REFLECTION+ON+DIFFERENTATION+IN+LANGUAGE+LEARNING+BY+ZEYNEP+CEYHAN

REFLECTION ON DIFFERENTATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING BY ZEYNEP CEYHAN Differentiation in Language Learning is presented by Dr. Annamaria Pinter from University of Warwick, UK. It covers some important points related to differentiation like what differentiation and motivation are, learning styles of people, grouping people, what autonomy is, and independence vs. dependence in learning and teaching. The session aims to show how important to use differentiation in language teaching. Since I want to be an English teacher, strategies about language teaching interest me very much. I want to learn new and beneficial strategies so as to increase efficiency in my profession. According to session, teacher’s role is the key in teaching; s/he should choose motivation theories according to his/her students’ needs and create a better awareness of learning for students. In this session, everything I heard is not new for me as I took some ELT courses so we talked about those points in the class. The three main things mentioned during session are differentiation, motivation and autonomy. Differentiation, in my opinion, is more applicable for older younger and adult learners as it requires taking some responsibility for the sake of learning. However, very young and young learners are not aware of learning responsibilities and strategies, the do not know what to do. Thanks to this session, I learnt autonomy cycle in a more detailed way. Autonomy cycle is beneficial not only for teachers but also students. In that session there is nothing contradicting to what I have already learnt from my ELT courses. I absolutely agree that we can break big classes into small groups. Creating and using differentiation in a big class seem impossible, but the solution is dividing the class into groups. I want to get more detailed information about autonomy. Since there is possibility of being a teacher in the kindergarten, I should know autonomy issue perfectly so as to help my very young students. Even it seems hard; we can use differentiation in Turkey. Every child is special and they need different approaches. We can apply some questionnaires and find students’ learning styles, levels and interests. It is tiring to create many tasks and activities which address to all learning styles. However, teacher can share their materials with each other; we are living in technology era and it is easy to share now. From the day I decided to be a teacher, I have never wanted to be absolute autonomy in the class. I want to know my students person by person, so that I can form lessons according to them. Everything related to classroom and students is very attractive for me. I want to learn as many methodologies as possible therefore I can choose and mix the most proper ones for my students. This session, its presentation and main ideas in it are very good prepared. I am not bored while listening to the presenter. Many points are useful for teachers and they are applicable things in teaching not dreams. I think I can use those points during my teaching life as I mentioned above. This session is my favorite and a very important one. Zeynep Ceyhan
 * Comment by Mehriban Arnazarova **

First of all, I thank you for sharing your thoughts about differentiation and autonomy as you do Mrs. Pinter:) to start with, although I agree how differentiation is important for an effective teaching and learning environment, I think it is quite difficult to apply the strategies such as breaking big classes into small groups in Turkey. At least, at the present moment, provided spaces are not enough to achieve that. on the other hand, I totally agree with you that every child or student need a different approach because each has different skills to be good at. However, I also think it will be so difficult to prepare different tasks for each student in terms of time limitation. Consequently, there might be brought new solutions to deal with this problem. As you have already mentioned, we should first discover students' needs and interests and then come up with the solutions. One of the solution might be so; after differentiating the students according to their needs and interests and skills, we may group students according those and put them in the same class; thus, we can apply the same strategies to all students in the class which will gain time.

I agree with you Comment by Ural BOZOĞLU Definitely I agree with you Zeynep. This conference was a chance to have an idea about how to implement such kind of activities in a real classroom. Those were all applicable for English teaching classrooms. You have mentioned about our ELT courses and the similarity between the topic of conference and what we are learning in our faculty. Besides these points which I agree with you, there are some points as well which I cannot agree. for exapmle, I think young lerners can have some responsibilities and strategies of learning. If they don't have, they cannot learn anything. Although it is hard to implement it in Turkey, If we are insist on it, we can manage something important for both students and teachers even for country. But we should be determant on implementing these points despite of the all difficulties. As to your reflection about this conference, the smoothness between topics are really well-balanced. I like the way you reflects what you have observed and what you have learned. You have tried to share even minor points which were mentioned in conference with us. Thank you for your efforts....  **Comment by Durak CESUR ** **I didn't attend this session but I clearly understand the content of the session. Zeynep's reflection is not a detailed one but it is quite clear. I think the content, as much as I understand, from reflection was useful for people who want to be real teachers of English. If I had a chance, I would like to attend this session. I think learning about the differentation of learning English would be so supportive for my future life. Zeynep stated that the content was different from what we learn in the deparment and this fac makes me regret not attending this session and missing a chance to see and learn new concept about language learning. Morever, I think Zeynep should give more detailed information about what the presenter did to teach them all these aspects of differentiation in learning. Her own comments are very valuable for me but we want to learn more and utilize her knowledge that she acquired through this session. Thank you, Zeynep. **