance (McCollum & Kajs, 2007), moreover, they have more intrinsic value for learning. On the other hand, the set of performance-oriented learner characteristics are considered negative because these characteristics were not related with academic success.

As teachers we need to ask what is the reason why a student wants to obtain an A grade in his/her class. Is it because s/he wants to look better than her classmates or is it because s/he has mastered the course content? This question is important in order to understand the cause of students’ behaviours (McCollum & Kajs, 2007). However, it is not simple to give an exact answer to this question.

Elliott and Church (1997), Midgley et al. (1998) and Skaalvik (1997) focused on an important advance in this area which is the distinction between performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals. As the name implies, performance-approach goals imply engagement in achievement tasks for performance reasons, whereas performanceavoidance goals concern disengagement in order not to appear stupid. Generally, performance-approach goals appear to have more positive consequences on motivation and achievement than do performance-avoidance goals.

Elliot and McGregor (1999:5) proposed a more complex conceptualization of achievement goals to incorporate approach and avoidance orientations into a 2X2 framework.

And the types of goals are: mastery approach – mastery avoidance and performance-approach – performance avoidance. That is, they described achievement goals in terms of competence, and the outcome can either be a desirable possibility (i.e., success) or an undesirable possibility (i.e., failure). Thus, when students adopt an approach orientation, they are expecting success, whereas a student who expects failure adopts an avoidance orientation. Compared to performance-approach goal, performance-avoidance is less effective. Mastery-avoidance goals may or may not coincide with both types of performance goals, which makes the term somehow confusing, this is why in my research I avoided this type of goals.

Following Elliot / McGregor framework, a mastery-approach (MAP) goal orientation is manifested in a student’s desire to learn as much as possible, to be persistent, and develop his / her skills. A student, who fears losing skills and the inability to master all the material, defines a masteryavoidance (MAV) goal orientation. Students, who exhibit a performance-approach (PAP) goal orientation, compare themselves with others and are motivated by their desire to demonstrate their ability and achievements publicly. Finally, a performance-avoidance (PAV) goal orientation describes a student, who does not want to appear incompetent or lacking in ability relative to others. The results for performance goals are not as straightforward as for mastery goals.

Though all performance goals are usually found to be related to reported use of shallow-processing strategies such as rote learning or memorization (e.g., Miller et al., 1996; Nolen, 1988), unrelated to effort and persistence (e.g., Miller

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et al., 1993), and negatively related to achievement (e.g., Miller et al., 1996), this is not always the case. For instance, Meece et al. (1988) found that performance-approach goals were related to both shallow and deep learning strategies.

Barzegar (2012) study, for instance, involved 260 psychology students. Mastery-approach goals in this study were found to be positively correlated with: • the incremental theory (belief that competence increases due to hard work); •

deep strategies and academic achievement.

On the other hand, they were negatively correlated with: • the entity theory of intelligence (belief that achievement depends on gifts and does not increase due to hard work); • shallow strategies.

Mastery-avoidance goals were positively correlated with: • the entity theory of intelligence; • shallow strategies.

On the other hand, they were negatively correlated with: • the incremental theory; • deep strategies and academic achievement.

Analogously, performance-approach goals in this study were positively correlated with: • the incremental theory; • deep strategies and academic achievement.

On the other hand, they were negatively correlated with: • the entity theory of intelligence; • shallow strategies.

Performance-avoidance goals were positively correlated with: • the entity theory of intelligence; • shallow strategies.

On the other hand, they were negatively correlated with: • the incremental theory; • deep strategies and academic achievement.

Achievement Goal Theory Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) is a socio-cognitive theory of motivation which views goals as cognitive representation of various purposes that students put up in front of them (Ford & Nichols, 1991). It involves task-oriented and egooriented goals.

An achievement situation is the one in which a student encounters some standard of excellence and objective performance feedback to communicate success or failure feedback. Which goal a student adopts is very important to understand his or her felt anxiety during a testing / achievement situation (Kyle et al, 2014; Edwards, 2014; Yeung et al, 2014). In achievement situations, students generally adopt one of three different goals: mastery-learning, performanceapproach and performance avoidance goals.

1. Task-involvement (Mastery-Learning goals): Individuals with task-involved goals focus on mastering tasks and increasing their competence. Mastery goals are rooted in the desire to improve one’s competence during a learning activity. Mastery goals generally cultivate a self-based (or task-based) evaluation of one’s competence, and these goals focus the student’s attention to developing competence and mastering the task. Therefore, mastery goals are strongly associated with positive patterns of learning, and achievement.

A student is described as task-involved, when s/he is interested in the task for its own qualities. This is associated with higher intrinsic motivation. Task-involved students are less threatened by failure, because their own ego is not tied up in the success of the task. Therefore, they experience relatively low test anxiety and relatively good test performance.

Lin, Hung and Lin (2006) investigated in their study the relationships between student achievement in mathematics and goal orientation. Their result suggested that the better performance in mathematics tended to be associated with more mastery-oriented goal orientation. According to their result, student goal orientation accounts for additional 11% of the variance.

2. Ego-involvement (performance goals): Individuals with ego-involvement goals seek to maximize favourable evaluations of their competence and minimize negative evaluations of competence.

A student who is ego-involved will be seeking to perform the task to boost his / her own ego, for the praise that completing the task might attract, or because completing the task confirms their own self-concept (e.g. clever, strong, funny, etc.). Ego-involved students can become very anxious or discouraged in the face of failure, because such failure challenges their self-concept.

The following table shows the differences between mastery goal and performance goal in terms of students’ perspective (summarized from the above literature review): Table 1.

Not all goals are directed towards approaching a desirable outcome (e.g., demonstrating competence). Goals can also be directed towards avoiding an undesirable outcome (e.g., avoiding the demonstration of incompetence to others).

2.a. Performance-Approach Goal With a performance-approach goal, the student seeks to demonstrate or prove competence, especially in the presence of an audience. Performance-approach goals generally cultivate a norm-based evaluation of one’s competence, and these goals focus the student’s attention on the demonstration of ability relative to that of others.

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Table 1: Comparison of mastery and performance goals

2.b. Performance-Avoidance Goal With a performance-avoidance goal, the student seeks to demonstrate or prove that he or she is not incompetent, especially in the presence of an audience. Performanceavoidance goals cultivate a norm-based evaluation of one’s competence, and these goals focus the student’s attention on the avoidance or a demonstration of low ability relative to that of others. When students pursue the performanceavoiadance goal, however, they experience a relatively high anxiety and relatively poor test performance.

Before children go to school, they seem primarily concentrated on mastery goals, but when they go to school, where they are surrounded by peers, they start comparing themselves with others and to view their success as doing as well as or better than others. From this time they start to compare their abilities, which is not desirible in terms of students’ self-efficacy. Therefore, performance-approach goals inspires competition, but may decrease self-efficacy, which, in turn, makes it less effective. Learners with performance approach can easily give up when they face difficulties, because they accept their limits and competencies and believe it is not possible to change it.

There are some inconsistencies with regard to how performance-approach goal orientations relate to patterns of learning. When students pursue two types of achievment goals - performance achievement and performance avoidance approach - they experience a relatively high anxiety and, consequently, a relatively low test performance. When students pursue the mastery-learning goal, however, they experience a relatively low anxiety and a relatively high test performance. Hence, adopting peformance-avoidance goals and performance goals are one cause of high test anxiety.

The best way to change one’s thinking during a testing situation (and hence to reduce or elminate one’s anxiety) is to intentionally change one’s performance and performanceavoidance goals into only mastry-learning goals.

Thus, learners’ achievement goals influence their cogni-

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tive processes and behavior. Mastery goals deal with the desire to acquire additional knowledge or master new skills, while performance goals deal with the desire to demonstrate high ability and make a good impression. While performance goals involve the desire to look good and receive favourable judgments from others when you perform well, performanceavoidance goals stimulate a student to do or not to do something in order not to look bad or receive unfavourable judgments from others. So, it goes without saying that in most cases mastery-approach goals are the optimal ones.

Research questions The following research questions guided this study: 1. How applications of Goal Theory affect students’ math success at university level?

2. Do successful (in good academic standing, with a GPA of 2.0 or above) and unsuccessful (on academic probation, with a GPA below 2.0) students differ in terms of their adoption of different goal orientations?

Research Methods This research is a quantitative one. The quantitative data has been processed using Elliot’s AGQ (Achievement Goal Questionnaire), leading to appropriate descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, including frequencies, means, and standard deviations. This study was conducted to explore whether there is a positive or negative correlation between students’ achievement and their achievement goal orientations. The research helped to clarify the relative effectiveness of mastery and performance goal motivation in math achievement from teachers’ and students’ perspective.

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Participants

were calculated with SPSS16.0 program.

53 freshman students of a private Suleyman Sah University (Turkey) were given Elliot’s AGQ (Achievement Goal Questionnaire). They were selected randomly from the volunteers in math classes. 43.4% of the sample were female and 56.6% were male.

We can see that the correlation is relatively high (more than 0.5). The results indicated that students’ success is relatively strongly bound to the type of goal they have chosen.

These results are in agreement with the results obtained by McCollum & Kajs (2007).

Measures

Research Question 2. Do successful (students in good academic standing, with a Math Average Success of 2.0 or above) and unsuccessful (students, with a Math Average Success below 2.0) students differ in terms of their adoption of different goal orientations

In order to identify students’ goal adaption types a questionnaire with eighteen items from the Achievement Goal Orientation Inventory (Elliot & Church, 1997) was given to randomly selected students. Also their course exam results have been compared with their motivational types. For each questionnaire, students were asked to rate whether they agree or disagree with the given statements, using a 5-point Likert scale, with scores ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

To address the second research question, students’ GPA and their types of goal orientations have been compared (see table 4).

Table 3: Students’ GPA (grade point average) and their types of motivation

Results : Research Question 1. How applications of goal theory affect students’ math success at university level?

Table 2: Students’ number of each motivational type and their GPA

The results indicated a significant difference in goal adoption between the successful and unsuccessful students. Students who possess mastery-learning goal have a grade point average 2.0 or are successful students (this average is accepted as college students’ grade in good academic standing), while students with both kinds of performance goals are unsuccessful. In more detail the results are shown in tables 5 and 6.

In table 2 we see the number of students whose goal orientations are mastery, performance and performance avoidance goals; also their grade point average is shown in table 2. In further tables MG stands for mastery goal, PAG – performance approach goal, while PAvG – for performance avoidance goal.

It can be seen that among 53 students 32 have mastery goals, 14 - performance –avoidance and 7 - performance approach. The average achievement of students whose goal adoptions are mastery learning is 76 (out of 100 possible), while performance approach is 65 and performance-avoidance is 47. Thus, mastery goals were positively related to good academic standing, whereas performance-avoidance goals were negatively related to good academic standing.

Performance-approach goals yielded relatively good results.

According to the results in table 5, this study indicated that Math Average Success is positively related to mastery goal orientation (r = .60, p < 0.01) and performance approach goal orientation (r =.25, p < 0.10) however, performance goal orientation correlation is quite weaker when it is compared with mastery goal. Consistent with what other researchers (Lin et al., 2006) have found, results of this study also indicated a negative correlation between Math Average Success and performance-avoidance goals (r = -.24, p < 0.10).

Thus, the results indicated a significant difference in goal adoption between the successful and unsuccessful students. Students who possess mastery learning goal have a grade point average 2.0, they are successful students (this average is accepted as college students’ points in good academic standing), while students with both kinds of performance goals are unsuccessful, especially with performanceavoidance goals.

In table 3 the calculations of correlations between the number of students who have successful testing results and follow the corresponding goal approach are shown. They

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Table 4: The correlations between the number of students who have successful testing results and follow the corresponding goal approach

Table 5: Means, Standard Deviation and Std. Error of Goal Orientation

Table 6: Correlations between Goal Orientations and Math Score

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Conclusion According to the gained results, this study indicated that there is a strong positive correlation between mastery-learning goal and students’ academic success (Math Average Success is positively related to mastery goal orientation: r = .60, p < 0.01). The performance approach goal yielded a positive, however, weak relationship with Math Average Success (r =.25, p < 0.10). On the other hand, performance avoidance orientation correlation is negative (r = -.24, p < 0.10). The findings of this research provide a better understanding that the best way to change students’ academic achievement level as well as reduce or eliminate their test anxiety is to take measures to change students’ performance-approach and especially performance-avoidance goals into mastery-learning goals. The students with mastery approach did really well (Math Average Success 2.0), with performance-approach goals - relatively well (Math Average Success 1.0), but not well enough, while the students with performance-avoidance goals did the worst (Math Average Success 0.0). Therefore, mastery approach is more effective than performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals. Learners with performance approach can easily give up when they face difficulties, because they accept their limits and competencies and believe it is not possible to change it. The received data are in congruence with the literature viewed above (Mensah and Atta, 2015).

Significanc This study is important and needed for several reasons.

Mainly, a gap exists in the understanding about the effectiveness of mastery and performance goal motivation in math achievement. The reason is that which goal a student adopts is very important to understand his or her felt anxiety during a testing / achievement situation. Not only adopting performance-avoidance goals, but also performance-approach goals are the causes of high test anxiety. The main reason is that these two goals are more similar than different. Individuals who adopt either of these two goals tend to be more concerned about their performance as compared to others and how they will be judged by others than about the learning process. When students pursue two types of achievement goals - performance achievement and performance avoidance approach - they experience a low test performance. When students pursue the mastery-learning goal, however, they experience a relatively high test performance.

Accordingly, it can be concluded that mastery achievement goals are strongly associated with positive patterns of mathematics achievement.

The significance of the study is that it should provide understanding that learners with mastery achievement goals believe that competence develops over time through practice and effort, while learners with performance goals believe that competence is a stable characteristic and believe that competent people need not try hard, which is a ruinous viewpoint.

Limitations Our sample was drawn from a single university and only 53 students. Thus, the validity of these findings to university students at other institutions is limited. Another more significant limitation to the generalizability of the findings involves

not taking into consideration students’ self-efficacy beliefs in math subject, as self-efficacy is also an influencing factor in students’ underachievement. Specifically, differences in students’ self-efficacy beliefs in math subject and goals toward learning have to be examined in the future. It is expected that the limitations with this study may be addressed through replications and additional larger-scale investigations.

Suggestions These findings suggest that educators should do their best to persuade students to follow mastery goals. Students who adopt performance approach and performance-avoidance goals should realize that they may be at greatest risk of failing as well as dropping out of college due to their wrong goal adaptation.

Besides, teachers’ major job in math, besides just teaching the subject content, is to inspire belief that competence increases due to hard work. Teachers also can help by reducing stressful situations and minimizing negative evaluations of competence. Students who adopt egoinvolved goals desire to maximize favorable evaluations of their competence in order to outperform others. However, the desire to get high grades increases the temptation to cheat. Cheating in the process of testing is always a serious problem for almost every teacher. In order to avoid it, teachers should focus on mastery learning goals rather than performance goals.

Appendix Data collection questions Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ) Consider what you goals for this course are; that is, what you are trying to accomplish during this course. Indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with each of the 18 statements listed below, using the following Likert 5-point scale: Circle 1 to communicate “Strongly Disagree” Circle 2 to communicate “Disagree” Circle 3 neither agree nor disagree Circle 4 to communicate “Agree” Circle 5 to communicate “Strongly Agree” 12345 1. It is important for me to do better than the other students.

12345 in this class?”

2. I often think to myself, “What if I do badly

12345 this class.

3. I want to learn as much as possible from

12345 4. In a class like this, I prefer course materials that really challenge me so I can learn new things.

12345 5. I worry about the possibility of getting a bad grade in this class.

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12345 6. My fear of performing poorly in this class is often what motivates me.

12345 7. My goal in this class is to get a better grade than most of the students.

12345 8. In a class like this, I prefer course materials that arouse my curiosity, even if it is difficult to learn.

References Abd-El-Fattah, S,M. & Patrick, R.R. (2011). The relationship among achievement motivation orientations, achievement goals, and academic achievement and interest: A multiple mediation analysis. Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology, 11: 91 – 110.

9. I just want to avoid doing poorly in this

Alexander, P., Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. (2000). ExpectancyValue Theory of Achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 68.

12345 10. I’m afraid that if I ask my instructor a “dumb” question, he or she might not think I’m very smart.

Ames C. (1992). Classrooms: goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84:261–71.

12345 11. I am motivated by the thought of outperforming my peers.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control.

New York: Freeman.

12345 12. I desire to completely master the material presented in this class.

Barzegar, (2012). The relationship between goal orientation and academic achievement - the mediation role of self-regulated learning strategies - a path analysis. Paper presented at the International Conference on Management, Humanity and Economics (ICMHE): 112-115. Phuket, Thailand, Aug. 11-12. Retrieved August 26, 2015 from http://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED537835.pdf

12345 class.

12345 13. It is important for me to do well compared to others in the class.

12345 14. I hope to have gained a broader and deeper knowledge when I am done with this class.

12345 15. I want to do well in this class to show my ability to my family, friends, advisors, or others.

Dweck, C. (1999). Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development.

16. My goal for this class is to avoid perform-

Eccles, J.S. & Wigfield, A. (2002). Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review Psychology. 53:109-32.

12345 17. I am striving to demonstrate my ability relative to others in this class.

Edwards, O.V. (2014). Differentiating performance approach goals and their unique effects. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2, 2: 134-145

12345 ing poorly.

1 2 3 4 5 18. It is important for me to understand the content of this course as thoroughly as possible.

Scoring Key Performance: Approach Goals (M = 2.49, SD = 0.63) Add up the numbers from the following six items and divide by six: 1, 7, 11, 13, 15, 17 Performance: Avoidance Goals (M = 2.25, SD = 0.77) Add up the numbers from the following six items and divide by six: 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 16 Mastery Goals (M = 3.23, SD = 0.50) Add up the numbers from the following six items and divide by six: 3, 4, 8, 12, 14, 18

Elliot, A., & Church, M. (1997). A hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72: 218-232.

Ford, M.E. & Nichols, C.W. (1991). Using goal assessments to identify motivational patterns and facilitate behavioral regulation and achievement. In M.L. Maehr, Pintrich, P.R. Advances in Motivation and Achievement. Greenvich, CT: JAI Press.

Kyle, V.A., White, K. M., Hyde, M. K.; Occhipinti, S. (2014).

The Role of Goal Importance in Predicting University Students’ High Academic Performance. Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology, 14: 17-28 Lin,C. J, Hung, P. H. & Lin, S. (2006). The Power of goal orientation in predicting student mathematics achievement. 30th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 4, 73-81.

McCollum, D.L. & . Kajs, L.T. (2007). Applying goal orientation theory in an exploration of student motivations in the domain of educational leadership. Educational Research Quarterly, 31: 45-59.

Meece, J. L., Blumenfeld, P. C. & Hoyle, R. H. (1988). Students’ goal orientations and cognitive engagement in classroom activities. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(4): 514-523.

Mensah, E. & Atta, G. (2015). Middle level students’ goal orientations and motivation. Journal of Education and Teaching Studies, 3(2), 20-33.

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Midgley, C., Kaplan, A., Middleton, M., Urdan, T., Maehr. M. L., Hicks, L., Anderman, E., & Roeser, R. W. (1998). Development and validation of scales assessing students’ achievement goal orientation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 23: 113-131.

Miller, R.B., Greene, B.A., Montalvo, G.P., Ravindran, B. & Nichols, J.D. (1996). Engagement in academic work: The role of learning goals, future consequences, pleasing others, and perceived ability. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 4: 388-442 Murpy, P.K. & Alexander, P.A. (2000). A motivated exploration of motivation terminology. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25: 3-53 Nicholls, J.G., Cobb, P., Yackel, E., Wood, T., & Wheatley, G. (1990). Students’ theories of mathematics and their mathematical knowledge: Multiple dimensions of assessment. In Kulm, G. (ed.) Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Mathematics, 137-54. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Nolen, B. (1988). Reasons for studying: Motivational orientations and study strategies. Cognition and Instruction, 5, 4: 269-287 Reeve, J. (1996). Motivating Others: Nurturing Inner Motivational. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rotgans, J.I. & Schmidt, H.G. (2012). The intricate relationship between motivation and achievement: Examining the mediating role of self-regulated learning and achievement-related classroom behaviors. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 24, 2: 197-208.

Schunk, D.H. (1990). Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology, 25:71-86.

Skaalvik, E.M. (1997). Self-enhancing and self-defeating ego orientation: relations with task and avoidance orientation, achievement, self-perceptions, and anxiety. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 71–81.

Yeung, A. S., Craven, R.G. & Kaur, G. (2014). Influences of mastery goal and perceived competence on educational outcomes. Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology, 14:117-130.

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The Importance of Raising Teacher Awareness of Culture-sensitive English Language Teaching Nino TVALCHRELIDZE *

Abstract It is straightforward that English language teachers in the 21st century face the daunting task educating students from diverse ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious background. It has become pivotal for teachers to raise their own cultural understanding first to be successful educators.

This study demonstrates to what extent English language teachers in Georgia value and practice culture-sensitive English language teaching and learning. The study concluded that at first teachers have to grasp the inseparability of language and culture to achieve students’ success in gaining communicative competence in English language. Based on the results of the study, English language teachers, in order to raise their cultural awareness are recommended: to participate in periodic in-service trainings, workshops and regional or national conferences that focus on target and international culture; to receive in-service professional training through participation in professional associations such as English Teachers’ Association of Georgia (ETAG), Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Foreign Language Teachers Association; the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIERAR); to subscribe to the journals and other publications of these professional associations.

Keywords: Culture, culture-sensitive, communicative competence, language, teacher awareness

Introduction It is known that teaching English as a second/foreign language acquired a great importance after the Second World War. English started to be considered as the language of international communication and there was a demand for studying English by students, immigrants, refugees, and tradesmen. The search for the new methodology brought Communicative Language Teaching as a new orientation, which emphasized the use of authentic material and which introduced the culture-specific phenomenon embedded in the language.

A Substantial number of investigations of the connections between language and culture were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s and significant works were produced.

Hymes (1967, 1972) first introduced the concept of ‘communicative competence’ that has thereafter had a great deal of impact on second language research and teaching methodologies. He identified that communicative competence incorporates both ‘speaking’ and behavioral competence and ‘interpretation’ of speech and behaviors according to the standards of the speech populace (Hymes, 1972, p.53 and 64 respectively). This was the commencement of consideration of speech acts and rules of speaking in comparison of languages and analysis of the sorts of communicative in

terference which may occur as people learn second/foreign languages. Communicative competence is now widely recognized as an important goal of language teaching. As language learning is the integral part of ‘culture learning’ and vice versa, teachers hold theories of ‘culture’ learning too.

It is crucial to maintain the link between language learning theories and culture learning theories.

What is successful language learning? It is the synergy of linguistic and cultural proficiency. These discussions illustrate the pivotal role of teacher and student variables in the process of teaching and learning languages and cultures. Teachers should possess a deeper understanding what teaching a target language means andrealize that it is also teaching about its culture. Learning a language simultaneously makes students acquire different ways of living and discovering how differently people think in different cultures. Teachers should know that they are primary sources for learning about the target culture. Teaching and learning about culture has been a matter of continuous consideration for language educators.

The National Curriculum for Georgia (2009-2010, 20112016) presents the following list as prioritized objectives for

* Assoc. Prof. Dr., International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia.

E-mail: ntvalchrelidze@ibsu.edu.ge

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teaching foreign languages: to communicate successfully with the people from foreign language speaking cultures; to have positive attitudes towards cultural diversity; to understand different cultural texts and contexts; to be ready for collaboration with people from different cultural identity.

The topics at different study levels of the English language are: English traditions and customs, education, youth, the European Union, geographical and historic dimensions of the target culture, historical personalities, facts about relationships between Georgia and English speaking countries.

Learner fluency was ranked as the most important goal of English language teaching, which is followed by acquisition of communicative competence. As for learner accuracy and acquisition of grammatical forms, they occupied the third and the fourth place respectively. However, the acquisition of vocabulary was ranked as the least important objective of all. Of course, all the above-mentioned goals are important for language teaching, but communicative competence as discussed above should have been named as the most widely acknowledged goal for language teaching as it involves both linguistic and cultural competence.

Teachers’ awareness and knowledge of aspects of culture-sensitive language teaching will benefit their students to communicate in the target language and smoothly overcome negative cross-cultural experiences. It must be noted, that wherever in this article the term ‘culture-sensitive’ language teaching is used it does not involve English language teachers teaching culture to students, as they are not culture teachers, but it entails teaching about culture and cultural peculiarities of behavior in connection with language teaching.

Question 2: Please write your idea what successful English language learning means.

Study of attitudes and instructional practices of English language teachers in Georgia The presented research reveals to what extent English language teachers in Georgia value and practice culture-sensitive English language teaching and learning. A survey was given to 4 university (Tbilisi International Black Sea University, Tbilisi Ilia State University, Kutaisi Akaki Tsereteli State University and Telavi Iakob Gogebashvili State University) ELT teachers, who were selected voluntarily and at random.

The inseparability of language and culture teaching is especially visible while teaching the language at a high level, this is why university lecturers teaching English were selected for the research.

The teachers’ ideas to this open-ended question are widely varied. Out of 82 teachers only 19.51% think that successful English language learning means all (speaking, writing, reading, listening) skills competence plus behavioral competence of the people from target culture. This makes me think once again that English language teachers in Georgia have to undertake the view of inseparability of language and culture. Below are some of the responses to the above question given by the teachers.

1. To put the theory into practice and make your language competenceapplicable in communication.

2. Native-like competency in English.

3. Ability to communicate successfully.

4. Acquisition of language and culture.

Question 3: Do you think that non-verbal communication should be included into formal curriculum?

As I believe that most importantly language teachers have to raise their own awareness as cultural beings and acquire a deep insight into the inseparability of language and culture to reach the main goal of English language teaching, the acquisition of communicative competence.

Results Question 1: Please rank the importance of the following goals of English language teaching (from the most important - 1, to the least important-5).

Figure 2. Non-verbal communication-the content for formal curriculum

The response to the question whether non-verbal communication should be included in the formal curriculum or not is distributed almost evenly between Yes and No, 35.4% of subjects thinking that it should be included and 37.8% answering that it should not be included. However, 26.8% were not sure about the issue. In the interaction with the members of different cultural groups the lexical and cultural aspects equally contribute to making the ground for understanding. Cultural aspects include many dimensions of nonverbal communication.

Question 4: How important is culture-sensitive English language teaching?

Figure 1. Main goal of English language teaching Figure 3. The importance of cultural teaching

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The majority of responses (37.8%) were allocated to the response that culture-sensitive teaching is not at all important while teaching English language, which means they are either not informed about the role of culture in language teaching or simply have a wrong opinion. The number of teachers who answered ‘extremely important’ is only 2.4% less. It is notable that if we join all positive answers (Slightly important 7.3%, Moderately important 19.5% and Extremely important 35.4%)together than more than half (62.2%) of the respondents replied that culture teaching is generally important while teaching English language. Anyway, much work has to be carried out in order to change teachers’ viewpoints and to help them change their teaching practices.

Question 5: Do you think that future English language teachers should have courses in anthropology?

Out of 31 respondents (37.8%) who answered that they have used culture-sensitive English language teaching, 15 respondents described the techniques used during the classes. They stated that they had used films, slides, videos, discussions, activities, reading texts focused on cultural issues, and comparison between students’ cultures and the target culture. Below you will see some notes made by teachers: 1. I create activities. Show the difference between cultures.

2. I used questioning and method of comparison, which kept students’ motivation and interest very high. For reading activities-texts about different customs increased interaction, as students were making some comparisons with their own culture.

3. Photos, slides, videos.

4.Generally discussing texts with culture orientation.

Question 8: How did you and your students find culturesensitive English language teaching and learning process?

Write about your experiences.

Figure 4. Anthropology as a compulsory discipline for future teachers

You can see that 32.9% of teachers do not have a clear idea whether anthropology is an important discipline for future language teachers. The majority of subjects 37.8% responded that future English teachers should not have courses in anthropology. A substantial amount (32.9%), however, is devoted to the category of teachers who think that this discipline is important for teachers. Anthropology studies the relationship between language and culture, it is part of culture pedagogy. An anthropology course, that is ethnographic in character, focuses on a specific culture using the theories of cultural anthropology and it is not at all important, which culture the course focuses on, much of the value for teachers is to utilize the application of anthropological theory. In order to deal competently with the 21st century classroom diversity, cultural anthropology is a useful and important discipline for language teachers.

Question 6: Have you tried in practice culture-sensitive English language teaching?

As we have seen in Figure 5 above, 31 teachers (37.8%) responded that they have tried to use culture-sensitive English language teaching. Out of them 17 teachers shared their experience with us. It is notable that all 17 teachers wrote how motivating, engaging, involving, enjoyable, and interesting these classes were and how proud and motivated the students felt. However, two of the respondents answered that the preparation process for teachers takes time, but the effect is worth this. Below are some comments written by the teachers: 1. Students extremely enjoyed, were motivated, happy, and involved.

2. It is a hard work for a teacher, but the lesson is enjoyable.

3.Preparation is quite time-consuming, but the effect is huge.

4. Students were proud, while talking about culture.

5.Students enjoyed to find similarities, engaged in discussions and debates.

Question 9: Have you tested the attainment of cultural goals for students?

Figure 5. Teachers’ instructional practices

The graph shows that more than half of respondents (58.5%) have never tried culture-sensitive English language teaching, which of course, is problematic. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of the subjects (37.8%) responded positively to this question. Only 3.7% were not sure if what they did was cultural orientation in language teaching.

Question 7: Please describe the techniques you have used for culture-sensitive English language teaching.

Figure 6. The issue of testing accomplishment of cultural goals

When asked, if they have tested, whether students were successful or not in achieving cultural goals, only one teacher had a positive answer (2.9%). Unfortunately, almost all (97.1 %) of the teachers, who have tried culture-sensitive English language teaching, responded that they have not

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tested the students’ achievement of goals. This means that the teachers care for the students’ achievement of the linguistic goals while cultural goals are inferior for them, as the only way for the teachers to check the student success is through testing.

Question 10: Please share with us your reasons for not having practiced culture-oriented English language teaching.

This question was asked to the 58.54% of teachers who responded to the question number 6 negatively; stating that they have never tried culture-sensitive English language teaching in practice. Out of 48 teachers 26 shared their ideas with us. Their views are very interesting. Many of them commented that course books are their guides and they follow the topics and activities in course books. Several report that it needs time and preparation and this is extra work for teachers. Some of them say that they have never thought about it. Below are several notable answers:

ergy in their excessively busy schedules to practice cultureoriented language teaching. Contemporary curricula of English philology and English language teaching should involve a course on language and culture interrelations. Also in the syllabus of methods of language teaching ways how to link language teaching with dealing with cultural issues should be included. Teachers of older generations should be retrained to be aware of the importance of culture-sensitive language teaching, as well as to be able to use adequate materials, activities and teaching methods, to put this teaching into life.

4. One more important issue, that the study revealed, is the non-existence of testing system to check the language students’ attainment of cultural goals. This issue is resolvable only if teachers set cultural goals together with linguistic ones before starting teaching English language. When cultural goals are part of formal curriculum, then teachers will try to check the outcomes.

1. It is not the goal for my course.

2. No syllabus requirements.

3. These extra activities need extra time.

4. I have never thought about it.

5. It should be a separate course, I think.

6. There is not much focus on it in textbooks.

Conclusion 1. This study showed that culture-sensitive English language teaching in Georgia has not yet been embedded in teachers’ everyday instructional practices. Due to many different reasons, teachers avoid teaching English in a culture-sensitive way. In this study learner fluency was ranked by the teachers as the most important goal for teaching the English language and not acquisition of communicative competence (including knowledge of cultural issues).This may mean that English teachers in Georgia need to make it clear that language and culture of the people who speak this language is a unity and the communicative competence which is the widely recognized goal of English language teaching means both fluent communication using this language and correct interpretation of behavior of people speaking this language.

2. It is significant that all those teachers (17 teachers who practiced culture-sensitive English language teaching out of the total number of respondents – 31 - wrote comments. They shared with us their pleasant experience and answered that they have seen how motivating and helpful for students such focus is. It is important to popularize these teachers’ opinions. It is also notable that more than half (62.2%) of the respondents think that culture-sensitive language teaching is important, which may lead to putting more effort into practicing it in everyday instructional practices and will be inspiring for colleagues.

3. As for the reasons for not practicing culture-sensitive English language teaching, it is apparent that many teachers have not thought about it. So, if the culture awareness and understanding of its importance while teaching language is kept at a high level for teachers, they will find time and en-

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References Hymes, D. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 23(2), 8-28.

Hymes, D. (1972). Reinventing Anthropology. New Pantheon Books.

York:

ეროვნულისასწავლოგეგმა (2011-2016). თბილისი. (National Curriculum. 2011-2016. Tbilisi.) Retrieved February 20, 2014 from http://mes.gov.ge/content.php?id=3923&lang=geo ეროვნულისასწავლოგეგმა. (2007, 2008, 2009-2010). თბილისი. (National Curriculum. 2007, 2008, 2009-2010. Tbilisi.) Retrieved February 20, 2014 from http://ganatleba.org/ index.php?m=102

Journal of Education in Black Sea Region ISSN 2346-8246, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2015

Undergraduate Iraqi Students’ Awareness of Social Mobile Media and Their Attitudes to Mobile Learning Tahsin YAGCİ *

Abstract In recent years advances in social networking and rapid developments in wireless internet technologies stimulated all of us to integrate and use them in our lives. Smart mobile technology industries are racing with each other to launch the newest model for their consumers. The biggest market beyond the dispute is teenagers and young generation. Of course, the adults cannot be ignored, either. The general aim to use the social network is for communication and sharing information. During the daytime students want to keep in touch with their peers. The most common electronic devices are smart mobile phones and the top rate for social networking website is Facebook.

This study aims to seek for and clarify the perceptions and the attitudes of undergraduate students in Northern Iraq, using electronic devices, in particular, smart mobile devices. What kinds of social media tools and platforms they are registered to? How often do they benefit from their accounts? What is their frequency to login to internet access and what part of the day do students use their mobile devices? What are students’ general purposes to use social media? – these were the questions asked in the research. This article emphasizes the diversity according to gender, faculty, grade, universities, etc. In addition, it seeks for the distribution of social media accounts. An online survey, conducted among different university students to recognize the ratio between various institutions, came to a conclusion that undergraduate students in Northern Iraq are equipped with sufficient smart devices to get involved in mobile learning via using social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

Keywords: Mobile learning, social mobile media, smart devices

Introduction We are the witnesses of a rapid development and advancement not only in smart mobile technologies and tablet PCs, but also wireless internet technology, such as 3G or 4G. There is a great challenge among communication companies and GSM operators to enhance the newest and the latest innovations to their consumers and market. Therefore, these very astonishing alterations in cyber world technology are stimulating educators and policy makers to adopt those innovative tools in educational environment.

The new generation never forgets their pocket pets (mobile devices) during the day. Actually, we can see that there is a gap between the old and the new generation from this viewpoint. This new Google generation, called Digital Natives, Gen Y, Net Gen or Digital citizens, involves experts of new mobile devices (Zimerman, 2012). They really demand the mobile learning to be used in the classroom and beyond.

According to Prensky, this younger generation of students has “spent their entire lives surrounded by and using com

puters, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (Prensky, 2001, p.1). These “Digital Natives have created their own communities of interest on Facebook and Twitter as well as chosen to be there virtually even during class time” (Akhras, 2012, p.87). However, according to some other studies, it has been shown that some of the digital natives are somehow reluctant to use social media tools in the educational process (Yagci, 2014).

Educational Values of Mobile Media E-learning is very popular and has increased rapidly among educational institutions. It really facilitated the teaching and learning process. Distance education or online education became very popular thanks to various advancements in technologies. Liu and Han (2010) name mobile learning a new primary educational source helping learners with the

* MA, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq.

E-mail: tahsin.yagci@ishik.edu.iq

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instruments of smart devices and wireless technologies. It has been used as blended learning in class or individually was applied by students as e-learning. Nowadays it became a formal teaching-learning activity (Sun, Wang, & Peng, 2011). The definition of e-learning according to Begicevic and Divjak (2006) was a process of teaching using ICT (Information Communication Technologies) to get a high benefit in education. Also e-learning is defined as the delivery of knowledge to wide groups via internet technology through computer devices to enhance the learning process (Rosenberg, 2001). One can use e-learning not only on the campus, but also at home or at work place. However, E-learning has some limitations compared to Mobile learning.

The advancements both in wireless technology and portable smart devices has really motivated not only students, but also educational institutions to apply mobile learning. Smart devices allowed students to be flexible. Since the Facebook was launched in 2004, it has become the most popular social media platform all around the world. Mobile media in education have facilitated interaction and communication among lecturers and students. Lifelong learning have become possible via mobile media. Learning became 7/24 in our daily life.

Mobile media have five unique features for educational purposes. First, they are portable. Learners can carry them wherever they want. At present mobile devices are more affordable compared to old models. They are easy to carry because of long-life battery features and weight. They are pocket size and have sensitive touch screens. Second; with the diversity of social media applications they are more interactive. Portable ubiquitous mobile devices facilitate people to enhance interaction and communication anytime and anywhere (Shih, Chuang, & Hwang, 2010). Especially nowadays many social public environments such as transportation vehicles, restaurants, hotels, even car washers provide internet access for free. Users can easily reach information whenever and wherever they demand. Learners can find authentic materials through mobile applications (Chang & Hsu, 2011).Their connectivity is disputable. Learning occurs according to students’ learning pace, which means individual and students centered learning.

Mobile media provide many successful approaches not only for present, but also for the future with the help of rapidly developing software tools on it. Mobile media are attractive for students because they provide a wide range of interaction in social life and fun communication. Students are really encouraged to collaborate via social media. Besides that learners can control the achievement of their learning goals. Repeating the content and the subject materials are limitless. Learners are highly exposed to target subject, such as languages via mobile media (Hwang & Zhuang, 2013).

Mobile media and m-learning develop interaction, encourage feedback among students and teachers. Students can tackle with their weakness using m-learning. There is always a contact between the teacher and the students which maintains learning process outside of the classroom.

Students enhance learning environment beyond college settings.

Social Media Platforms and their usage around the world Facebook is the most popular social media site after it

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has been launched in 2004. According to a new questionnaire conducted in September 2014, it was found that Facebook also remains by far the most popular social media site among its opponents. Although its growth has slowed down, the number of user involvement with the platform has increased. Some other social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest have seen a meaningful expansion lately (Duggan et al, 2015).70% of Facebook users login to it every day. 45% of them revisit the site twice a day. There is a huge increase in Instagram and Pinterest users. About half (49%) of users are engaged with Instagram. The percentage of multiple social media users among adults is 52%.

Facebook The majority of the Facebook users among seniors go on to increase. Facebook is not only popular among young adults, but also very demanded among women. The median number of friends on Facebook is 155. However, when the users were asked about their actual friends, the median number decreased to 50 (which is also a big number). Facebook users also have a wide variety of friends on the network.

Twitter Nowadays most people get information of social events across the world. They are sensible to political and social news via Twitter. They try to be involved in social community with on average 140 letters. It is certain that 140 characters are not sufficient to express your ideas or emotions, but people feel relieved after typing those sentences. Nowadays Twitter is very popular among the TV channels. They give hashtags to their audience to ask for their ideas. Generally, college educated adults use twitter more than others. Currently Twitter has 260 million active users who totally share and send about 500 million tweets every day.

Mobile Device Popularity According to the latest statistics, mobile device consumption is increasing gradually. Every six months electronic device companies launch a new mobile device to market. The unbearable desire to possess the new-born smart devices forces customers, especially young ones, to queue in front of stores (Bosomworth, 2015).

• 64% of American adults own a smartphone.

• 90% of American adults own a cell phone • 32% of American adults own an e-reader • 42% of American adults own a tablet computer Some smartphone owners, particularly younger adults, minorities and lower-income Americans depend on their smartphone for internet access. Of U.S. adults who own a smartphone, 29% of cell owners describe their cell phone as “something they can’t imagine living without. “As of May 2013, 63% of adult cell owners use their phones to go online. 34% of cell internet users go online, mostly using their phones, and not using some other device, such as a desktop or laptop computer. Mobile users pick up smartphones as they become more affordable, 3G and 4G networks advance.

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Method In this study the aim of the research was to investigate the general overview of undergraduate university students’ general profile of mobile device usage and their attitudes to social networks. This survey was conducted in Northern part of Iraq which is called Kurdistan Regional Government. Several universities responded to the survey. Those are Ishik University, Salahaddin University, Cihan University and some other universities which were not named by the respondents in the survey.

Students’ awareness of the mobile devices, the frequency of logging into internet and social network sites and the demography of the students were sought. The questionnaire was prepared and delivered through Google drive forms.

Some of the charts and tables were used from Google Drive.

The survey questions are in the Appendix A. The questionnaire was prepared to evaluate the undergraduate students’ readiness towards using social media in their learning process. The questions were selected and adopted by the author from a similar study which was conducted in U.S.A. (Gikas & Grant, 2013). The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed in SPSS.22 program. The Cronbach’s Alpha was defined as 0.766> α ≥0.699 or acceptable (0.8 > α ≥ 0.7 is generally viewed as acceptable) (see table 1).

Table 1. Reliability of the Questionnaire

The survey link was shared via social media, such as Facebook groups and mailing sites. The survey was online for nearly two weeks. The data were collected by means of Google forms. They were also analyzed in SPSS.22 data analyzing program.

The survey questions consisted of four parts. The first part was about demographic information. The second part sought for information about respondents’ mobile and electronic devices. The next part was about social media tools and platforms. The last part of questions was about the Internet accessibility.

Participants 127 volunteer respondents from North Iraqi universities participated in the survey. 52% were female and 48% were males. The majority of the respondents (60.65) study were from Ishik University, 16 respondents - from Salahaddin University, 11 respondents - from Cihan University, and 23 respondents are from other universities in Erbil.

Table 2. Which educational institution do you study at?

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Tahsin YAGCÄ°, Undergraduate Iraqi Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Awareness of Social Mobile Media and Their Attitudes to Mobile Learning

In table three the diversity of the respondents can be seen according to their years of study. Freshmen are 20, sophomores are 41, juniors are 13, seniors are 15 and the others are preparatory school or graduated students.

Table 5. How long have you been using your electronic device?

Table 3. Which year student are you?

39.4% of the respondents use their devices approximately 4-6 hours a day. The following highest ratio is 20.5% for those who use them for 7-12 hours. The third place belongs to 15.0% - for 2-3 hours (see table 6).

Findings

Table 6. How many hours a day do you use your electronic device(s)?

The responses dealing with mobile and electronic devices are shown in table (4). According to the results, 48 out of 127 respondents have a mobile (cellular) phone (35.8%), 107 of them have a smart mobile phone with Android or IOS operation system (79.9%), 36 of them own a Tablet Pc (26.9% )( e.g. IPad. Samsung Galaxy Tab etc.), 86 of them own a laptop / a notebook computer (64.2%), 26 of them own a desktop computer (19.4%) at home, and 9 of them have some other electronic devices (6.7%).

Table 4. Mobile Electronic Devices

Table 7 is about which part of the day students intensively use their devices. As after the lectures they are free in the evenings, they easily get engaged with their devices.

However, 41.9% of the respondent uses them during the day.

The other issue in this study was the period of mobile device usage. 17 % of the respondents have been using their electronic devices between 1 and 3 years. The highest ratio - 70.9% of the respondents - for more than 3 years (see Table 5).ctronic Devices

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Figure 1. Part of the day students intensively use their devices

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Table 7. Intensiveness of mobile devicesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; application

Table 8. Popularity rating of social media tools and platforms

According to the answers to the eighth question, the general purpose for using mobile devices is 48.4% - for educational purposes, while 35.2% of the respondents claim that they need their devices for fun and entertainment.

According to table 8, the most popular network site is Facebook - 94.9% of the respondents have a user account.

Also Instagram is another popular tool with a 60.3% percentage having an account.

45.3 % of the students login to their profiles 2-3 hours in a day. 28.9% percent of the students login for one hour during the day.

According to the answers to question 11, 33.6% of the students login to social media for communicating and chatting with friends. Just 25% of them use it for educational purposes. They intensively use their social accounts in the evenings (in the evenings 49.2%. all day 31.3%. in the mornings 10.2%).

In the survey we asked if the respondents possess their own internet access. 87.5% of the students have their own internet suppliers. The percentage for those who has no ownership is 12.5%.

However, almost everybody has internet, maybe at home or in their institutions.

41.4% of the respondents login to internet in the evenings.

37.5% claims that they use internet any time during the day. The percentage in the morning is 13.3%. They rarely login to internet in the afternoons (7.8%).

Table 9. How many hours in a day do you login your internet?

Discussion Figure 2. Social Media Tools and Platforms

In the course of the analysis for the usage of mobile devices, social networks and internet access we clarified the degree of readiness for implementing mobile learning in Iraqi Higher Educational institutions. The majority of the undergraduate students (76.4% who use the Internet for 2 or more hours a day â&#x20AC;&#x201C; see table 8) actively apply the Internet, correspondingly, they have the necessary technical skills to use it for learning.

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The results of research show us that the percentage of mobile device owners (mobile phones – 35.8%, smart phones -79.9%, tablet PCs – 26.9%, laptop computers – 64.2%) among the respondents is high enough (see table 3). Comparing the results obtained in this paper and the researches viewed above (Duggan et al., 2015; Bosomworth, 2015), we can make a conclusion that the percentage of smart phone users in Iraq (79%) is higher than American users (64%). On contrast, Tablet Pc owners’ ratio (27%) is lower than in America (42%). Correspondingly, there is a great potential in this region to use mobile learning.

However, experience shows that neither students, nor the academic staff are aware of the whole potential that mobile devices offer for education (IADIS, 2014). Thus, they need to be properly informed about the effective use of the social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Edmodo, Moodle, etc.

Limitations There were some limitations in this study. It was not easy to access a sufficient number of respondents in a short time. In this kind of studies it is challenging to collect a great number of responses. The question types were simple, not to bore the students. Much more researches should be done in this area. Same kind of investigations must be done for faculty staff as well. This study will be a commencement for further researches in this field.

Conclusion Respondents in this research have revealed the fact that social media tools via smart mobile devices can be used in education in Iraqi universities. They have access to the devices either at home or at university. They have the skills needed to use them.

On the other hand, only 48.4% use their mobile devices for educational purposes (answers to question 8) and even less, only 25% use social media for educational purposes (answers to question 11). Both teachers and students need to be better informed about the possibilities that mobile learning offers them.

We have a digital young generation that has grown up holding smart technologies. This is today’s reality and educational policy makers and curriculum designers should consider how to embed mobile learning into learning environment. They should lead the relevant people into action.

Application of mobile devices and internet usage via mobile devices should be encouraged and implemented in educational process.

References Akhras. C. (2012). Investing IT in business students: On line peer work is worth that extra mile. International Journal of Business and Social Science. 3(11), 134-141 Bosomworth. D. (2015. January 15). Mobile Marketing Statistics 2015. Retrieved September 8, 2015 from: http://www. smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/ Chang, C. K., & Hsu, C. K. (2011). A mobile-assisted synchronously collaborative translation - Annotation system for EFL reading comprehension. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24(2), 509-533.

Duggan, M., Ellison, N., Lampe, C., Lenhart, A.and madden, M. Social media Update, 2014. Pew research Center. (2015).

Retrieved May 10. 2015. from http://www.pewinternet.org/ files/2015/01/PI_SocialMediaUpdate20144.pdf Gikas, J., & Grant, M. M. (2013). Mobile computing devices in higher education: Student perspectives on. The Internet and Higher Education, 19, 18-26 Hwang, G. J., & Zhuang, Y. Y. (2013). Effect of the inquiry based mobile learning model on the cognitive load and learning achievement of students. Interactive Learning Environment, 21(4), 338-354.

Liu, Y., & Han, S. (2010). Understanding the factors driving m-learning adoption: A literature review. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 27(4), 210-226.

IADIS - International Association for Development of the Information Society. (2014). Mobile Learning. Tenth International Conference. Madrid, Spain.

Prensky. M. (2001). Digital natives. digital immigrants. On The Horizon. 9(5), 1-6. Retrieved September 8, 2015 from http:// www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20 Natives.%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf Rosenberg, M. J. (2001). E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shih. J. L.. Chuang. C. W.. & Hwang. G. J. (2010). An inquiry based mobile learning approach to enhancing social science learning effectiveness. Educational Technology & Society.

13(4). 50-62.

Sun, Y., Wang, N., & Peng, Z. (2011). Working for one penny: Understanding why people would like to participate. Computers in Human Behavior, 27, 1033-1041.

Yagci. T. (2014. November). Mobile Social Media Challanges Digital Natives In EFL Learning. Journal Of Educational And Instructional Studies. 4(4). 49-53 Zimerman. M. (2012). Digital natives. searching behavior and the library. New York: New Library World

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Appendix A How Digital Native Are You? A) Personal Information 1.

2.

3.

4.

9.

What is your gender?

• Female • Male Which educational instition do you study at?

• Ishik University • Salahaddin University • Cihan University • Other Which year student are you?

• Freshman • Sophomore • Junior • Senior • other I study at the faculty of… Please choose your faculty.

• Education Faculty • Bussiness and Management • Faculty of Law • Dentistry • Faculty of Engineering • Faculty of Science • Other

C) Social Media Tools & Platform 10. Please choose the social media tools if you have any account or profile.

• Facebook • Twitter • My Space • Instagram • LinkIn • Youtube • Pinterest • Edmodo • Weblog or Blog • I have no social media account • Other: 11. How much time do you spend on your social media account?

• 1 hour • 2-3 hours • 4-6 hours • 7-12 • More than 12 hours 12. What is your general purpose to use your social media account?

• For education • For fun and entertainment • For chatting and communicating with friends • Other: 13. I generally use my social media account intensively....

• in the mornings • in the afternoons • in the evenings • all the day

B) Mobile and Electronic Devices 5.

6.

7.

8.

What is your general purpose of using electronic devices?

• For education • For fun and entertainment • Other:

I have these Electronic Devices • Mobile (cellular) Phone • Smart mobile phone • Tablet Pc ( e.g. Ipad. Samsung Galaxy Tab etc.

• Laptop. Notebook Computer • Desktop Computer • Other Devices How long have you been using your electronic device?

• 1 month • 2-3 months • 4-6 months • 7-12 months • 1-3 years • more than 3 years How many hours in a day do you use your electronic device(s) ?

• 1-2 hours • 2-3 hours • 4-6 hours • 7-12 • More than 12 hours I generally use my electronic device intensively....

• in the mornings • in the afternoons • in the evenings • all the day

D) Internet Accessibility 14. Do you have your own internet access?

• Yes • No 15. How many hours in a day do you login your internet?

• 1-2 hours • 2-3 hours • 4-6 hours • 7-12 • More than 12 hours 16. I generally log into internet access intensively....

• in the mornings • in the afternoons • in the evenings • all the day

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Strategies to Support the Enhancement of Listening Comprehension (A Case of Ishik University English Preparatory School Naci YILDIZ *

Abstract Teaching listening while dealing with a foreign language has largely been neglected, as, on the one hand, it has been expected that L1 listening strategies would be automatically transferred on L2 and, on the other hand, as listening skills are sophisticated, hence, difficult to investigate and teach. However, as the skill which is prerequisite for two-sided oral communication and as a valuable source of comprehensible input, listening deserves much more attention than has got until today, either in teaching practice or in research. This study attempts to show the influence of developing learners’ listening strategies on the improvement of their comprehension skills. In an experimental study with 40 students at Ishik University (Iraq) it was found that the use of strategies in the listening process considerably enhanced the achievement of learners.

Keywords: Listening activities, listening comprehension, listening strategies

Introduction Historically, while teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language), listening has been underestimated – insufficient time has been spent on it in and out of class, also, little research was dedicated to the development of listening skills, due to the complexity of the skill. However, if, while teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), the lack of time spent on listening comprehension in class has been compensated by the time spent on it in the native-language environment, no such compensation could be offered in EFL. The idea that L1 listening strategies will be automatically transferred on L2 also found little evidence (Rubin, 1975). Thus, it is obvious that teaching foreign language listening skills needs more attention both theoretically and practically, as listening comprehension has a vital role in successful communication. If listening comprehension does not occur, communication cannot be established. In other words, learners need to receive input to communicate - the term “comprehensible input” was introduced by Stephen Krashen (1982) to stand for the language heard and read which the learner can understand.

Listening is not a passive activity. It is a process in which learners need to understand the structure and the vocabulary of the target language, and at the same time, through interpreting the intonation and stress, learners need to discriminate between the sounds and finally to interpret the whole utterance. Listening is a difficult activity and it requires hard work. Learners need to analyze all language compo-

nents carefully, applying their knowledge of the subject spoken about, in order to obtain information.

Listening is processing input, so learners are required to recognize language knowledge (Krashen, 1982). If learners do not have sufficient language knowledge, they cannot process input and comprehension does not occur. Vandergrift (1999) argues that asking learners to produce without input processing does not bring about outcomes (i.e., speech production: speaking and writing). Initially learners need to have sufficient language knowledge and assimilate it in long term-memory. This will allow them to comprehend better.

Yet, short-term memory may be unable to retain all the information perceived. So, learners need to improve their auditory memory for better listening comprehension. Besides, background knowledge (if it exists) helps comprehension, so, unless refreshed (or, if needed, provided), it will also create obstacles to listening comprehension. Thus, in order to receive messages, learners need to possess and be able to apply cognitive strategies to overcome the difficulties in listening comprehension. Having such strategies is a great advantage, which enables learners to learn the target language in an effective way.

The term ‘strategies’ means “techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge”. It was first introduced to language teaching and learning by Rubin (1975, p. 43). Oxford (1990) aimed to involve steps used by

* MA, Suleyman Demirel University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.

E-mail: naciyildiz3034@gmail.com

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Naci YILDIZ, Strategies to Support the Enhancement of Listening Comprehension (A Case of Ishik University English Preparatory School)

learners to make the acquisition easier, which are memory strategies (how learners remember language), cognitive strategies (how learners think about their learning), compensation strategies (allow learners to compensate limited knowledge), metacognitive strategies (how learners manage their own learning), affective strategies (learners’ feelings) and social strategies (learners interact with others).

Anderson (2005, p. 757) develops the term further and defines it as “conscious actions that learners take to improve their language learning”. Anderson (2003) argues that these strategies could be observed, for instance, when a learner is taking notes during a lecture or they could be unobservable, i.e. mental, for instance, thinking about what the learner knows about a topic prior to reading a text in a resource.

These strategies of listening comprehension are considered as steps, which are taken by learners to receive information and deduce meaning from the oral input, through taking their prior knowledge of the world and of the target language into account (Young, 1997). The enhancement of effective strategies is significant for listening comprehension, because strategies lead learners to value their own understanding (Vandergrift, 1999).

based strategies require: listening for specific information, recognizing cognates, and recognizing word-order patterns.

1. Literature Review

In order to receive better results in listening activities, learners need to apply the following strategies:

Listening strategies are classified into two main categories: bottom-up and top-down. Bottom-up processing refers to the “part of the process in which the understanding of incoming language is worked out proceeding from sounds into words into grammatical relationship and lexical meaning and so on” (Morley, 1991, p. 87). Top-down strategy, on the other hand, is “the converse of bottom-up: holistic, going from whole to part and focuses on interpretation of meaning rather than recognition of sounds, words and sentences” (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2002, p. 197). The information processing has been brought up from the listener’s prior knowledge of the situation or context and language expectations.

The prior knowledge of the listener plays a major role in the process of digesting information. This strategy is composed of: listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences and summarizing (Morley, 1991, p. 87; Guo & Wills, 2004, p.4).

Listening provides the learners with aural input they need for language acquisition and allows learners to communicate interactively. Effective language teachers have the skills to help their learners increase their listening comprehension, so that learners can develop listening strategies.

Sharma (2011, p.13) states that listener-based strategies require the following: • Listening for the major idea of the material • Predicting the cases or incidents in the material • Drawing assumptions • Cutting Furthermore, the language difficulty level of the material influences input processing. Words, grammar and pronunciation in a listening material are key factors for the establishment of comprehension. These materials must match the student’s listening skills’ level. Too difficult listening texts will give learners nothing in terms of listening skills development, taking into consideration Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximate development’ (1989). According to Sharma (2011, p.14), text-

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To process meaning from a listening material, learners need to follow the following basic steps: • They need to know the purpose for listening; this will encourage learners to motivate themselves better; • They need to have some background knowledge about the topic; this will allow them to make predictions about the content, and learners will be able to select more useful listening strategies, if they have some prior knowledge of the topic; • Learners need to select relevant to the difficulty level of the listening text top-down and/or bottom-up strategies and use them effectively; using both strategies simultaneously is especially effective; • Learners need to check their answers after the listening activity finishes; this helps them to see their comprehension failures and specify the choice of different listening strategies.

a)

Before listening:

• Define the purpose of listening; • Refresh / check background information about the topic they will listen to; • Brainstorm the language on the topic; • Predict the information based on the title and some illustrations. b)

During listening:

• Check the guesses; • Select the major information (keywords, names, other data); • Ask for help if comprehension of listening materials does not occur. c) After listening: • Assess the comprehension of the given piece; • Evaluate the overall progress of listening comprehension; • Decide whether the strategies applied were appropriate or not; • Modify strategies if it is needed.

When teachers use pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities in listening comprehension, learners can learn better. At pre-listening stage learners will have an idea about the topic, which will facilitate their comprehension of the listening activity. Both pre-listening and post- listening activities are important in that they reinforce the understanding of the activities. Vandergrift (1999) argues that these

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strategies guide learners for successful comprehension of listening materials and learners can develop metacognitive strategies acquisition in three ways: planning, monitoring and evaluating.

In foreign language learning, various strategies are used to reinforce learner achievement. Wenden (1987) argues that learners need to know about the strategies and they need to design their learning accordingly, because these strategies may affect their second language learning.

Strategies will help learners to guide their learning. Rubin (1987) classified strategies into three groups: learning, communication and social strategies.

Learning strategies contribute to the learners’ language awareness. Learners develop these strategies to promote learning, so learning strategies influence the quality of learning. Communication strategies and social strategies are not directly related to language learning.

O’Malley and Chamot (1990) classified learner strategies into three groups which are: cognitive, metacognitive and social/ affective ones. Cognitive strategy includes mental manipulation or transformation of language materials, and the purpose is to promote understanding, which will lead to acquisition (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). Metacognitive strategy, on the other hand, includes knowledge about the learning process. It is a strategy that requires learners to think about the learning process. Learners through this strategy plan their learning; furthermore, learners self-evaluate their learning in this process after the completion of the task.

Social/affective strategies include working cooperatively, and question asking.

Metacognitive and cognitive strategies are important to improve the process of learning. O’Malley and Chamot (1990) argue that learners who do not have metacognitive approaches, do not have the ability to monitor their progress.

These learners cannot direct their learning; as a result they cannot evaluate their accomplishments. One of metacognitive strategies - deductive strategy - refers to application of rules to language comprehension. Learners use deduction in this strategy through applying discourse, sociocultural and structural rules.

Based on the above, the following model of strategies of EFL listening can be suggested: Figure 1.

Wenden (1998) claims that learners gain the following advantages through metacognitive strategies: 1. Learners have the ability to use learning strategies; 2. Learners learn faster and integrate the knowledge in a better way; 3. Learners consider themselves as continuous receivers and they can appropriately deal with all circumstances; 4. Learners are self-confident to ask for help; 5. Learners investigate and assess why they are attentive learners;

The impact of listening strategies has been investigated by researchers. In a study carried out by Rubin (1988, p. 32), for example, it was found that the use of listening strategies can produce better results. Rubin stated that “the combination of well-selected video and the acquisition of effective learning strategies can improve student affect and motivation”. If learning strategies are carefully selected and implemented, they can help learners to gain better learning outcomes. In another study by Thompson and Rubin (1996) the influence of cognitive and metacognitive strategies has been studied. While the experimental group in their study had a systematic instruction in strategies for listening comprehension, the learners in the control group had no such instruction, they just fulfilled the required tasks. The tests that learners fulfilled before, during and after the study, showed that learners who received strategy instruction, demonstrated a much higher level of listening proficiency than other learners without a special instruction for strategy development.

Thus, the advantages of teaching the strategies of listening comprehension are: 1. Developing higher level cognitive skills; 2. Making the listening process easier; 3. Increasing students’ motivation and self-confidence; 4. Improving the comprehension skills.

6. Learners can deal with the issue if something goes wrong during the task;

However, it is necessary to mention the disadvantages, as well:

7. Learners’ strategies are compatible with the learning task and they can make adaptations for changing conditions.

1. Mastering the strategies takes time, which, eventually, decreases the listening practice time.

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2. For some students dealing with strategies is intellectually difficult, so not all of them really benefit.

2. Research Methodology 2.1. Environment Ishik University has been providing education in Iraq for 8 years. One of the reasons why the university has become one of the most favored higher education institutions in Iraq is teaching all courses in English. The author of the article teaches listening in preparatory school and he has seen that even students with good enough vocabulary and grammar skills have grave problems while listening. He has tried to use strategies very often in his classes to facilitate the comprehension of language materials and has seen that the use of strategies enabled students to understand the listening materials more easily. This stimulated the researcher to study the issue of listening strategies application more thoroughly.

2.2. Design of the study Quantitative methods were used in the study. The performance of learners was carefully assessed by testing. The listening comprehension tests that the learners had involved conversations between university students about campus life. The listening tests included 5 conversations each of which had 10 multiple choice questions. Comparison between the control and the experimental group results was carried out.

2.3. Sample Selection

post-listening activities were used for this. Students were fulfilling special activities (such as “repeat what you hear” – each next sentence based on the previous one, but longer) that helped them to improve their auditory memory. The teacher explained to them about the use of bottom-up and top-down processing, which enabled the learners to predict what they would hear and anticipate what would occur next.

This approach left less time to just practicing listening, so some activities offered by the textbook had to be omitted.

However, learners became more successful in comprehending the texts when strategies were applied, so the fulfilment of fewer exercises was compensated by a more effective, conscious approach during the practice.

2.5. Data Collection Data were collected in this study through weekly tests in both groups. The difficulty level of the tests in both groups and throughout the experiment was the same (provided by piloting the test items). Learners in both groups had the same listening material and questions in the examinations in each week. To provide the reliability and the validity of the results, in experimental and control groups the same book (Brooks, 2011), the same listening materials, the same number of hours dedicated to teaching listening were used.

2.6. Results The obtained weekly results in each group, student by student, are shown in detail in the appendix (tables 4-5). Table 1 below shows their summary.

Table 1. Mobile Electronic Devices

The participants of this study were Ishik University preparatory school students. The university administration gave the researcher the permission to hold an experiment at the university. The students were informed about the experiment, and the researcher obtained their informed consent to participate in the research. They were promised confidentiality and anonymity so that nobody’s results would be publicly disclosed – nobody would know exactly which student got which grades.

Two groups were created: experimental and control group. Each group involved 20 learners, so totally 40 students participated in this study. There were 100 pre-intermediate level students at the university prep school, and 40 of them (upon their consent) were selected randomly and also randomly placed to the two groups. The language level of learners in the groups did not differ largely, which contributed to trustworthy findings.

2.4. Procedure Both groups were taught the same language material with the same textbooks. The number of hours dedicated to the development of listening skills did not differ, either, which contributed to the reliability of the comparison of the groups’ results. However, the students in the control group were just practicing the listening comprehension tasks offered by the textbook, while the students in the experimental group were purposefully developing their listening strategies according to the model suggested above. They were activating their prior knowledge of the world and target language before fulfilling the listening tasks. . Pre-listening, while-listening and

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While the averages of learners’ in the control group are respectively 54.7, 56.4, 59.1, 61.6 (or grew by 6.9 points = 13%, which is the result of time spent on practicing listening), the averages of learners’ in the experimental group are respectively 62.4, 69.2, 75.8, 79.6 (or grew by 17.2 points = 28%). These scores yield that strategies during listening process help learners understand the listening materials better.

It is seen that both groups improved in terms of listening comprehension weekly. However, it is clearly seen that the use of strategies contributed to the achievement of learners; pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities helped learners with better comprehension of listening materials. The weekly scores of students in the experimental group were increasing more steadily than those in the control group.

Journal of Education in Black Sea Region ISSN 2346-8246, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2015

Table 2 below shows the means of weekly test scores, standard deviations and standard error means.

Based on the above results, paired samples test was carried out (see table 3), to find out the confidence level of the obtained results.

Table 2. Paired Samples Statistics

Table 3 shows that there is strong evidence (p = 0.000) that the use of strategies improve listening comprehension.

If we look at the 95% Confidence Interval (95% CI) which means that if we were to do this experiment 100 times, 95 times the true value for the difference would lie in the 95% confidence interval. In this study, the 95% CI is from -2 to -1 for pair 1, -3 to -1 for pair 2, -3 to -2 for pair 3 etc. These numbers confirm that the difference in marks is actually very small which means that the results are valid.

2.7. Data Analysis Figure 1 shows the achievement of learners in both groups throughout the study. The weekly averages of learners in both groups are demonstrated in Figure 1. While the averages of learners in the control group are respectively 54.7, 56.4, 59.1, 61.6, the averages of learners’ in the experimental group are respectively 62.4, 69.2, 75.8, and 79.6. These scores yield that the development of listening strategies during listening process effectively helped the experimental group students to understand the listening materials better.

Quite a sharp increase in the experimental group is seen between the first and the second week (by 6.8 points, or 11%), then the increase gradually slows down, but still goes on (week 2 – week 3: by 6.6 points, or 10%; week 3-week 4: 3.8 points or 5%). It is visible that the dramatic increase is achieved when the strategies are first explained and used (second and third week), later the increase in the skills level goes on, but is not so dramatic.

Figure 2. The achievement of learners in both groups in all weeks

On the other hand, we can see that the increase in the control group is slower than in the experimental group (between week 1 and 2: 1.7 points or 3%, between week 2 and 3: 2.7 points or 5%, between week 3 and 4 by 2.5 points or 4%).

Thus, the experimental group’s results grew considerably within a one-month period - by 17.2 points = 28%), while the control group’s result grew reasonably within the same period (by 6.9 points = 13%). This supports the idea that purposefully teaching listening strategies increases the level of listening skills.

As the research was limited by the country, university, student number and duration, more research is necessary, to come to the conclusion that the suggested model of developing listening strategies yields a considerable increase of the level of listening comprehension skills.

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Table 3. Paired Samples Test

Conclusion Based on the literature analysis, it can be summed up that listening is an essential part of verbal communication. It provides learners with comprehensible input. However, EFL do get less experience in listening comprehension, compared not only to L1 students, but also to ESL students.

This means that teachers need to increase the efficiency of teaching EFL listening in order to turn students into successful listeners. The use of listening strategies in foreign language learning process influence input processing. Unless learners are provided the key factors for the establishment of comprehension, they do not gain enough benefits from listening practice. The implementation of listening strategies will generate better learning outcomes.

The strategies of EFL listening comprehension, according to the suggested in the research model, included all four main components: 1. Cognitive – refreshing the background knowledge on the topic 2. Meta-cognitive – discussing the ways to tackle with difficulties, the reasons of success and failures, such as meaning elicitation from more knowledgeable others or interlocutors Communication / linguistic – methods of guessing the meaning, including using the linguistic context, word-derivation, cognate words Social / affective - working in pairs and small groups to develop / check comprehension; listening to enjoyable pieces

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The results of the experiment held at the prep school of Ishik University (Iraq) showed that the experimental group’s results grew considerably within a one-month period of teaching listening strategies - by 17.2 points or by 28%, while the control group’s result grew reasonably within the same period (by 6.9 points = 13%), as no teaching of listening strategies was provided. This means that the teaching and the application of listening strategies in the experiment has significantly increased the level of students’ scores in listening. As the experiment held is aligned with the literature analyzed, it is expected that the application of the offered model would increase the level of listening comprehension of other students as well. To say that for sure, more experimentation on a wider scale is needed.

References Anderson N. J. (2005). L2 learning strategies. In Hinkel E. (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (p. 757-771). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Brooks, M. (2011). Q: Skills for Success Listening & Speaking 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press Guo, N. and Wills, R. (2004). An Investigation of Factor Influencing English Listening Comprehension and Possible Measures for Improvement”. Retrieved November 1, 2015 from http://www.aare.edu. Au/05pap/gou05088.pdf Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press

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Lynch, T. and Mendelsohn, D. (2002). Listening. In N. Schmitt (ed.). (p. 193-210). .Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold.

Ming, Y. C. Y. (1997). A serial ordering of listening comprehension strategies used by advanced ESL learners in Hong Kong. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 7, p.35 - 53 Morley, J. M. (1991). Listening Comprehension in Second/ Foreign Language Instruction. (p. 81-106). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (Second Edition) New York: Newbury House.

Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Malley, J. M. and Chamot, A.U. (1990). Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Rubin, J. (1975). A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Listening. San Diego, California: Dominie Press.

Rubin, J. (1987). Learner strategies: theoretical assumptions, research history and typology. (p. 15â&#x20AC;&#x201C;30). In Wenden, A. and Rubin, J. (Eds.). Learner Strategies in Language Learning.

New York, London: Prentice Hall.

Rubin, J. (1988). Improving foreign language listening comprehension. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

Sharma, N. (2011). Strategies for Developing Listening Skills.

ELT Voices, India, December, p. 12-17.

Thompson, I. and J. Rubin. (1996). Can strategy instruction improve listening comprehension? Foreign Language Annals, 29(3), p. 331-42.

Vandergrift, L. (1999). Facilitating second language listening comprehension: Acquiring successful strategies. ELT Journal, 53, p.168-76.

Vygotsky, L. (1997). Interaction between learning and development. In Gauvin, M. & Cole, M. (eds.). Readings on the Development of Children. (p. 29-36). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wenden, A. (1987). Incorporating learner training in the classroom. (p. 159-168). In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner Strategies in Language Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Wenden, A. (1998). Learner training in foreign/second language learning: A curricular perspective for the 21st century.

Retrieved November 1, 2015 from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416673.pdf

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Appendix A Table 5. Test scores of students in the experimental group

Week 4

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

70

71

Student 1

66

74

86

91

68

69

Student 2

66

74

84

89

62

68

75

Student 3

67

75

82

87

60

62

66

67

Student 4

67

74

82

85

Student 5

60

62

64

67

Student 5

66

74

80

85

Student 6

60

60

64

65

Student 6

64

72

80

83

Student 7

58

60

62

65

Student 7

64

72

78

83

Student 8

58

58

62

63

Student 8

62

72

78

81

Student 9

56

58

60

63

Student 9

63

72

76

81

Student 10

56

58

60

63

Student 10

63

72

76

79

Student 11

56

58

58

60

Student 11

62

71

74

79

Student 12

54

56

58

61

Student 12

62

67

74

77

Student 13

52

56

56

60

Student 13

61

68

74

77

Student 14

52

54

56

57

Student 14

61

67

74

77

Student 15

50

52

54

57

Student 15

60

66

72

75

Student 16

50

52

52

55

Student 16

59

64

70

75

Student 17

48

50

52

55

Student 17

59

63

70

75

Student 18

48

48

52

54

Student 18

58

62

70

73

Student 19

46

48

50

53

Student 19

59

62

68

71

Student 20

46

46

50

51

Student 20

58

64

68

69

54.7

56.4

59.1

61.6

62.4

69.2

75.8

79.6

Week 2

Learner

Learner

Week 1

Week 3

Table 4. Test Scores of students in the control group

Student 1

62

64

Student 2

62

64

Student 3

60

Student 4

Average

Average

12

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