Journal of Education

Case Study of S tudents’ Needs and Attitudes Towards Topics Dealing with the Target Culture in the EFL Syllabi in Georgian High Schools

Natela Doghonadze — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

In second/foreign language teaching a very important aspect of contents of teaching is culture, the unity of language of culture.
Much has already been done in this direction, but still much has not been investigated. The goal of the article is to find out
whether Georgian students think that too much / insufficient teaching about English-speaking countries’ culture is offered at
school and what aspects of teaching about the culture students expect to get. A conclusion is made that it is necessary to pay
more attention to teaching about culture in general and in particular to that of various English-speaking countries (not only the
UK and US, as the traditional approach is), to develop various language activities, especially speaking ones, that will make
teaching about culture interesting and engaging, and to provide a variety of culture-related topics.

Significance of Drama and Drama Exercises in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language, the Case of IBSU

Sinem Atış — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

The objective of this study is to determine the role of using drama and/or dialogs performed by students to make the lecture
more entertaining and provide strong skills while teaching Turkish as a foreign language. There are few adequate studies for
drama application for Turkish as a Foreign Language teaching. The studies performed in this area are mostly towards teaching
Turkish as a mother tongue. In the article an attempt is made to demonstrate the significance of drama exercises in teaching
a foreign language and a conclusion is made that drama and performances increase the involvement and motivation of studentsin
the class and develop speech.

Effects of Using Interactive Whiteboards at High School Mathematics Classrooms

Ahmet Çakir — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

This article presents the results of a quantitative research about the effects of using interactive whiteboards in high school
mathematics classroom. It will be helpful for the high school mathematics teachers as well as for researchers in the field of
teaching mathematics. The aim of the article is to investigate the effects of using interactive whiteboards in high school mathematics
classrooms.
In
the
article
the
following
research
questions
are
answered:
“What
can
we
do
with
an
interactive
whiteboard?”
and
“Do
we
really
need
the
properties
of
the
interactive
whiteboard?”
For
the
research
part
of
the
article
mathematics

lessons
for
tenth
grade
students
of
a
private
school
in
Tbilisi
were
held
in
two
ways.
During
the
first
6
weeks
the
topics
were

taught
on a blackboard by
traditional methods.
Starting from seventh week we used an interactive whiteboard. At
the end of
the
research
a
student
questionnaire
was
applied.
In
the
questionnaire
10
questions
were
asked
about
the
benefits
and
differences
of using interactive whiteboards in
mathematics lessons. It was
found that the application of
interactive whiteboards in

mathematics
lessons has a number of significant benefits.

Managing the Classes by using Multiple Intelligence Instruction

Suleyman ÇELIK — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

Classroom management is one of the challenging and difficult tasks to achieve for many of the foreign language teachers and
they confront different types of classroom management problems every day, such as disobeying the school and classroom rules,
misbehaving during the lessons, using obscene words and gestures, and showing disrespect. Unless the FL teachers overcome
those classroom management problems, it is hard to teach effectively. This study deals with some high school EFL teachers who
use multiple intelligence instruction methods in their lessons in Duhok city in Iraq. A questionnaire and interviews were used to
collect data about how the teachers control their classes, their attitudes toward managing the classes and assumptions aboutmultiple
intelligence instruction. The
preliminary results of the study show that teachers who use different
types of teaching activities

can
control their classes easier than the ways they used when they applied traditional teaching approaches. If teachers take into

consideration
students’

Multiple Intelligences, they can achieve higher student engagement in the class activities. On the other
hand, those teachers who use the same teaching techniques all the time have difficulties in managing the classes or their lessons
are so boring. As a result, using different types of activities which are related to learners’ intelligence can both foster a positive
climate and help the teachers to control their classes.

Comparative Analysis of the Problem of Tense in Georgian and Turkish Languages

Harun Chimke — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

Georgian verb is rich in grammatical categories, however, some of these categories are the subject of debate, and category of
time is one of these. According to some linguists, tense is one of the primary categories of the Georgian verb. It is known that a
grammatical category must be expressed by an appropriate affix; however, Georgian verbs do not possess such. It is one of the
elements of tense rows, i.e. it is expressed by one of the rows to which an appropriate question sign (?) is added. The subject of
our interest is whether the tense is a grammatical or a semantic category in Georgian, and what answer we will obtain by comparing
Georgian-Turkish
linguistic data with one another.
The issue of grammatical tense is not clear in Turkish linguistic scholarly literature, either. According to the commonly accepted
view in Turkish scientific literature, there are four grammatical tenses in literary Turkish language, however, some linguists divide
past tense into two parts:
Simple tenses in Turkish are divided into five forms and,unlike Georgian, all Turkish grammatical tenses have their own markers:
1. Present-indefinite (-yor): “Kızım sana söylüyorum,gelinim sen işit“ –“I am appealing to my daughter, so may my bride hear
my words“; 2. Future-affirmative (- acak, -ecek): “Ben bu işi yapacağım“ –“I will definitely do this“; 3. present-future (-r, -ar, -er,
-ır, -ir, -ur, -ür) “Son gülen – iyi güler“–“He, who laughs the last, laughs the best“; 4. Future-outcome (-mış
), Turkish: “Sevgisiz
doğmuşsun, sevgisiz büyümüşsün“ –“You were born without compassion and you have grown without it as well“; 5. Past-affirmative
(-dı
), Turkish: “Diyeceklerini unuttu, hiçbir şey söyleyemedi“–“He forgot what he was going to say, so he could not say
anything“. With these tense markers we can easily understand in which form a particular verb was used.
4
Accordingly, tense is a clearly expressed grammatical category in Turkish: each tense has its own marker. This very point makes
it clear for Turkish language learners to distinguish the tense form in which the particular verb is. The same cannot be said about
foreigners, namely,about the Turks learning Georgian. Regarding the above-mentioned point,the following can be suggested:
when studying the Georgian language, foreigners should pay attention to the prefixes with which they can express the future
tense by present indefinite, in all other cases attention should be paid to the semantics, i.e. the context.
The comparison of Georgian-Turkish linguistic data reveals difference which causes difficulty in comprehending the tense category
in Georgian verbs. Indeed, in Georgian the tense category has the corresponding semantics and the function of tense in

general,
but is not expressed formally.
Accordingly,
we should consider the viewpoint of the scientists claiming that tense is a

semantic
category rather than grammatical one.

Speaking Anxiety Among Turkish EFL Students (Case of IBSU)

Huseyin Demir — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

Since English is one the most widely spoken languages in the world, speaking anxiety could become a serious problem for learners.
Hence,
to
prevent
further
negative
consequences,
caused
by
this
issue
(such
as
loss
of
motivation
while
learning
the
target

language,
avoiding
speaking
in
public,
etc.),
it
needs
to
be
deeply
studied.
The
study
investigates
the
feelings
of
English
language

anxiety
among
Turkish
EFL

students. The study revealed that the majority of the participant, despite their gender and level differences,

more or less experienced English language anxiety. The article seeks to find out the types of anxiety felt by foreign
language learners and also provides several ways how to cope with it.

Towards Target Language Awareness of English Language Teachers - Three Stories of Teacher Education Projects

Jarosław KRAJKA — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

The process of training future teachers of English has gained a new dimension recently thanks to ubiquitous access to the Web
and widespread availability of hardware and software. Even despite that, however, teacher trainers need to be looking for sound
pedagogical procedures that could be implemented in teacher training sessions. The purpose of the present paper will be to show
the design and implementation of “TEFL specialisation module 4” post-graduate course, aiming at expanding digital teaching
skills and target language awareness of student teachers. In particular, a discussion of text-based, audio-based and video-based
instructional modules will be provided.

Adult Language Instruction in Liberal Adult Education I nstitutions in Finland

Tamar Mikeladze — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

Extensive research has been carried out on adult education, although no single study exists which adequately covers foreign
language instruction in liberal adult education institutions. At adult education centers (AECs) learners differ in many aspects,
creatinga complex environment for teaching. This paper presents research which was designed to study adult learners’ attitude
towards the language programs/courses; it describes adults’ learning experience at liberal AECs. The research was conducted in
2013 within the operating foreign language courses at the AECs in Turku, Finland. The data was gathered by a semi-structured
interview. Twenty three AEC language learners participated in the survey. The main issues addressed in this paper are: a) adult
learners’ attitude toward the language courses, b) AEC language classroom practices (success factors and obstacles). The current

study found that the language courses were in demand. Along with these positive findings the study disclosed that adult
learners had some problems that could be solved by educators and administrators’ intervention. These problematic areas were:
1) teaching methods and approaches, 2) teaching materials 3) course/ class management 4) teaching resources. The AEC
educational environment is extremely diverse and thismakes teaching tremendously complex. Only through a constant dialogue
between an instructor and learners it is possible to create a productive, satisfying environment.

The Importance of Parental Involvement in School Development in Georgia (Case of Private School ‘Logos’)

Ekaterine Pipia, Ketevan BATSANKALASHVILI — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

The presented paper examines how parental involvement in education can facilitate school development and improvement in
Georgia. The study, which was conducted in the private school “Logos”, Tbilisi, Georgia, sought to find out the types and categories
of
parental
involvement,
parent’s
assessment
of
school
and
family
responsibilities
in
the
process
of
education,
and
finally,
barriers
that impede successful school-parent cooperation. The
aim of the research was to identify whether the interviewed parents

felt
involved
in
their
children’s
education
and
school
life
as
well
as
find
out
what
activities
they
would
be
willing
to
get
involved
in.

The
research also studied the strategies that would help parents to be better involved and the barriers that prevented them from

engaging
in
school
life.
Based
on
the
findings
of
the
research,
we
were
able
to
draw
conclusions
and
recommendations
that
are

useful for school administrators in order to turn Georgian schools into open-type, democratic institutions that are ready to achieve
better academic results for the future generations.

Problems of International Student Mobility in Georgia

Ekaterine Pipia, Tinatin GABRICHIDZE — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

This research was designed to examine the level of internationalization of higher education in terms of international student
mobility in Georgia. The papers aims to explore Georgia as 1) the host country and 2) the country of origin of internationally
mobile students, detect the most common problems and barriers existing in the process of recognizing the diplomas obtained at
American and European Universities and validating Georgian educational documents abroad. The study revealed that Georgia,
after implementing reforms and becoming a part of the Bologna system, is increasing its internationalization level, but there are
many problems with the recognition of international education, as well as with the recognition and validation of Georgian education

abroad, which harms the reputation of Georgian higher education system. It is quite obvious that many Higher Education
Institutions in Georgia still do not have the capacity to meet the demands of international students, which results in low numbers,
especially on the masters programs. The study concludes that the majority of Georgian educational documents issued after 2005
(after the new reforms and Bologna processes in higher education - HE), have no validation problems at American and European
Universities, which stresses the fact that the quality of Georgian HEIs is increasing.

Data-driven Vocabulary Learning vs Traditional Instruction at a High School in Uganda

Bilal Tekin — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0400

The importance of vocabulary knowledge has gained much more attention in recent years. In order to increase the lexical knowledge,
there
have
been
many
attempts
by
various
researchers
to
find
new
vocabulary
learning
strategies.
Data-Driven
Learning

(DDL)

was introduced as a new vocabulary learning strategy by Tim Johns (1991) by taking advantage of online corpora. The
present study aims to investigate whether this new approach is effective in vocabulary learning compared to traditional instruction.
4 months of experimental study involved two different groups as experimental (DDL) and control (traditional instruction) group.
The analyses of the end of pre and post-tests showed that the experimental group performed better than the control group. The
analyses showed that the difference in performance between the two groups was statistically significant.