The SL also regularly invites consultants to support work and development in areas such as curriculum, EAP writing, assessment, and so on.
Tom Ryan's Visit - March 1-4, 2011
In his first visit to Sabancı University School of Languages, individual counsellor and psychotherapist Tom Ryan carried out one-to-one sessions with SL staff on a variety of areas related to personal and professional development. He had one-to-one meetings with 23 members of staff over four days and also gave a highly useful and inspiring group session entitled, Heart's Desire.
Dr.Tony Humphreys' Visit - March 29-April 2, 2010
In his seventh visit to Sabancı University School of Languages since October 2004, Dr.Humphreys continued with his most effective one-to-one sessions with SL staff on a variety of areas related to personal and professional development. He had one-to-one meetings with 25 members of staff over four days and also gave a highly inspiring groups session on his new book, The Compassionate Intentions of Illness, co-authored with Dr.Helen Ruddle.
Nur Kurtoglu-Hooton's Visit May 20, 2009
Workshop: Building one's own e-portfolio
Nur Kurtoglu-Hooton's workshop focused on the basics of personal learning systems and aimed to help the audience experience how assets can be created within such systems and how one can build one's own e-portfolio.The focus was on how blogs and other assets can be created within the software and how they can be integrated into an asset to form one's own "webfolio". The workshop also showed how each asset can be shared with other users. Nur shared some of her own webfolios and how they were used for teaching and learning purposes.
Biodata: Nur Kurtoglu-Hooton is Programme Director of MA in TESOL Studies, and teaches the Course and Materials Design module on the distance learning MSc TESOL programme at Aston University, School of Languages and Social Sciences. At undergraduate level she teaches the TESOL module to students majoring in English. Her research interests include feedback and the use of learning technologies in teaching.
Tony Humphreys' Visit January 28-February 2, 2009
During his visit, Tony Humphreys continued to provided one-to-one and group support and input to SL academic and administrative staff on a variety of areas for personal and professional development. Dr. Humphreys also gave two seminars, The Seven Deadly Sins in Education and Self-Reliance: A Family Issue, the latter of which was open to SL family members and other SU members.
Nick Groom's Visit December 3-5, 2008
Nick Groom from the University of Birmingham, Center for English Language Studies, continued to work with the Corpus Project Group (CPG) on corpora and corpus analysis techniques. He also gave a session for all teachers on using corpora in teaching and concordancing programmes to analyse texts for classroom use.
Tony Humphreys' Visit June 3-6, 2008
Tony Humphreys provided support and input to SL academic and administrative staff on a variety of areas for further personal and professional development including areas such as effective communication skills, working effectively with others through conflict, teacher stress and preventing burnout, motivating tired students and potentially 'failing' students.
Humphreys also provided ideas on 'achievement' and related concepts in the Seminar and Discussion Series organized by CIAD, 'Let's talk about teaching'
Nick Groom's Visit May 14-16, 2008
Nick Groom from the University of Birmingham, Center for English Language Studies, worked with the Corpus Project Group (CPG) and also gave a a session for all on using corpora in teaching.
Chris Kennedy's Visit - April 15, 2008
‘Little’ texts and language awareness
Language awareness is a way of looking at language which links culture and language features. It encourages intercultural and inter-language comparisons. It is not a rule-learning approach but a process of reflection and awareness-raising. We can use sets of ‘little’ texts which share the same social purpose (genres) as an approach to language awareness. Little texts are small bits of language which are a complete whole. They are often ephemeral and may on the surface appear trivial since they often deal with seemingly unimportant aspects of the culture - they may not be part of high culture or literature. Nevertheless, they can tell us a lot about a culture and can reveal interesting aspects of language use. Some examples of 'little' texts would include job applications (and acceptances/refusals); job ads; adverts; street signs; shop signs; memos; letters to the press. By collecting such texts together we can produce a corpus and use concordancing programs to reveal features of the genre. I shall provide some examples of such ‘little’ texts corpora and show how they can be used with student and teacher audiences.
Tony Humphreys’ Visit - May 28-30, 2007
To provide support and input to SL academic and administrative staff on a variety of areas for further personal and professional development including areas such as effective communication skills, working effectively with others through conflict, teacher stress and preventing burnout, motivating tired students and potentially ‘failing’ students including those facing dismissal.
Ann Johns' Visit - October 22-25, 2007
To provide the SL academic staff with feedback, input and guidance on the integration & implementation of the SL writing guidelines to the SL teaching program; the exploitation of input materials in Beyond the Boundaries to meet the renewed writing objectives at different levels (using the books in conjunction with the renewed writing syllabus); and the new assessment criteria & prompts for short answer questions.
Ann M. Johns’ Visit ( October 16-18, 2006 )
Aims: To provide the Writing Task Group (WTG) and SL with feedback, input and guidance on:
*The FDY-SL (English) Principles of Writing; how we can shape and integrate these principles and their suggested processes into a renewed writing syllabus for the Foundations Development Year (FDY) at SL-SU
*The exploitation of SL’s textbooks, Beyond the Boundaries, for teaching and learning writing; using the books in conjunction with a renewed writing syllabus.
University Courses; how major a role the writing assignment/exam tasks in these courses can play in the Foundation Year in terms of teaching, learning and assessment
Tony Humphreys’ Visit ( December 27-30, 2005 )
Aims: To provide both individual and group support/input to SL academic and administrative staff on a variety of areas for further personal and professional development including areas such as effective communication skills, effective group meetings, working effectively with others through conflict, teacher stress and preventing burnout, motivating tired students and potentially ‘failing’ students
Frank Heyworth’s Visit ( December 15-16, 2005 )
Aims:
* To provide input and guidance on: second foreign languages (German, Spanish and French) course structures and curriculum; approaches to using the CEFRL with second foreign language courses
* To provide feedback and guidance on:further work done on the FDY English syllabus documents and their implementation
* To provide feedback and guidance on: FDY English speaking criteria; the new English exams based on the CEFRL (your views on these)
Kari Smith's Visit (March 21-22, 2005)
Kari Smith's visit was aimed at providing feedback, input and guidance on:
· institutional-level assessment issues,
· the assessment of speaking,
· analysis of exam results of mid-terms,
· approaches to feedback on exams to students.
Tony Humphreys' visit (March 10-12, 2005)
The aims of Tony Humphreys' visit was:
· to provide ideas on instructor queries based on initial input provided in October 2004,
· to provide additional input and support to SL instructors in the areas of personal development and communication, more specifically to focus on the power of relationships and understanding emotions,
· to provide input to SL Administrative staff on effective mutual communication and input based on specific queries they may have.
Biodata
Frank Heyworth's visit (February 24-25, 2005)
The purpose of Frank Heyworth's visit was to provide feedback, input and guidance on:
· institutional-level curriculum issues,
· the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and
· approaches to using the CEFRL as a reference tool.
Biodata
Tony Humphreys' Visit (October 4-5, 2004)
Biodata
Oya Basaran's workshop ( June 8, 2004)
Can we teach critical thinking without thinking critically?
The workshop aimed to question our definitions and understanding of critical thinking as a tool for better learning both in our classrooms and in life. At the end of the workshop, participants were invited to question how their egocentrism and reasoning might be a block to their own thinking and re-think every dimension of their teaching in order to develop questioning minds and foster critical thinking in their classrooms. (More info)
Tom Miller's workshop on 'Issues in Academic Writing' (April 27, 2004)
Barry O'Sullivan's visit (January 30-February 1, 2003)
Barry O'Sullivan's visit was aimed at providing input, guidance and feedback on asessment issues in the School of Languages.