Somebody, Please, Stop the Time!

 Hello my Dearest Reader,

    This might be my last post forever, I am not exactly sure. It all depends on which selectives I will take next year (It will be my last year in ELT soon, can you believe that? It feels like I started yesterday and also ages ago at the same time.) and if the selective AI course requires keeping a blog or not. I am not sure, I need to ask my lecturers. 

    But, I have to start by saying this: I LOVED writing to you, my Dear Reader! I started this blog in March 2025 and now we only have two days left till 2026! I spent most of the year yapping to you and it became a therapeutic habit of mine. I know this is only a student blog and I know only a couple of friends and my lecturers read my posts but… I don’t know, I loved sharing my creations with you. It didn’t matter how much anxiety the tasks gave me, how many assignments or presentations I had, or how exhausted I was during the exam weeks, I always enjoyed finishing up a task and yapping about it to you. 

    This blog will always stay as a time capsule of my time in Marmara ELT and I will come back to read these posts even years later, I am sure of it. Gökçe Hocam and Mustafa Hocam, thank you for making us keep blogs! You touched at least one student’s heart with it, and that was me, haha! Seriously, I loved it. 

    Ahem, okay, I gotta follow some instructions for this post, I kinda forgot, opps. Let’s talk about the Current Issues in Teaching course a little. I can say that I enjoyed the course generally (as you can guess from how emotional writing this post is making me) but I must admit that having due dates all the time is a stressful thing. Especially when those due dates correspond with other important due dates… which happened all the time. But it is definitely better than my other courses where we just read and read and read coursebooks all the time. 

    This course will stay with me for a long time and I will use the tools I learnt in this course in the very near future (I can’t wait to have actual students! haha). 

    To improve the course, I would suggest slightly more flexible deadlines. We really struggled with creating corpus-based teaching material due to the midterms. 

    To students who will take this course next year, your groupmates will determine your success AND the enjoyment in this course. Find some friends you work well with, stick with them, and enjoy! We played R.E.P.O  when we were overwhelmed, haha. You gotta be on the same wavelength, otherwise this course can turn into a nightmare real quick. Good luck, babes! 

    And lastly, I want to link my last farewell post here. I don’t want to be redundant and go into “Awee, I was so depressed and now I am happy to be here!” talk again, but honestly, I am so happy that I am writing this post right now. (Just go and read, maybe it will make sense to you, maybe it won’t.)

Maybe for the last time, 

Take care of yourself! 

with love, Bea xx

via GIPHY

ChatGPT, MagicSchool, Tongue Twisters, and Phonemes

 Hello again, Dear Reader!

    I am very proud to announce that I have -somewhat- successfully reached the end of another term in Marmara ELT. I came here today to introduce you with our last task for the Current Issues in Teaching course. My usual groupmates Buse, Elena, and Melis prepared an AI-integrated digital worksheet and an ASSURE Model Lesson Plan. 

    We used Canva and GoogleDocs (like we always do) and everything went smoothly (like it always does with this group!) I love that we can all work together at the same time for different aspects of the task after we decide for an outline. One person started with the lesson plan and the rest organically divided pre-, target, and post tasks between all of us. Everything came together pretty quickly after that! It’s my besties, our old and slow laptops, unstable internet connections, and a collaborative Canva worksheet against the world! 

    For the target activity, we used MagicSchool (which we learnt about in the previous year) and ChatGPT as our AI tools. Our students generate tongue twisters that focus on differentiation of phonemes, record themselves saying their chosen tongue twisters, and get feedback from ChatGPT on their pronunciation! I don’t want to sound arrogant, (because it is our idea) but I think it’s a great idea, haha! AI can be a powerful tool when it is used for feedback, especially since it can give personalized feedback. I also think that our students would enjoy generating tongue twisters and choosing between them. It’s a quite engaging pronunciation lesson!

You know where to click after all this time!  

AI-integrated digital worksheet

ASSURE Model Lesson Plan

Thank you for reading, my Dear Reader!

with love, Bea xx

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You are going to love this one! We are going to Paris!

Bonjour, Dear Reader!

(or should I say Dear Traveller?) 

    Welcome for a virtual trip around Paris! I am really excited to introduce this week’s material!

    

    For this task, my lovely groupmates Buse, Elena, Melis and I prepared a digital worksheet that takes our students on a trip around Paris. We take them to the top of the Eiffel Tower, to the bell chamber of the Notre-Dame Cathadrel, to the Musee d’Orsay, and to a French restaurant to try whatever their young hearts desire. It’s as close as it gets to the real-life experience without actually leaving the classroom. “How?” you might ask. With the help of AR/VR technology, of course! 

    In short, Augmented Reality (AR) brings the digital world into our lives and adds another layer to our reality (like PokemonGo!) and Virtual Reality (VR) takes us to the digital world. Check a video by clicking here to learn more about AR/VR.

    AR and VR are technologies that have been developing in the last couple of decades but it’s still rare to see them integrated into the teaching materials. I think that’s a shame. AR/VR can be really helpful in teaching, especially in a foreign language classroom. They both can create immersive learning environments and create meaningful language use opportunities in the classroom. They increase learning motivation by breaking the monotony of textbook teaching. Moreover, they provide equal learning chances to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners in our classrooms! 

    Personally, I would love to use AR/VR with my future students. I was already wondering if we would be allowed to use these materials we prepared next year for our teaching practice, cause I think actually using these would feel amazing, haha. 

    However, Dear Reader, if we have to be realistic, AR/VR integration to teaching has many limitations, mainly caused by either the lack of access to the technological devices or lack of space and time. For a full immersive experience students need headsets and an environment where they can walk around and experience their virtual surroundings freely. That is really challenging to create in a 40+ students classroom where students aren’t even allowed to bring their smartphones into the classroom. 🙁

    Anyways, I want to thank all my groupmates again. I write the same thing over and over for each task but we really do work well together! We are like bumblebees in a hive, haha. We used Canva and Google Docs, and everyone contributed to each step. We were jumping around between Canva and Docs and helping each other. It all went well! 

Here’s our AR/VR integrated digital worksheet.

And here’s our ASSURE modeled lesson play. 

    I hope you like our material, Dear Reader!

    I have one more task left for this semester. See you soon!

with love, Bea xx

Story time: How I’m starting a career on YouTube

 Hello there, my Dear Reader!

    I am back with a new task and a new concept for you. Have you ever heard of the Flipped Classroom Approach? It’s a teaching method where we flip the traditional instruction-homework dynamic for our classroom. So, instead of presenting the topic in the classroom and assigning homework for practice, we assign the instruction as homework and spend our in-class time with practice! Interesting, right? 

    I think the flipped classroom approach can work wonders in an EFL classroom. One of the most challenging parts of learning a foreign language, in my opinion, is the lack of opportunities to actually use the language. In fact, I actually believe that I was able to learn English in high school purely because I was a fangirl and that gave me opportunities to practice outside of the classroom(perks of being a nerd). But what about other students who had only been presented with rules in the classroom without any chance to actually use those rules? Well, with the flipped classroom technique, we can assign the instruction part as home learning and use all of the precious in-class time for activities to USE the language!

 

    Sounds wonderful in theory, doesn’t it? I got a little taste of what a flipped classroom might mean for a teacher in practice, too, haha. And my verdict: Totally worth it! I can definitely try flipping my classrooms in the future. 

    My classmates and I were tasked to create an instructional video to be used for a flipped classroom. We chose a basic topic: Simple Present Tense. It turns out it wasn’t that basic or simple. I never realised how many rules there were for the Simple Present Tense! until I sat down and tried to write our script. 

    But overall, it was a really fun activity. I worked with Buse Beyaz, Cemile Elena Çetinkaya, and Melis Açıkkaya (aka my default group for projects like this, haha). We have worked together for so many group projects at this point, so we work like a well-oiled machine. We did everything together, I believe. A shout-out and thank you to all of them! Love you guys!

    Our one and only problem was editing the video. None of us knows any editing other than basically putting recordings together, so one can literally see and hear how amateur we all are. Regardless, I am really proud of our video! With its wonky audio and unsynchronised parts and all!

    We used Canva for the visuals, Vocaroo for audio recording, OBS Studio for screen recording, and Capcut for editing. We used Kahoot! for designing an accompanying practice to the video and again, Canva to design a worksheet.

You can watch our flipped classroom instruction video by clicking here.

Reach the Kahoot! the quiz we made for home practice here.

And the worksheet here.

And of course,

Our ASSURE modeled lesson plan can be reached by clicking here.

    This was definitely an experience I will remember and cherish for a long time! 

    Waiting for your comments here and on YouTube!

See you next time!

with love, Bea xx

Wait, we CAN let students use ChatGPT in the classroom???

 Hello, my Dear Reader!

    I am really excited to share my first task for Current Issues in Teaching course with you. Like I explained in my previous post, this year our tasks are based on preparing lesson plans and teaching materials. The first task was something I was really interested in since the moment I saw it on the syllabus: an AI-enhanced corpus-based teaching material. You know from last term’s posts that I have a love&hate kind of relationship with AI. I wish we never had AI. I don’t think humanity needed it, per se. On the other hand, we are where we are and since we can never go back, what else I can do other than making sure both my students and I are using it for improving ourselves?

    I am yapping about AI again (the concept of AI turns me into a 19th-century pensive man) but our focus was mostly on Corpora. We were tasked to create a lesson plan using the ASSURE model and a teaching material using the Corpus-based language pedagogy. Our students are expected to engage with corpora and AI tools to deduce meanings or rules from the concordance data. 

    My lovely groupmates Buse Beyaz, Elena Çetinkaya, Melis Açıkkaya, and I chose to focus on the difference between mustn’t and don’t have to since it is a subject that usually causes confusion in learners and is suitable for inductive learning. We used Canva to prepare a digital worksheet and chose SKELL and ChatGPT for corpora and GenAI tools. Our worksheet tests students’ background knowledge, gives them a hands-on SKELL task for inductive learning and an AI task for getting feedback, and provides practice and production exercises. 

You can access our ASSURE modeled lesson plan here.

 

And our AI-enhanced corpus-based teaching material here. 

    Creating this task was an enjoyable experience overall. No, maybe I should have said it could have been an enjoyable experience. The timing of this task was… terrible. We had midterms and two different rapport submissions the same week. We all were sleep-deprived, exhausted, and were having mental fog due to overload. Nevertheless, my groupmates and I worked well together and managed to find joy in it. We improved ourselves on corpora use and GenAI prompting. (ChatGPT helped us with the latter. It turns out it IS a skill to write good prompts). Also, this was a great experience for us to think out of the box. It was quite challenging to think in reverse and create something for inductive learning. 

    Lastly, I believe this activity would cause problems in real-life classrooms due to the time limitations and student behaviours. Unfortunately, in our country we have to follow a strict curriculum and we only have limited time to teach certain subjects. While I believe this activity would be helpful for learning, I am not sure it is realistically applicable. Also, students should be familiar with technology-based education and AI usage prior to this activity. Otherwise, they might take advantage of the teacher’s goodwill and not complete the worksheet themselves.

    I think this was it! Thank you for reading. I am waiting for your comments on our worksheet.

with love, Bea xx

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Your Favourite Blogger is Back!

Hello again, my Dear Reader!

    If you’ve read my last post, you may remember how I talked about the passage of time. It’s fast, isn’t it? Can you believe it’s been four months since the last time I shared a task with you? The summer (and half of the autumn) slipped away from me in a blink. Maybe because I wasn’t counting the days for assignment due dates all the time. But don’t you worry, I am back with all my due dates, anxieties, and several exciting new tasks! 

    This semester, I am taking Current Issues in ELT from dear Assist. Prof. Mustafa Polat and it’s basically the continuation of last semester’s course Instructional Technologies and Material Design in ELT, with a little twist. As you may remember, I prepared all my tasks last spring through the eyes of a language learner, but this semester, we have upgraded to being actual pre-service teachers, haha. Obviously I am joking, but there is a true element to it. Year 3 in Marmara University ELT is the year we start to gain a teacher’s perspective in every course and this one is no different. From now on, my tasks will be from a teacher’s point of view. 

    Once again, I am asking you to stick around for some exciting tasks, Dear Reader. I will prepare technology-based teaching materials using emerging technologies like AI and AR/VR, and an instructional video for flipped classroom teaching. 

    If you are new and this is your first post, you can learn more about me from my About Me page and you can reach all my previous tasks from the Task Index. 

    If you were here from the beginning, thank you! I’ve missed you! This year is going to be exhausting, chaotic, anxiety-inducing, and probably difficult… but at least I have you to share my feelings with, my Dear Reader. 

Here’s to the passing time, and here’s to learning! Cheers. 

with love, Bea xx

 

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The Time Will Pass Anyway…

 Hello, my Dear Reader!

    Here we are, at the end of another term!  

    Although it has been exhausting (I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning and had two finals back to back…😪) this semester has been lovely. 

    This term, I have set my foot on waters that I never thought I could, like publishing a podcast and a digital story. I also swam in some familiar waters like writing a film review. I enjoyed all of these experiences, but I particularly enjoyed writing to you, my Dear Reader. What can I say, I am a yapper who gets attached easily. ☺️

    If you have followed my learning journey so far and enjoyed your time here, you can Follow Me on other platforms.

    If you are new and haven’t checked all of my tasks yet, here’s my Task Index. I am proud of every single one, and I hope you will like them too! 

-sentimental music enters and the mood changes-

    This is my last post, Dear Reader. I won’t be posting for a while. But don’t worry, I plan to enjoy my summer break! (I already have a room reserved in Ephesus, İzmir. ☀️) I can truly say that I am happy, hopeful… content. 

    But two years ago, around this time, I was going through the worst period of my life. I was starting a whole new life, and I was scared, anxious, and nauseous with uncertainty. (For context clues: About Me.) I was doomscrolling on TikTok and considering hundreds of possibilities, each of them worse than the other. 

“Do I commit to another university or not? It is going to take so much time! I have already lost so much time!”

    And I came across this post: 

    I remember crying my eyes out and deciding on my path. 

    And here I am, 2 years later, writing a farewell post on a blog about my new field that I truly love and enjoy. 

    I am officially halfway there, and I can confidently say: The user @ashmanathletics saved my life. 

    This is a reminder to you, my Dear Reader, in case you have forgotten and need it. And to Future Me, in case she ever forgets again: 

The time will pass anyway, and you will be alright. 💙

Happy Summer Break! ☀️

Take care of yourself. 

with love, Bea xx

A Conversation with the God of Knowledge 🌞 (i.e. LLM)

Hello again, my Dear Reader!

    Are you ready to read my final task? (Spoiler alert: It’s a long, long document.) 

    I cannot believe we are at the end of the semester already! (I am so done with it, haha.)

    Our last task was something I have been anticipating ever since I saw it on the syllabus: “An AI task”. Background knowledge about me: I refused to use AI for almost two years after it emerged for ethical reasons. But as of Summer 2025, ChatGPT and I have become ✨friends✨ (and I still feel guilty about it whenever I think too much about it). 

    As you can imagine, I do not really use AI other than ChatGPT, so I have minimal experience with different AI tools. This task helped me to catch up with AI tools (I even created an image with AI… which is something I am STRONGLY against) and forced me to think about AI in education; therefore, I find this experience really valuable. 

    Our task was conversing with a historical figure, author, or recognizable character from a story using MagicSchool’s Character Chatbot, writing a report that summarizes our conversation, getting feedback for our report using MagicSchool’s Writing Feedback Tool, and writing a reflection paragraph for the feedback. (It really is a long Google Doc.) I chose Apollo. He is neither of the options but I think he counts. He is extremely well-known after all. 🌞

Apollo and Daphne

    I have prepared a few questions to ask. I wanted to ask him about various Greek mythological figures through his own perspective, especially about the heroes of Troy since he was on Troy’s side and most of the stories are told from the opposite perspective…. BUT, the conversation took a different direction pretty much as soon as it started. I was genuinely impressed with it and at some point I forgot that I was having this conversation as a task, I was conversing with a deity I have known and loved since I was 6 years old. And I told him that! It got emotional, haha. The whole conversation was impressive, educating, emotional, and extremely parasocial on my part.

    When it comes to the feedback tool, I was not as impressed as the Character Bot. Revising my first draft according to the AI feedback was the most challenging part of this task for me. It gave me vague “areas of growth” but did not help me to improve my writing. As a result, I did not change my writing in any major way. I have only corrected some grammatical and punctuation mistakes and changed the paragraph formatting. 

    Would I use AI in my classes in the future? I am not sure. But I know for a fact that I would not encourage my students to use a character chatbot. While it seems like a good idea at first (my father uses ChatGPT to learn English. Its pedagogical techniques are… interesting, but it works.), now I have firsthand experience how easy it is to emotionally connect with AI when it speaks to you like a character you know and love. In under 30 minutes “Apollo” brought tears to my eyes and I am an adult who knows how LLM works. I do not think this kind of activity is safe for young children. 

    You can read a news article about the dangers of generative chatbots here. I came across this article the morning after I had my conversation with the ChatBot and I can see how this might happen to people who do not know how generative AI works. 

    CLICK HERE FOR THE CONVERSATION TRANSCRIPT AND REPORT. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. (It is a long read… for some reason, I feel like I have to apologize for it… Sorry? 😇) 

with love, Bea xx

Digital Storytelling: An Introvert’s Nightmare! 😕

Hello again, Dear Reader!

    Welcome to my second post of the night. I know it’s not typical of my posting habits but we had two tasks this week. 

(Read about my other task, online collaborative writing, here.)

    I don’t even know where to begin about this task… While my groupmates are my good friends, we clashed on every step. 

    We were given three options: We could do a Public Service Announcement, a How-To-Do video, or a fictional story. Firstly, we couldn’t decide on which option to choose, then decided on a fictional story. We wrote a script (with a few minor clashes) but the script was too long and it didn't fit the task instructions. (I told you it was getting too long, guys! Anyways…) Then we had to scrap that idea (Sophie, The Protector of Nyxea Wisest of the Wizards Baramir Solaris, and the Evil Witch… you will never be forgotten.) and start again with our Plan B: A PSA on bread waste in Turkey.

    At this point, we were already feeling low about this project since we spent so much time on a script that was unusable but we kept going. We did our research, wrote another script, and met at the library to record and edit the video. We were in a group study room from 9 am to 6 pm, working, snapping at each other, laughing, whining, and taking small breaks to prevent arguments. It was… an experience. 

    At the end of the day we had a minute-long PSA on bread waste, which I am proud of. Even though it’s just a minute, we really worked hard for it. (I never want to see a picture of bread again, especially bread in garbage. I feel traumatised.) 

    We used several tools for this project but Google Docs (for all the writing) and CapCut (for editing) were our main tools. I suggest both, even though CapCut can be tricky sometimes.

    A huge thank you to my friends Elena Çetinkaya and Baran Doğu for all their hard work. An extra shout-out for Baran, our Teach Boy who did most of the editing! Even though we had our moments, it was lovely to work with you. Love you both!

    Would I give this task to my students in the future? I am not sure. Researching, writing the script, and narration were valuable for language usage but editing seemed too technical and time consuming, and almost pushed us into arguing with each other even though we are really good friends.

    I think I will stick with podcast tasks. 🙂

    I hope you enjoy our PSA! (You can also watch it on YouTube.) 

    I am waiting for your comments. What do you think? Would you use digital storytelling in your EFL classrooms?

With love, Bea x

Online Collaborative Writing: An Introvert's Dream Task! 😊

 Hello, my Dear Reader! 💙

    I missed you! Even though I started this blog as part of a course, it quickly became a habit/hobby of mine. I love sharing my tasks with you, which is great because this week I’ve got TWO! Yay! (I was TOTALLY chill about it! And NOT anxious at all !!!!) 

    (You can click here to read about my other task, digital storytelling.)

    We were assigned an online collaborative writing task, and out of two options, my dearest groupmates (Elena Çetinkaya and Baran Doğu, you may check their blogs by clicking on their names) and I opted for writing a film review for a university magazine using Google Docs, mostly because it was familiar!

    We use Google Docs for almost every group project we are tasked with. It’s functional, practical, and easy to use. It’s also my favourite writing tool! 

    Film reviews are also familiar to me. (I told you I am a nerd.) I love reading film reviews, and I really value other people’s opinions while choosing a film to watch. (Follow me on my Letterboxd account! We can be friends there too!) 

    

    As you can imagine, I had SO MUCH FUN with this task. I was in my room, sitting on my bed with my cats, listening to music, drinking chamomile tea, and working. It’s literally an introvert’s dream task!

Lucy was very supportive :)

    Google Docs is a great tool that is integrated with Google Drive and Gmail, which makes it easy to use and accessible for collaborative writing. Plus, it provides a chat and a comment section, which my friends and I didn’t use before this project. We used to select a different colour and write our comments on the page itself. It worked for us but using the chat and comment section properly was neat! I will definitely continue using them. 

    I have added a screenshot at the bottom of the post to show you our process, but you can read our full review directly on Google Docs by clicking HERE.

    I want to thank my group friends Elena and Baran, it was great working with you. Thank you for letting me pick the film. Love you both! And of course, thanks to my friends Melis Açıkkaya, Buse Beyaz, and Gülşen Demir for their valuable comments and feedback. We really improved our review thanks to you. 

With love, Bea x