Reflection+on+conference-2-

REFLECTION ON CONFERENCE -2- This presentation is related to turning challenges into opportunities in the ELT classes. The presenter, George PICKERING who is tutor in language teaching management and inspector of language school for counseling in UK., related the topic with psychological point by mentioning optimistic and pessimistic thinking. Also he used activities, jokes and little stories while explaining his ideas. At the beginning he talked about his life and experiences by showing some pictures of his wife and his. As an introduction it was good and successful to take the audiences’’ attention. He gave information about how we can turn challenges into opportunities by explaining some useful ways such as mind frame, priming, memory and motivation. He mentioned on different personality types and the effect of this how to turn challenges to opportunity. The ways of seeing thing of our minds are different. He made a quick activity which involves a couple of images and writing what they see. He asks the audience what they write and then shows what the pictures mean. With this activity he aimed to approve the differences of our minds. Also as an interesting and useful activity, he shows a video in the video focus on attention is mentioned. The one who are busy to count the passes did not realize the gorilla which passes between the people. I like his comment on this video which is a quotation from ‘Did you see the gorilla?’ written by Richard Wisdom “How to recognize the hidden opportunities?” Because we are always busy with something else we don’t see the opportunities. Also seeing something as an opportunity differs from one to another person. Another highlighted topic is related to priming. Priming has effect on learning if we prime something; we frame it to learn in our mind. We gain opportunities to learn by priming and framing our mind. I found useful the Wisdom’s priming way by asking ourselves such questions: What am I going to learn today ?, What am I looking forward to today?, What have I learnt today?, What am I grateful for?. Those questions can help to draw a way of learning process and also to see the developments, challenges or drawbacks in this process. Another useful tip which the presenter said is asking ourselves “What did I achieved today?” at the end of the day. This may help us to transfer our satisfaction of achievement and willingness to achieve to the next day. In the end he turn back the main topic, to turn the challenges into opportunities by relating and summarizing the entire topic. He said that for turning the challenges to opportunities the key element is asking ourselves “Am I in the right way?” If we ask the right question to ourselves, we get the right answers. I think this is a useful statement and fact not just for education life but also for all parts of our lives. As a conclusion, I have learnt very useful tips to use in my teaching life for motivating my students to deal with the challenges and difficulties which they will encounter while learning English. Especially, I can use priming in my life and also I can advice and enable to use my student to use it.

**SALİHA ARSLAN**