CAPtain's Language Adventure

   Ahoy, Me Hearties!  Today, I’m sharing our adventure into creating a flipped classroom material for our English lessons. But first, what’s a flipped classroom, you ask? It’s a teaching approach where students learn the basics of a topic outside the classroom—through videos, readings, or other resources—and use class time for discussions, activities, and deeper learning. For language classes, this approach can be a game-changer! On the plus side, it gives students control over their learning pace, freeing up classroom time for practice and interaction. But on the flip side, not every student has access to the necessary tech, and some may need extra motivation to engage with the material outside class. Our task was to create a flipped classroom video about the Past Continuous Tense —a core topic in English grammar. We divided the content into four sections: What is it? , positive forms , negative forms , and question forms. I handled the recording and editing for my pa...

  Ahoy, Me Hearties!  Let me tell you about a task we recently tackled that was as exciting as it was challenging. My crew of four; Mustafa , Samet , Abdülhamid , and of course me; created a corpus-based teaching material for 9th graders, all about the tricky duo: do vs. make. To make it even better, we built a detailed lesson plan based on the ASSURE model using our material. It was an adventure packed with learning, creativity, and a few bumps along the way. So, what’s inside this treasure chest of a teaching material? It’s a four-part journey:  Test Your Knowledge: A quick warm-up to check what students already know. Improve Your Knowledge with Corpus: Students dive into real-life language examples from a corpus to spot patterns. Discovery: This section encourages students to figure out the rules themselves by analyzing the corpus data. Practice: Exercises to apply and reinforce what they’ve learned. We designed the material using Canva for its visual appeal and clarit...

Ahoy, Me Hearties!  I’m Berat Çaputlu , your friendly ELT adventurer from Marmara University, and I’m excited to be back for another semester of exploration and reflection. This time around, I’m navigating the course Current Issues in Teaching , where we’re setting sail into the latest tech trends in English language teaching—think AI breakthroughs, data-driven insights, and even virtual reality adventures! My mission here is to share this journey with all of you, whether you’re here for the class or simply curious about how tech is reshaping education. Throughout this blog, I’ll be diving into how digital tools are transforming language teaching and learning. We’ll explore everything from the evolution of ed-tech to the magic behind flipped classrooms, as well as the role immersive tech can play in making language lessons more dynamic. Plus, I’ll be unpacking the potential of AI to create personalized lessons and empower students to learn more independently. My goal is to keep thi...

  Ahoy, Me Hearties!  Ahoy, mateys! Before I embarked on this course, I was optimistic about bringing technology into English language teaching (ELT). I saw its potential, but I wasn't sure how it would actually work in the classroom. Well, let me tell you, my thoughts have evolved big time! Now, I'm all in, ready to embrace tech to boost learning outcomes. Throughout the course, I dove deep into the tech world through various tasks. Blogging was a fantastic way to reflect on my journey, helping me put my thoughts and observations into words. Creating infographics was a creative challenge that taught me how to present complex info visually, making it easier for students to grasp. Podcasts opened up the world of audio content creation, showing me the importance of listening skills in language learning. The "Story with a Twist" task unleashed my creativity and narrative skills, proving that storytelling can be a powerful teaching tool. Collaborative writing projects hig...

  Ahoy, Me Hearties!  As an aspiring English teacher, exploring AI tools has been a thrilling adventure, both as a learner and as a future educator. This journey has shed light on how AI can revolutionize language learning, making it more engaging, efficient, and personalized to each learner's needs. From a learner's perspective, AI tools have been absolute game-changers. They offer instant feedback, tailored learning paths, and a treasure trove of resources at the click of a button. Take Grammarly, for instance—it doesn't just catch grammatical errors; it also suggests stylistic improvements, helping us grasp the nuances of English writing. Apps like Duolingo and Babbel serve up interactive exercises that adapt to our proficiency levels, keeping the challenge steady without being overwhelming. Personally, I found AI tools to be my trusty sidekicks rather than a hassle. My tech-savviness made integrating these tools smooth sailing. They provided immediate answers to my quer...

Ahoy, Me Hearties!  Allow me to paint you a picture of the quite eventful experience I had with Google Docs accompanied by Mustafa and Tahir . Our assignment was to either do an online collaborative movie review or address a global issue of our choice. Of course, we chose the movie review first because it appeared to be simpler and a whole lot more entertaining. Well I mean, hello people, who on earth I may ask, does not love watching movies? Google Docs is such a tool which raised no difficulty in our work, and as for me I’ve been a technological genius even from the age of five or seven. Cooperative writing was rather uneventful and went swimmingly. We broke up the subjects, discussed them in groups, and refined each other’s work effortlessly. Another thing I loved about Google Docs was that, it was less straining in all that it offered to me. The major advantage of using Google Docs is that you can all work on it at the same time type comments and make changes instantly. I almo...

  Ahoy, Me Hearties!  Let me tell you about the wild ride my buddies;  Samet and Mustafa ; and I had creating our own twist on the classic Snow White tale. So, we set a date to brainstorm story ideas, and I gotta say, it was a blast! We were bouncing ideas back and forth like crazy (we were not) , and then it hit me – what if instead of a poisonous apple, the witch gave Snow White a telephone? Talk about a modern spin on a fairy tale! My PERFECT idea. Watch the video if you wanna hear the rest of the story!! Once we settled on the idea, the real adventure began. We knew we wanted to bring our story to life visually, so we decided to give Pixton a shot. Now, let me tell ya, it wasn't all smooth sailing. We ran into a few bumps along the way, especially when it came to figuring out all the features. But hey, nothing worth doing is ever easy, right? Despite the challenges, we powered through and got our story done. Sure, it might not be perfect, but we're proud of what we...