Participating Pre-Service Teachers in the Bulding Bridges Project Shared Their Experiences

Final-year students studying in the Department of English Language Teaching at Near East University, who have also taken part in the “Building Bridges: Teaching English to Diverse Groups” Project organised by the Near East University’s Research Centre for Applied Linguistics (RCAL), have shared their experiences with their fellow students. Pre-service teachers who have had the chance to put their theoretical knowledge they gained in their four years of university education into practice explained that they were given the opportunity to feel like real teachers through this project. While they accepted questions from the audience, they stated that they found the opportunity to try out classroom management methods as well as different techniques of language teaching in real classrooms. They also shared the difficulties of teaching two diverse groups at the same time and the ways through which they have overcome these difficulties. Participating pre-service teachers were presented with certificates at the end of the panel.

According to Asst. Prof. Dr. Çise ÇAVUŞOĞLU, who was coordinating the project, currently two hours of English language instruction is provided weekly to the members of Association of Prevention of Social Risks and Cyprus Turkish Association for Orthopedically Disabled. Although this phase of the project will be completed in 14th May 2016, the Building Bridges project will continue in the coming semesters with further collaborations with various and diverse non-governmental organisations.