Welcome back dearest reader :)
At the 6th week of Teacher Training Program, we focused on English as an International language topic. Before the session as a preparation we read Aya Matsuda's Teaching Materials in EIL article. In this way we were able to have a vivid image of the evaluation of teaching materials.
The importance of the awareness that we raise as prospective teachers of English can not be denied. The material that we are creating to be used in the classroom setting should include varieties of Englishes from all around the world and should be able to reflect each of them with ultimate care. If we don't do this, then how will our students meet with the phenomena of EIL? We owe this to them. While integrating many Englishes we should not exclude localisation as well since local Englishes are the Englishes which constitute EIL so why not including our local English? As far as I'm concerned this is one of the best questions to be asked.
I can not say that I was totally unaware of EIL yet of course I learnt somethings as well. Using varieties of course books, creating as authentic materials as possible, providing many different accents and etc.
As a starting point, we may try to investigate the needs of the student group that we are going to teach, in this way the teaching materials and the way of our teachings can be shaped better. The local context of the students ought to be taken into consideration as well as the global setting. To be able to understand the needs of our group we may implement surveys or interviews to provide them a better education.
Evaluation of the materials is vital yet the creation and the development also carries the same importance. During the creation stage, we need to be careful and should be able to reflect and highlight some important points. I realised that no course book is perfect. They all lack in some points but some of them are presenting some particular aspects in a deeper sense and that is all.
Before the session we were asked to analyse a course book that we used while we were learning English and during the session we discussed the course books that are used in Turkey for such a long time. The main problem of the course books that are widely used in Turkey are they all are in favour of native speakerism due to the fact that this hinders the EIL perspective to a great extent. I personally was not educated with such course books the ones that my teachers were using were supporting multicultural aspects and they were serving varieties of Englishes although the core English it was presenting was British English. Of course the whole book was not built on such a topic yet at least it carries elements of such an ideology. I surely realised even the importance of the use of visuals. They should support the EIL concept along with the content. We need to understand that there's not only British and American English around the world. There are many other Englishes and they are all being used commonly this is a fact not to be unseen.
Localisation is another issue which is needed to be analysed. To be able to get the attention of the students, the material should support the local culture in the biggest circle of globalisation. So that the students have the chance to reflect upon the topics easily. With such a course book and awareness, students will gain much more confidence and they may be able to express themselves without any hesitation that the native speakerism created. I strongly believe that if we manage to create a course book as Turkish English teachers for Turkish English students with this perspective, the success will be inevitable.
Bilge Güral xx
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