Multicultural Language Education : From Research into Practice [1 ed.] 9781443867849, 9781443863063

Citation preview

Multicultural Language Education

Multicultural Language Education: From Research into Practice

Edited by

Azamat Akbarov

Multicultural Language Education: From Research into Practice, Edited by Azamat Akbarov This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Azamat Akbarov and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6306-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6306-3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present and an Analysis of Geography Education in Cyprus ................................... 1 Adem Özder The Origins of Language: From Cultural Transmission to Inductive Biases .................................................................................... 18 Alma Jeftiü Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert? .......................................... 26 Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo Alternative Assessment Tools in ELT ....................................................... 41 F. Ilke Buyukduman A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture in the Balkans ............................................................................................ 52 Fatih øyiyol An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels ...... 69 IúÕl Altun Pre-Service Second Language Teacher Training and Social Engagement ... 82 Izabela Dankiü Tense and Aspect in English: A Linguistic and Pedagogical Point of View ...................................................................................................... 91 Jasmina Mirtoska Reading Therapy: An Evaluation of Literary Books about Puberty on the Axis of Bibliotherapy ................................................................... 102 Kemalettin Deniz The Many Faces of be ............................................................................. 119 Lidija Perkiþ

vi

Table of Contents

Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods: Advantages and Disadvantages ................................................................................... 129 Mahira Hadžimehmedagiü and Azamat Akbarov Language Acquisition, the Imitation Theory and Foreign Language Learning................................................................................................... 138 Mehmet Demirezen From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher: A Follow-Up Study on EFL Teacher Dilemmas............................................................ 153 Nese Cabaroglu Cultural Specifities in Slovenian and Italian Business Letters ................ 176 Nina Lovec Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail ............................................................... 186 Senka Majetiü Cognitive, Afective and Social Strategies Used by L2 Teachers in Bosnian EFL Context .......................................................................... 201 Senka Majetiü Reflection of European Commission CEF Criteria on French Language Curricula in Primary and Secondary Education in Turkey ...................... 213 Suna Timur A÷ildere, Neúe Tertemiz and Aybike Akkutay Thematic Structure in English and Serbian: An Exploratory Study ........ 223 Tatjana Marjanoviü A Study on the Classroom Management Beliefs of Foreign Language Preservive Teachers ................................................................................. 235 Ülker Akkutay and Neúe (Iúik) Tertemiz An Investigation of the Attitudes of the Students of Foreign Language Department towards the Environment in Terms of Some Variables ....... 252 Ülkü Eser Ünaldi and Abdullah Türker The Full Circle in Practice: From Alternative Assessment to Differentiated Instruction .................................................................... 261 Željka Babiü Contributors ............................................................................................. 271

A HISTORY OF TURKISH CYPRIOT EDUCATION FROM THE OTTOMANS TO THE PRESENT AND AN ANALYSIS OF GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION IN CYPRUS ADEM ÖZDER

1. Introduction Cyprus is an island country in the northeast of the Mediterranean Sea and lies between 34° 33' and 35° 41' north latitude, and 32° 23' and 34° 35' east longitude. Cyprus has 782 km of coasts along the Mediterranean Sea, its longest being the 225 kilometres between Karpas Cape in the east and Paphos Harbor in the west. The narrowest point of the island is the 43 kilometres between Larnaca Bay and the Esen Hill on the east of Girne. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean with an area of 9,251 km2, after the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Turkey, located to its north, is the country closest to Cyprus. The distance between Cyprus and Turkey is 65 km, whereas with Syria it is 112 km, Lebanon 162 km, Israel 267 km, Egypt 418 km and Greece 965 km. According to geographers, the island of Cyprus, while adjacent to Anatolia, took the shape of an island due to collapses during the Third Geological Period. Leading geographer D. Frey asserted that the “island of Cyprus may be considered as tectonic, as a part of Anatolia in terms of its geological and climatic characteristics” (Gürsoy 197, 41–45). Many geographers have agreed with his assessments. According to the census in 2006, the population of Cyprus was 265,100, comprising 143,843 men and 121,257 women (DPÖ 2007). The history of Turkish Cyprus education, over more than four hundred years, can be examined in five periods: the Ottoman period (1571–1878), the British colonial period (1878–1960), the Republic of Cyprus (1960– 1974), the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus (1975–1983), and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (since 1983) (Cicio÷lu 1984, 211).

Dr., Süleyman ùah Üniversitesi, [email protected]

2

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

The island of Cyprus, with its strategic location in the northern Mediterranean, was conquered by the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1571. Immediately after the conquest, the Ottoman Empire, following the settlement policy, sent people from different parts of Anatolia with different professions. These people, sent with their families, strengthened the Turkish-Islamic texture while also contributing to the development of agriculture and trade on the island (Alasya 1963, 51–52). Cyprus did not occupy the agenda of the Ottoman Empire from the day it was conquered until the second half of the nineteenth century and was usually observed as a place of exile for certain government officials. After the opening of Suez Canal in 1869 Cyprus became a focus of attention for the Western states, since it was one of the most strategic routes to India; in particular, the British Empire wanted to ensure the security of reaching India through a policy of seizure of Cyprus (Alasya 2002, 380) With the Treaty of Ayastefanos, signed after the 1877–78 War between the Ottomans and the Russians, the Western states assured the holding of the Congress of Berlin and the signing of the Treaty of Berlin. During this process, Britain wanted to maintain Cyprus as a military base; in return, it would safeguard the benefits of the Ottoman Empire and create a defensive alliance against Russia. This request was accepted by the Ottoman government as it was in need of support in the international arena. In accordance with this, the Ottoman sovereignty in Cyprus was to continue, but the administrative and military rule of the island would be temporarily left to Britain (Alasya 2002, 380). When the Ottoman Empire went to war in alliance with Germany in 1914, Britain formally invaded the island. With the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1924 Cyprus was officially left to Britain. The unrest between the Turkish and the Greek communities continued with Greek attacks, and Britain was not effective in preventing such violence. With the withdrawal of Britain, the Independent Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 under the guarantor of Britain, Turkey and Greece. When violence increased with Greece’s proposed invasion, Turkey used its right to intervene militarily as a guarantor. After the Cyprus Peace Operation in July 20, 1974, two separate governments were formed on the island. On one side the Greeks, on the other the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus, established in 1975 and controlling the northern part of the island. The Turkish Federated State of Cyprus had been renamed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on July 15, 1983 (Alasya 2002, 383).

Adem Özder

3

1.1 Education History and Applications in Cyprus during the Ottoman Times (1571–1878) When we examine educational activities in Cyprus during the Ottoman dominated times, it is apparent that they were carried out by foundations, as in other parts of the country, known to have continued until the Tanzimat Period. When the traditional Ottoman educational institutions are considered, we primarily encounter Sibyan schools, the basic educational institutions where children aged between 6 and 12 are educated. In these schools, the aim was to teach children how to read the Quran in accordance with Tecvid rules. It is known that the first educational institution established was the Ayasofya Sibyan School in Nicosia after the Ottomans conquered Cyprus, and was a mazbuta Sibyan school, established and managed by the state foundations, with all expenses paid by them. It has been registered in the records that the six mazbuta SÕbyan schools and five mahalle (neighbourhood) Sibyan schools were established during the first thirty-year period after the conquest. When it comes to the nineteenth century, various attempts were made by the Ottoman Empire to gather the educational institutions under one roof and modernize them. As a result, Evkaf-I Hümayun Nezareti was established in 1826. Next, with the establishment of Maarif-i Umumiye Nezareti in 1857, educational affairs were executed from a single centre. With the Maarif-i Umumiye Nizamnamesi, put into force on September 1, 1869, the structure of education was shaped. The state schools were divided into three groups which were established in accordance with this regulation; primary schools comprised Sibyan schools, Iptidaiye and Rüútiye schools; secondary schools comprised Idadiye and Sultaniye; higher education institutions comprised Darülfünun and vocational higher schools. These changes in the Ottoman Empire revealed themselves in Cyprus, and Ibtidai schools were established alongside Sibyan schools. øptidaiye schools were directly regarded as state institutions and were affiliated to Maarif-i Umumiye Nezareti. The educational period in Iptidaiye schools was defined as three or four years. During this period, the students were taught basic skills such as literacy, arithmetic, religious studies, history, geography and handcrafts. Rüútiye schools were founded for the graduates of Sibyan and Ibtidaiye schools to help them continue their education. The first Rüútiye School in Cyprus opened in 1862 in Nicosia, named Selimiye Rüútiyesi. This school, also known as ølmiye Rüútiyesi, formed the foundation for today’s Nicosia Turkish High School. In the Rüútiye schools education lasted for three

4

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

years, and lessons such as Turkish, Arabic, Quran studies, religious studies, arithmetic, calligraphy and agriculture were taught. The higher educational institutions in the Ottoman Empire were known as medrese, and all the needs of the students were met by its management. The first medrese in Cyprus was established in 1573 named “Büyük Medrese,” and a new medrese was founded in 1578 named Küçük Medrese. Over time, the number of medrese under the auspices of mosques and foundations increased. Besides formal education institutions operating in the Ottoman period, various structures that can be considered within the scope of non-formal educational institutions were also available. Dervish lodges, mosques and libraries of educational institutions can be counted among these non-formal educational institutions. Mevlevihane in Nicosia, Cyprus, as well as various mosques and libraries, have provided services for this purpose (Alasya 2002, 215).

1.2 History of Education and applications in Cyprus during the British colonial period (1878–1960) In 1878, when Cyprus was transferred to Britain, there were 41 primary schools and eight Rüútiye medrese on the island. The British rule founded the Directorate of Education for collecting educational institutions, and established separate educational councils for the Turkish and Greek communities. In addition, it set up school commissions in every town to deal with the education of that region. Britain did not behave fairly towards both communities, and this situation caused disadvantageous results for the Turkish community, and only a quarter of the money allocated to the Council of Turkish Education was paid. Covering the costs of the schools was hindered by confiscating the Turkish foundations. In contrast, the Greek foundations were not confiscated and the budget allocated to them was paid in full. Thus, it was comprehensible that there had been attempts to hinder the education of the Turkish society (Alasya 2002, 217). As a reaction to the attitude of the British government, the Ottoman Empire reacted by opening up twelve new schools as a reaction to the three that were closed. In addition, the Ottoman Empire worked to meet all the needs of the Turkish community schools. In response, the Turkish Ministry of Education tried to monitor and implement the decisions taken by the Council of Ottoman Education in various periods. The Ottoman Empire sent textbooks, materials and teachers, paying their salaries. Thus, the Ottoman educational curriculum was implemented in the Turkish Cypriot Educational system. With the new education law of 1920, implemented by the British, all educational institutions on the island

Adem Özder

5

were connected to a centre, and thus Britain established complete control over them. This situation led to some Turkish schools closing down once again (Alasya 1963, 52). A year after the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Turkey in 1929, the Turkish Cypriot community started to offer education using the new alphabet. After this period, the education system of the Turkish Republic was followed by the Cypriot Turks. Due to various problems with the Greek and British rules, the latter tried to establish friendly relations with the Turkish community. As a result, some conveniences were provided to the Turkish schools. In the early 1950s eight secondary state-funded schools opened and all their expenses were met by the general budget. Other Turkish schools were also granted the opportunity to change to this status, and almost all agreed to this. Those which did not accept this change tried to survive with assistance from Turkey. A large number of students who graduated from schools in Cyprus chose universities in Turkey for higher education, and the Turkish government tried to help these students by providing scholarships. Apart from this, teachers were continuously sent to the schools in Cyprus by the Turkish governments to contribute to Turkish Cypriot education

1.3 Educational History and Applications in Cyprus during the Republic of Cyprus Period (1960–1974) With the weakening of British domination on the island, Britain prepared to withdraw gradually. Within the frame of these preparations, in 1959 the British administration transferred the Turkish educational institutions to the Turkish Cypriot community. During this period, besides the schools supervised by the Turkish Republic, the Turkish community had 222 primary schools, 8 secondary schools, 6 high schools and one girl’s institution—237 schools in total. Relying on article number 87 of the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus established in 1960, the educational affairs of the communities were left to each individual community. The administration of the Turkish schools was carried out by an executive board on behalf of the Turkish Community Council, whereas the technical affairs were carried out by the Department of Education. The Turkish Community Council initially tried to make the education system convenient to the Turkish education system, starting from primary schools. The Turkish Community Council was successful in formal and non-formal education areas between 1960–1963. During this period, the implementation of planned education started for the first time, and Public Education was

6

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

offered by the Women’s Courses in villages and Practical Arts Schools (Alasya 1966, 416). Due to increasing Greek attacks from 1963, the Turkish Cypriot Education system was badly affected. Some of the teachers were killed in these attacks, students were not able to go to school, and 118 primary schools and 5 secondary schools were closed, leading to around 15,000 students suspending their education (Cicio÷lu 1964, 219).

1.4 History of Education and Applications in Cyprus during the Period of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus (1975–1983) Before the Cyprus Peace Operation, the Turkish Community had 223 primary and secondary schools wherein 23,291 students were educated. After the Cyprus Peace Operation, 100 schools were left outside the borders of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus, whereas 152 school buildings remained from the Greeks and were put into service for the Turkish Cypriot Community. In the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus, established on February 13, 1975, the necessity to determine the official national education system of the Turkish Cypriot community occurred. For this purpose, the First Turkish Cypriot Education Council was held between October 20–25, 1975. During the council meeting, issues such as the principals governing the Turkish Cypriot National Education and its general structure, teaching as a profession, school buildings and facilities and training tools and supplies, duties and responsibilities in the field of teaching, and planning of the applications were discussed (Cicio÷lu 1964, s. 220). As a result of the council meeting, the aims of the Turkish Cypriot National Education system were divided into two groups, including general and specific purposes. The general structure of the education system comprises two main parts, including formal and non-formal education. According to this, formal education is composed of pre-school education, primary education, secondary education and higher education. The education facilities outside of formal education were gathered under one roof. Following the council’s decisions, the purposes of formal education were put forward, according to which, with the help of pre-school education, it aimed to help children’s physical, mental and emotional development and acquisition of good habits, and to train them in basic education and to speak Turkish accurately and well. The basic training aimed to help every Turkish child acquire the necessary basic knowledge, skills, behaviours and habits to be good citizens in accordance with a sense

Adem Özder

7

of national morality, parallel to their interests and abilities in preparing them for life and higher education. The purpose of secondary education was to introduce personal and social problems to the student, finding ways to solve them and raising awareness for contributing to the economic, social and cultural development by providing them with the minimum common general knowledge. There were two higher education institutions in Cyprus during the period until 1983. The first was the Turkish Cypriot Teachers’ College, while the other was the High Technology Institute founded in 1979. The First Turkish Cypriot Education Council in 1975 decided that higher education institutions would be opened in Cyprus, by their own means and by cooperating with one or several higher institutions in Turkey (Cicio÷lu 1964, 221).

1.5. History of Education and Applications in the period of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in Cyprus (since 1983) In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, established on November 15, 1983, education policies have been determined by the requirements of the day, in addition to which the implementation of education policies to modernize the national education system were executed. The Second Turkish Cypriot National Education Council was held in 1991, the third in 1995 and the fourth in 2005. Issues such as how the Turkish Cypriot National education system should progress towards its goals and what should be done were discussed, and various decisions were taken. In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the education system was shaped under the headings pre-school education, primary education, secondary education, higher education and special education (see Fig. 1.) Pre-school education involves the education of children who are not old enough to start school, and was carried out by the state lasting for one or two years, and expanded by a program to cover all the children at pre-school age in the student population. Primary education includes the education of the students from the age of 6 until completion at 11. The objectives and tasks of primary school are designed in accordance with the general objectives and fundamental principles of Turkish Cypriot National education. Primary School institutions consist of one or two years of kindergarten and five years at primary schools. When the students finish the fifth grade they are given a primary school diploma. Secondary education covers at least six years of education related to primary school. Each student completing primary education has the right to proceed with secondary education and to benefit from the offerings to the extent of their interests and abilities.

8

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

The objectives and tasks of secondary school have been designed in accordance with the general objectives and fundamental principles of the Turkish Cypriot national education. Secondary education institutions are composed of 3 years secondary and high schools implementing upper secondary school programs and named depending on the weight of the program they follow, vocational high schools, technical high schools and other high schools. Secondary schools may be established separately or affiliated to a high school. The durations of the secondary schools are determined by the ministry depending on the specifications of the program implemented at school, but may not be less than 6 years. Those who have completed secondary school are granted a secondary school diploma, whereas those who have completed high school are granted a high school diploma in accordance with the type of school they attend. Orientation, in particular, starts at secondary school and gains intensity. To avoid any mistakes and to re-orientate in possible developments, it also continues at high school (Ministry of National Education Youth and Sports, Nicosia, Northern Cyprus, mebnet.net). From the 1990s, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus started to establish private universities. Owing to these universities, Northern Cyprus became a centre of attraction for international students. Currently, the universities in Northern Cyprus are: the Near East University, the Girne American University, the Eastern Mediterranean University, the European University of Lefke, the Cyprus International University, and the University of Kyrenia. Besides these, the Middle East Technical University and the østanbul Technical University have Cyprus campuses. Around 25,000 students are studying at these universities, including international students.

Adem Özder

9

Fig. 1. The structure of the school system in the TRNC (Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, Nicosia, North Cyprus, Mebnet.net)

10

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

2. Geography Education in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 2.1 Importance of Geography Education and the Methods Used Geography education in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is a matter of utmost importance with regard to Cyprus’s strategic, geopolitical, social, cultural and economic future. Geography provides a strong platform for the young and adults to understand each other, to cooperate to solve common problems and to learn to live and work together (Donert 2008, 107). In achieving this goal, geography is a tool that can be used for life, regarded as a leverage to abolishing the separation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot part of Cyprus for teachers and trainers, and would contribute to the peaceful continuation of the culture of living together. What makes geography so special and what should the geographers’ education resources consist of? Geographers see the world from a different perspective and try to find the relations originating from humanity and the environment, investigating their effects to find their meanings. Geography is affiliated with understanding the reasons why different places and regions have significance in human-environment relationship studies (Donert 2008, 107). One of the important purposes of geography is to contribute to the development of citizens who can investigate knowledge and skills related to it and apply them to their lives systematically. “For this reason, geography education should be structured to answer the capability and needs of the students, and at the same time should also be structured to meet the community’s, nation’s and world’s social and workplace requirements” (NAPED 2002). The main method used to collect quantitative data in the study was the oral interview. This method resulted from the generalizations of the data gathered from oral interviews by those teaching geography, social sciences and citizenship lessons and students from ten primary schools and ten secondary schools. In the oral interviews, teachers and students were asked about their opinions of geography, their approaches and evaluations, teachers’ ideas about the geography curriculum, education strategies teachers use in geography lessons, which materials makes up their tools and equipment, what teachers want the students to acquire from geography and their opinions about the textbooks.

Adem Özder

11

2.2. Geography education institutions and their curricula in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus The universities providing geography and geography education are limited to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Department of Geography, opened in the Near East University, which aims to train highly qualified geography teachers who are objective, active, productive and open to innovation, with knowledge about Cyprus, the Turkish world and the geography of the world and who can form relations between humans and the environment and have studied contemporary geography. While one of the purposes of opening a department of geography is to educate geography teachers, particularly for secondary schools in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Turkey, another is to train specialized staff in the field of CBS to work in various governmental institutions and agencies (neu.edu.tr). Though geography education in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus aims that students perceive the environment in which they live, it also emphasises that students develop their own unique perceptions of the world, and that is why a learning area called “Global Environment: Regions and Countries” has been developed. In today’s world, where communication and transportation facilities have no obstacles, students are informed about events in every corner of the world. Therefore, while gains might be ranked among classes, the subjects they contain might be discussed according to their contents in levels of local, national and world measures. The principal of “from close to far” is sometimes neglected in geography, and examples in global scales and samples from similar and different places and cultures reveal diversity for students to use in their social lives. Geography improves critical thinking, creative thinking, communications and empathy, problem-solving, decision making, using information technologies and efficient use of the language and entrepreneurship. Besides these general skills, it also improves using maps, observation, fieldwork, geographical inquiry, tables, graphs and diagram preparation, interpretation, time perception, and perception of change and continuity (Ministry of Education 2006). In primary schools in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the content of the geography course is in life sciences courses at grades 1 and 3, whereas at grades 4 and 5 it is in social studies courses. Life science courses are given as 40-minute lessons, 5 times in a week. If the teacher cannot finish the subject in 40 minutes they have the right to extend the lesson for another 40 minutes. This practice shows the importance of the social studies course in the curriculum of primary education. The social studies course is given two times a week in 40-minute classes. In primary

12

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

school, there is no individual lesson called geography; however, the content of the course is in life sciences and social studies courses. While life sciences books are printed in Turkey, social sciences textbooks are printed in Cyprus. Through primary school, at the end of each semester exams are taken for social studies and life sciences courses. At the first and second grades of secondary school, students study geography in social studies lessons in 40-minute classes. The same period also applies to history lessons. However, students study Citizenship and Kemalism instead of geography at the eighth grade. After the lower classes of secondary school the students go to preparatory class and are given 40minute geography lessons twice a week. When the students go to high school they choose either social sciences or science as areas. Social science students continue to study geography in 40-minute classes twice a week; however, there is no geography lesson for science students. Students use textbooks printed in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus for the first two years of secondary school. High school geography textbooks are printed in Turkey. Besides this, students learn the geography of Cyprus through the Turkish Cypriot/10B book in their three years at high school. In secondary and high schools four exams are performed annually, provided that they are held in the middle and end of the periods (Philippou, Latif & Hakan n.d., 17–18). Among the topics covered are: the close surroundings of the students (classroom, school, neighbourhood, community, village, town or city) and, since the textbooks come from Turkey, the topics of Turkey and Atatürk are also discussed. In the last two years of primary education, information about the close surroundings of the students and remote places, including Cyprus, are given to students. The subject of Europe is directly discussed in the fourth, sixth and seventh grades. In high school, the geography curriculum concentrates on the geography of the world and Cyprus. In addition to this, from the total number of pages only 25.01% is reserved for general geographic information instead of topographic content. While very little is reserved for Europe (0.88%) and the world (4.92%), 11.23% is reserved for content about Cyprus; this ratio (9.62%) is not too high compared to Turkey. Therefore, the geography curriculum starts with the environment students are familiar with, such as the classroom, school or the neighbourhood, and gradually transitions to more remote places (Ibid., 26).

2.3. The materials used in geography education In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the teaching materials used are textbooks first, and then materials including maps, globes,

Adem Özder

13

multimedia tools, and CBS and UA Technologies. Teachers in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus stated that the visual and complementary materials they can use in the classrooms are limited, and that they have limited access to resources. Relying on the oral interviews, though the teachers compensate this lack of material by using CD-ROMs, maps, the internet, and printed media and magazines, the time allocated to preparing these materials makes them feel that they are losing time, and causes them despair. The two important issues emphasized were (1) the importance of providing necessary materials and (2) keeping the existing ones up to date. Particularly, they stressed that the computer needs and internet usage should be fulfilled as soon as possible, because the existing computers in schools do not provide fast access to the internet. They also stated that due to this reason they are not able to use some of the materials. The comments about the resources and materials are usually followed with criticisms about the high numbers of students in the class and the requirement to give geography classes in a special class as a laboratory lesson. As a result of this, there would be no need to move the computers and other materials required for a geography lesson from one class to another, and they might instead meet in a particular place. However, teachers are also aware of the fact that equipment alone cannot make positive progress. As one of the Turkish Cypriot teachers stated: “There is a school with full equipment. But the teachers in the school cannot use this equipment. On the other side, there are teachers who can use this equipment; however they do not have this kind of equipment in their schools.” For this reason, the teachers underlined the need to train teachers to use technological and educational tools and equipment in geography education. It has been stated that the teachers need extra materials and resources about difficult topics to teach the students: “The reason why the students have difficulty in understanding the topics is the lack of visual materials.” Teachers of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus underlined the importance of field trips and stated that when they want to organize such trips they are faced with great administrative difficulties.

2.4. Course books In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus the main objective of the Social Studies 7 (Geography) textbook, designed with a new approach that is far from memorization, is to provide the natural and social geographical subjects in an unconventional method. Thus, the students learn the subjects in geography by thinking, questioning and sometimes adding a little of their selves, or through experience. The fact that the book was designed by

14

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

taking the multiple intelligences theory into account has led to students’ adoption of the book. Thus, all of the students in geography lessons are individuals who are thinking and questioning. We are fully confident that this book would fulfil its duty as to the formation of the desired humansociety model (social studies, geography 7, 2006 book commission). In the discussions we had with private and public school teachers in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the teachers generally expressed their satisfaction about the current state of the curriculum in geography lessons. While there are differences of opinion among teachers of geography, they express that there is satisfactory information about these items in general, such as: the amount of issues, the degree of difficulty, presentation of the topic in a logical structure, structuring of the lessons from easy to hard, presentation of the subjects and easy transition to the next subjects during the lessons, as well as the clear presentation of the objectives in the curriculum, presence of valuable information in the geography curriculum, and the availability of satisfactory information about the geographical places the students live. Looking at the content of the curriculum of geography, there is a dominant belief that there are difficult geographical concepts and new themes and ideas which are quite abstract for the students. This situation underlines that more time is needed to construct these concepts in an active way instead of just “transmitting” or transferring them. Turkish Cypriot teachers agree on the idea that more place should be given to Cyprus instead of Greece and Turkey and the curriculum should be allowing more flexibility in order to give more emphasis to the local geography and students’ interests. Most probably because the curriculum in Greek Cypriot education is older, teachers emphasize the need to evaluate the curriculum immediately, where objectives, content, method and evaluation criteria with developments in geography, contemporary topics in local, European, and International level, problem and anxieties shall also be included (Philippou 2008, 26). In our discussions with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus geography teachers, we asked for their ideas about the geography textbooks used in schools and the goals they want the students to attain through geography lessons. Generally, their responses were as follows: x Geography textbooks used in schools in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus comply with the objectives of the curriculum x The curriculum in geography textbooks has suitable examples and exercises to reinforce the content of the subject x They contain pictures, tables and graphs to reinforce the understanding of the content and scope of the subject

Adem Özder

15

x They use maps to consolidate the understanding of the subject x They use language that is helpful to the understanding of the subject x The textbooks have a positive impact on students’ approach to geography lessons x The geography textbooks develop the geographical skills of the students x The geography textbooks promote geographical research x The geography books have scientifically valid content x The geography books have been written with a civilized approach that is positive regarding geography education and comprehensible for the students x The textbooks focus on contemporary problems like time and space x The textbooks consider questions according to scientific criteria x The textbooks are equipped with up-to-date statistics and data x The textbooks develop the skills and behaviours of the community x The textbooks promote usage of complementary materials x The textbooks provide utilization of atlases while presenting subjects x The textbooks suggest various methodological approaches and ensure students have an interest in subjects such as the place of school and community to increase quality of life. The achievements required of students are: x To ensure the comprehension of physical and human characteristics of the neighbouring countries, such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Greek Cypriot, Turkey and Greece x To develop the geographical skills of students and to encourage them in geographical research x To assure that the students are sensitive to physical, humanistic and social events and political developments x To ensure that students are knowledgeable about the physical and humanistic features, cultural riches and the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of Cyprus and its neighbours x To provide the determination of importance of social factors and their effects in the relationship between Cyprus and its neighbours x To ensure the analysis of political factors’ effects in the relationship between Cyprus and its neighbours (Philippou & Önen 2008, 25).

16

History of Turkish Cypriot Education from the Ottomans to the Present

3. Conclusion and Evaluation Cyprus has witnessed many events from the past to present. Undoubtedly, the most important factor in this fact is the strategic, economic, social, cultural importance and richness of Cyprus. We may consider that there is no better example than Cyprus as a place where different regions, cultures and traditions interact and clash with each other. Similar to the Balkans, education is extremely important in shaping the geocultural texture in this region. In the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, considered to be one of the most important countries in world geography, the education system and geography curriculum have changed several times over the course of history. Textbooks and education in history lessons and particularly in geography lessons have a great importance. In Cyprus, we observe that the textbooks were criticized until the beginning of the 1950s because of their reliance on the memorization of data. After the 1980s, as facilities developed, the number of tools and equipment increased, constructivist education became more widespread rather than memorization-based education, and an education method became effective where different methods were used to put the student at the centre of learning and orient them to discuss issues and surroundings with their friends. Cyprus provides a wide common ground through the co-habitation of the Turkish people living in the TRNC and the Greek Cypriots living in the southern part of Cyprus, providing a multicultural environment. Therefore, it is important to review geography textbooks to ensure they provide up-to-date scientific information and adopt progressive pedagogical approaches that would support the theory of geographical knowledge as a discipline to help the students discuss rather than just learning about the world, Cyprus and its neighbours. Due to problems with South Cyprus, the country's borders, historical geography, and population characteristics carry geopolitical value. Therefore, these subjects are focused and should be considered very carefully. Since the textbooks taught in the TRNC are prepared in Turkey, the effect and perception of the Turkish national education system is visible. Besides this, the education curriculum and the course contents are ecology-based in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Remarkably, the protection of the environment is considered to be the main objective. The relationship between humanity and the environment has a fair basis in the curriculum. In addition, the atmospheric events and the climatic characters are known and closely monitored in Cyprus, as a centre of tourism. In the field, reflecting the characteristics of the Mediterranean zone, problems related with water are an important issue in the agenda. Therefore, basic information about

Adem Özder

17

elements of hydrography such as groundwater, springs and streams is given, as is the importance of the protection of drinking water resources, and the coasts as the main destinations for tourists are discussed. In this regard, we observe that the characteristics of the coasts are handled in detail, and that the mountains in the north of the country have importance in plateau tourism.

References Alasya, H. Fikret. "Population Movements in Cyprus." Turkish Culture 3 (1963). —. "Cyprus: The British Invasion and Administration." DIA, Turkey Religious Foundation Publications, C. 25, Ankara, 2002. —. "Recent Status of Education Institutions in Cyprus." Turkish Culture 40 (1966). —. "Turkish Education Institutions in Cyprus." Turkish Culture 10 (1963). Cicio÷lu, Hasan. "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Education." Journal of Ankara University Faculty of Educational Sciences 16 (2) (1984). Donert, Karl. (2008). "Spatial Learning for Young European Citizens: An Educational Resource." Exploring Europe and Ourselves: Geographies and Identities at Work, eds. S. Philippou & M. Beydio÷lu. Lefkoúa: UNDP, p.107. Gursoy, Cevat. "Geographically, Cyprus and Turkey." Cyprus between the First Nations Congress, April 14–19, 1969. Proceedings of the Turkish Delegation, Turkish Culture Research Institute Publications, Ankara, 1971. Philippou, Stavroula, Dilek Latif and Hakan Karahasan. The European Depictions: Comparative Analysis of Textbooks and Geography Curriculum in Cyprus. Philippou, Stavroula and Mehves Beyidoglu Onen. “Exploring Europe and Ourselves: Geographies and Identities at Work.” Project Research Reports Seminar Reports and Educational Materials Book, Nicosia, 2008.

Electronic Resources www.neu.edu.tr www. mebnet.net

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE: FROM CULTURAL TRANSMISSION TO INDUCTIVE BIASES ALMA JEFTIû

Introduction Human languages share a surprising number of properties, ranging from high-level characteristics such as compositional mapping between sound and meaning to relatively low-level syntactic regularities (Hawkins 1988). One explanation for these universal properties is that they reflect constraints on human language learning, with the mechanisms by which we acquire language only allowing us to learn languages with these properties (Chomsky 1965). Due to these mechanisms, certain languages are more learnable than others. Nevertheless, similarities across languages could also be partially the result of descent from a common ancestor (Greenberg 2002). Analyzing the rate at which languages change can clarify whether similarities across languages are solely the result of cognitive biases or might be partially due to descent from a common ancestor (Rafferty et al. 2014). This chapter will explore how regular linguistic structures can emerge from language evolution by iterated learning, in which one person’s linguistic output is used to generate the linguistic input provided to the next person. A model of iterated learning with Bayesian agents is usually applied to show that this process can result in regularization when learners have the appropriate inductive biases. The aim of this chapter is to explore the connection between origin of language and language transmission to determine whether the rate at which languages change can clarify the roots of similarities across languages. These similarities can be result of cognitive biases but might also be partially due to descent from a common ancestor.

Alma Jeftiü

19

Material and Method This study is designed using a qualitative research approach in which a literature review method has been chosen. The main reason for this method is that the overview of contemporary research should be provided to explore the connection between origins of language, language transmission and inductive biases. Moreover, this study does not attempt to generalize the results but aims to provide solid ground for future research in this area.

Results Origins of language: from mimicry to natural selection Much of language origin is unclear, but there are some assumptions that it must have arisen as the brain increased in size and complexity when Homo sapiens became differentiated from other species between 2 million and 300,000 years ago (Harley 2001). Also, Broca's area, associated with language, was present in the brains of early hominids two million years ago. The idea that language evolved from mimicry or imitation has been called the “ding-dong,” “heave-ho” or “bow-wow” theory (Harley 2001). However, such similarities can only be attributed to very few words, and many words take very different forms in different languages. Also, there have been plenty of speculative theories on the origin of language. According to the “bow wow” theory, language began in the imitation of natural sounds; the “heave ho” theory says that it originated in the rhythmic chants of early humans as they collaborated in heavy work; the “sing song” theory says that it came out of courtship, cooing and laughing; the “eureka!” theory says that some clever early human consciously invented it (Harley 2001). Furthermore, there is much more to language than using words in isolation. What gives human language its power is the ability to combine words by use of a grammar, and it is the evolution of this that is the most contentious issue. Debate on the origin of language is very long, and includes arguments such as: there has not been enough time for something so complex to evolve since the evolution of humans diverged from that of other primates, that grammar cannot exist in any intermediate form (we either have a grammar or we do not have it), and that, as possessing a complex grammar confers no obvious selective advantage, evolution could not have selected for it (Harley 2001). The alternative explanation to

20

Origins of Language: From Cultural Transmission to Inductive Biases

evolution by selection is that language arose as a side effect of the evolution of something else, such as the ability to use more complex manual gestures, or to use tools, or that it arose as a by-product of the increase in overall brain size (Chomsky 1988). According to Piaget (1923), language developed as a result of the close connection between use of hand gestures and vocal gestures, while Corballis (1992) argued that the evolution of language freed the hands from having to make gestures to communicate. Nevertheless, assumptions that grammar could have arisen from a Darwinian idea of natural selection still exist in the work of Pinker & Bloom, according to whom grammar evolved to communicate existing cognitive representations, and it contributes a lot to the survival of human beings (Pinker & Bloom 1990). Although the relationship between evolution and language might have been more complex than presented, it is possible that they evolved in a more interactive way. This includes the development of brain and speech apparatus, as well as symbolic processing abilities necessary to preform language. Also, the emergence of consciousness largely depended on the evolution of language. According to Jaynes (1977), consciousness in humans was preceded by a “bicameral mind” based in the two hemispheres of the brain, with a mentality based on verbal hallucinations. Later on, with the development of writing, the idea of the bicameral mind disappeared; however, the evolution of language is still a speculative topic. Corballis notes that in 1899 the Linguistic Society of Paris famously banned all debate on the origins of language (Corballis 1992). Although controversial, this debate is connected to something more important—the possibility that a common ancestor language (or languages) could still have some influence on similarities across modern languages. Hence, language transmission is analyzed through an iterated learning model.

Language transmission and cultural evolution— the road to inductive biases Language transmission is a process in which those who are currently learning a language do so based on the utterances of other members of the population (Rafferty et al. 2014). A model that assumes that each generation of people learns language from utterances generated by the previous generation is called an iterated learning model. This model provides an opportunity to understand how constraints on learning influence the process of learning transmission. Previous research using this model has shown that after a number of generations, the distribution over languages converges to an equilibrium

Alma Jeftiü

21

that reflects the constraints that guide learning (Griffiths & Kalish 2007). While similarities across languages may reflect common ancestry prior to convergence, after convergence the behaviour of learners is independent of the language spoken by the first generation (Rafferty et al. 2014). Pairing the Principles and Parameters iterated learning model with data concerning the estimated amount of time since the origin of human languages, the number of parameters, and the rate of language change, Rafferty, Griffiths & Klein (2014) find that under this model it is possible that a common ancestor language (or languages) could still have some influence on similarities across modern languages. In order to explore language evolution as well as how language transmission occurs, the iterated language model has been used. According to this model, parents pass their knowledge to children, and the children pass on language to their own children. Even though cultural transmission is seen as a way through which children acquire language, it is still unclear whether it is a language that has been transmitted, or just a sophisticated communication system. Such processes introduce linguistic variation, with the generalizations produced by each learner changing the prevalence of linguistic forms (Realli & Griffiths 2009). A particular type of change occurs when components of language, with unpredictable or inconsistent variation, lose their unpredictability and become more regular over time. This process of regularization has come to play a prominent role in discussions of the role of innate constraints on language acquisition in linguistics and cognitive science (Pinker 1994). The regularization of linguistic structures by learners has played a key role in arguments for strong innate constraints on language acquisition, and has important implications for language evolution. However, relating the inductive biases of learners to regularization behaviour in laboratory tasks can be challenging without a formal model. Realli & Griffiths (2009) conducted three experiments demonstrating that simulating the process of language evolution in the laboratory can reveal biases towards regularization that might not otherwise be obvious, allowing weak biases to have strong effects. The results of these experiments suggest that people tend to regularize inconsistent word-meaning mappings, and that even a weak bias towards regularization can allow regular languages to be produced via language evolution by iterated learning (Griffiths & Realli 2011). Developing models of cultural evolution in which the mechanisms of transmission take into account the inductive biases of agents is essential if we want to understand how the structures of individual minds influence the languages and concepts adopted by societies (Griffiths & Realli 2011).

22

Origins of Language: From Cultural Transmission to Inductive Biases

While children have a tendency to regularize language towards a more deterministic structure, adults do not share the same tendency, and it seems that they produce utterances with the same probabilities as seen in their linguistic input (Griffiths & Realli 2011). Since most of the things people learn are from other people, the processes and mechanisms of cultural transmission are important for both preventing errors and understanding how, once maintained, knowledge can be changed over time. Biology provides a well-developed account of how information changes through transmission, and it describes phenomena scientists observe in human societies. A difference in learnability means that languages and concepts possessing a particular property are more likely to be accurately transmitted from one generation of learners to the next (Rafferty et al. 2013). Therefore, languages and concepts that are more learnable would become more prevalent and more likely to be accurately transmitted from one generation of learners to another. Transmission and change of knowledge (and language) become salient problems if one considers the more structured knowledge people acquire from one another. This especially applies to language. Therefore, modelling learning as Bayesian inference provides the tools to predict how cultural transmission can affect forms of knowledge, and how inductive biases can be involved. Bayesian inference provides a way to answer a key question that emerges in describing human learning and memory, indicating how the expectations of an agent combine with the observed data to yield a conclusion (Griffiths & Realli 2011). Laboratory simulations of cultural transmission of different forms of knowledge confirm the prediction that such knowledge will change to take forms that are consistent with human inductive biases (Griffiths & Realli 2011). The question of how quickly cultural transmission can change the information being transmitted has been explored less extensively. However, it has both practical and theoretical implications since it determines whether it is possible to decrease misunderstandings and whether enough time has passed for languages to have lost the influence of a common ancestor, or how long ago two cultures diverged (Realli & Griffiths 2009).

Discussion It is important to understand the rate at which languages change, since it can help explain whether similarities across languages may be partially attributable to a common ancestor, and can determine the implications of different assumptions about how languages are acquired and transmitted.

Alma Jeftiü

23

The results of the above-mentioned studies not only imply that many similarities are not due to constraints on learning, but rather the research suggests that if convergence has not occurred, then both a common ancestor and constraints on learning may influence at least some of the properties of modern languages. However, there are also influences on language change that do not fit into the iterated learning framework that was applied in the research mentioned above. One such influence is the geographic factor (Rafferty et al. 2009). Languages spoken by neighbouring groups are likely to influence one another, just like Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin languages do. According to Rafferty et al. (2014), in order to incorporate this factor into iterated learning, one might augment each learner with a location and have multiple descendants from each parent, each of which may migrate to a slightly different location. Learners may then learn both from their parents and from those who are geographically close to them. Such a model is likely to have different convergence properties than the iterated learning models and would represent a combination of models of language learning and human migration. Social factors include deliberate language changes by social groups to differentiate them from one another (Labov 2001). Even though complex, social factors deserve to be incorporated into new analyses of language evolution.

Conclusion The results of this analysis can provide an explanation for how models of language evolution can be used to draw conclusions about the origins of similarities across languages. Also, it can pave the way for the investigation of these questions using more realistic models in more natural environments. After convergence the behaviour of learners is independent of the language spoken by the first generation, but social factors as well as ancestral language still play certain roles within that process. The geographical factor can strongly influence the development of languages in neighbouring countries, since the origin of language depends not only on theories, convergence and the iterated learning model, but also on social interactions.

24

Origins of Language: From Cultural Transmission to Inductive Biases

References Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —. (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Corballis, M. C. (1992). “On the Evolution of Language and Generativity.” Cognition 44: 197–226. Greenberg, J. H. (2002). Indo-European and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Griffiths, T. L. & Kalish, M. L. (2007). “A Bayesian View of Language Evolution by Iterated Learning.” Cognitive Science 31: 441–480. Griffiths, T. L. & Reali, F. (2011). “Modelling Minds as Well as Populations.” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. Griffiths, T. L., Lewandowsky, S. & Kalish, M. L. (2013). “The Effects of Cultural Transmission are Modulated by the Amount of Information Transmitted.” Cognitive Science 37: 953–967. Harley, T. (2001). The Psychology of Language from Data to Theory. London: Psychology Press. Hawkins, J. (ed.). (1988). Explaining Language Universals. Oxford: Blackwell. Jaynes, J. (1977). The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Labov, W. (2001). Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume II: Social factors. Oxford. Perfors, A., Tenenbaum, J. B., Griffiths, T. L. & Xu, F. (2011). “A Tutorial Introduction to Bayesian Models of Cognitive Development.” Cognition 120: 302–321. Piaget, J. (1923). The Language and Thought of the Child (trans. M. Gabain, 1955). Cleveland: Meridian. Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). “Natural Language and Natural Selection.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 707–784. Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Rafferty, A. N., Griffiths, T. L. & Klein, D. (2014, a). “Analyzing the Rate at which Languages Lose the Influence of a Common Ancestor.” Cognitive Science. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12112. Rafferty, A. N., Griffiths, T. L. & Ettlinger, M. (2013, b). “Greater learnability is not sufficient to produce cultural universals.” Cognition, 129 (1): 70-87. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.05.003.

Alma Jeftiü

25

Realli, F. & Griffiths, T. L. (2009). “The Evolution of Frequency Distributions: Relating Regularization to Inductive Biases through Iterated Learning.” Cognition 111 (3): 317–328.

VERB MOVEMENT IN BOSNIAN: OVERT OR COVERT? AMNA BRDAREVIû-ýELJO

1. Introduction Pollock's paper (1989) discussing V-movement and the structure of IP was one of the major landmarks in generative grammar and the precursor of the subsequent proposals for “splitting” functional and lexical projections into newly devised projections relating to these “roof” projections, i.e. CP or VP. We are primarily concerned with the Vmovement proposal and the basic dichotomy that Pollock (1989; 1997) established between V-movement and non-V-movement languages— French and English, respectively. We are striving to determine whether the Bosnian language stands somewhere between these two opposing types, as it can be preceded or followed by a VP-adverb, or can be typed as a Vmovement or non-V-movement language, specifically. Although Pollock (1989; 1997) proposes that IP projection be split into AgrP, TP, NegP and VP projections, and although his analysis goes along these lines, we shall not use the split-IP projection in this chapter because AgrP (namely both instances of AgrP: AgrsP and AgroP) was dispensed within the framework of the minimalist programme. Instead, the basic minimalist sentence structure shown in (1) will be exploited: (1) [CP [TP [(NegP) [VP ]]]]

2. V-movement in English and French Pollock (1989) discusses different unrelated syntactic structures—such as adverb placement, yes-no questions, sentence negation, quantification at distance and floating quantifiers in finite and non-finite clauses—to show that English does not have V-movement, while French does, placing them

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

27

into these two aforementioned language types. In this chapter we shall focus on the first three structures, leaving the last two aside.1

2.1. Adverb placement, yes-no questions (i.e. inversion) and negation Pollock (1989, 367) gives the following examples: (2) (a) *John kisses often Mary (b) Jean embrasse souvent Marie (c) John often kisses Mary (d) *Jean souvent embrasse Marie (3) (a) *Likes he Mary? (Compare to [2c]) (b) Aime-t-il Marie? (c) Does he like Mary? (4) (a) *John likes not Mary (b) Jean (n') aime pas Marie (c) John doesn't like Mary (d) *John not likes Mary (e) *Jean ne pas aime Marie 1 We do not discuss structures with floating quantifiers, as we depart from Pollock's (1989) view that floating quantifiers move to adverbial positions. We posit, relying on Sportiche (1988) and Radford (2009), that floating quantifiers are “stranded” in the base position of subjects or in the positions they pass through. We shall primarily focus on finite clauses, since non-finite clauses in Bosnian do not differ from finite clauses with respect to adverb placement and sentence negation (see, however, Pollock's analysis of English and French non-finite clauses). See (ia) (ib) (iia) and (iib) below. (i) (a) On þesto jede ribu he often eats fish (b) On jede þesto ribu he eats often fish (c) Preporuþuje se þesto jesti ribu (it) is recommendable often to eat fish (d) Preporuþuje se jesti þesto ribu (it) is recommendable to eat often fish (ii) (a) On ne jede meso he not eats meat (b) *On jede ne meso he eats not meat (c) Preporuþuje se ne jesti meso (þesto) (d) *Preporuþuje se jesti ne meso (þesto)

28

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

English verbs cannot cross VP-adjoined adverb often/souvent2 in (1a), but they have to be preceded by it in (2c). On the other hand, French verbs have to precede VP-adverbs (2b) and can never be left inside VP and, thus, cannot follow the adverb in (2d). This indicates that lexical verbs obligatorily move outside VP in French, while they obligatorily stay inside the VP projection in English. The same can be deduced from the examples in (3) and (4). In (3b) the verb is inverted with the pronoun il (“he”) and moves to the next head position, i.e. C. On the other hand, in English the main verb cannot be inverted with the subject and thus cannot be moved to C (3a), but a dummy element do has to be inserted (do-support, doinsertion)3 in (3c).4 The absence of verb movement in French (4e) results in ungrammaticality. Lexical verbs have to move outside VP in French, as the example (4b) illustrates. Since TP projects higher than NegP in the split-IP projection in Pollock (1989) (NegP is the complement of T head), (4b) shows that the lexical verb aime moves past the negative marker pas, landing in T. On the other hand, the corresponding examples in English are ungrammatical (4a, 4d), firstly because lexical verbs cannot move outside VP (4a), and secondly because not prevents the Affix Attachment operation as proposed by Radford (2009) and cannot precede the lexical verb inside VP (4d). Thus, the only acceptable example in English is (4c), where do-support is applied as a last resort. All of these examples clearly indicate that verb movement obligatorily applies in French, while it never applies in English. Nevertheless, 2

Since adverb placement is a rather contentious issue in the literature and can be misleading when used as a probe into a syntactic structure, it will not be our main proof for V-movement in Bosnian. However, since Pollock uses it as a diagnostic for V-movement, and since VP-adjoined and TP-adjoined positions are widely accepted as the positions of manner adverbs and sentential adverbs respectively (Pollock 1989; Watanabe 1993; Boškoviü 1995), we will also use it as our basic assumption. 3 There are different proposals as to when the empty element “do” is inserted. We rely on Chomsky (1995) and Radford (2009) and view the DO-support operation as a PF-operation. In Radford (2009), DO-support and Affix-Hopping are subsumed under the Affix Attachment operation and are viewed as PF operations in line with Minimalism. 4 Pollock (1989, 368) claims that if English had a lexical verb that inverted in questions (i.e. if [2a] were possible), it should then exhibit a “French” pattern of behaviour with respect to negation, adverbs and floating quantifiers due to Head Movement Constraint (HMC, first formulated in Travis 1984). HMC states that the head movement of X to Y cannot skip the intervening position Z. Thus, direct movement from V to C is prohibited because it skips the intervening T position.

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

29

Minimalism dispenses with the distinction between movement and nonmovement operations. Instead, it differentiates between “overt,” namely pre-Spell-out operations, and “covert,” namely post-Spell-out operations. In the framework of Minimalism, V-movement applies in each language type—overtly in French and covertly in English.

3. V-T movement in Bosnian There have been a few proposals linking V-T movement to rich verbal morphology (Roberts 1999; Biberauer & Roberts 2006) and strength of agreement to null subjects (Taraldsen 1979). Based on these proposals, we could simply claim that V-T movement applies in this language, since it is a language with rich verbal morphology, overt agreement and null subjects. In the typology of Biberauer & Roberts (2006), Bosnian would be grouped with languages that have rich agreement and rich tense inflection, and hence V-T movement and null subjects. However, Bosnian differs from other languages in the same group in that verb movement operation seems to be optional, rather than obligatory, namely, the constructions with moved lexical verbs sound as natural as those in which verbs appear to stay inside VP. Consider the following examples: (5) (a) Ona þesto jede ribu she often eats fish (b) Ona jede þesto ribu5 she eats often fish (c) Ona þesto laže she often lies

5

All of my informants (17 informants, mainly language students and language teachers) find (5a) perfectly grammatical. Ten informants (59%) marked (5b) as perfectly grammatical as well, while for the rest (7 informants, 41%) this sentence was somewhat degraded. The degree of grammaticality rises when an intransitive verb is used, namely when the adverb þesto is not placed between verbs and their complements (objects). Thus, (5d) is marked as perfectly grammatical by 12 of my informants (70.5%) and partially grammatical by 5 informants (29.5%). None of my informants marked (5a), (5b), (5c) or (5d) as ungrammatical. However, even some of the informants who found both of these examples completely grammatical said they would rather use (5a) than (5b) in most “unmarked” contexts. We personally think that these different word orders correspond to a difference in information structure between these two questions.

30

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

(d) Ona laže þesto she lies often (6) (a) Jede li ona ribu? eats Qshe fish (b) Da li ona þesto jede ribu? COMP Q she often eats fish (c) Da li ona jede þesto ribu? COMP Q she eats often fish (7) (a) Ona ne voli ribu she not likes fish (b) *Ona voli ne ribu she likes not fish In (5a), the lexical verb jede follows the VP-adjoined adverb þesto, while in (5b) it precedes the VP-adjoined adverb þesto. (5a) corresponds closely to the equivalent English example (8a), while (5b) corresponds closely to the French example in (8b): (8) (a) She often eats fish (b) Elle mange souvent du poisson It appears that if there is V-T movement in Bosnian, it must be optional, since both (5a) and (5b) are grammatical. However, since optionality should not be an option in a minimalist framework, we shall try to propose a new analysis at the end of this section. (6a) indicates that the lexical verb jede moves to C to function as the host for the clitic question particle li, which is placed in C. (6a) corresponds to French (3b) and the same pattern is shown. However, the lexical verb jede does not obligatorily move to C, thus in (6b) da functions as the host for the clitic li and the verb stays either in V (6b) or moves to T (6c). Sentential negation might be a counterargument to our initial proposal that V-T movement must be an option in Bosnian, since lexical verbs can never cross the negative particle ne, which is the head of NegP (7b). Only those examples in which verbs follow the negative particle ne are correct (7a). However, when we insert the VP-adjoined adverb þesto into this structure, we can see that ne and the lexical verb jede cannot be separated by the adverb þesto, as in (9a), but that this adverb has to follow the negative particle ne and the lexical verb jede (9b).

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

31

(9) (a) *On ne þesto jede ribu (b) On ne jede þesto ribu (c) On ne jede ribu þesto If the lexical verb jede stayed in V and did not move to T, then (9a) should be grammatical, since the negative particle ne is in NegP and þesto is VP-adjoined. However, only (9b) is grammatical and indicates that the lexical verb jede moves outside VP. Thus, we postulate that lexical verbs move from V to Neg in negated constructions, where they incorporate the Neg head ne.6 The incorporated construction ne+jede then moves into T, as in (10).7 (10) [TP ona ne jede [NegP ne+jede [VP þesto [VP onajede ribu]]]] The final piece of evidence in favour of the V-movement in Bosnian comes from the possibility of the (O)VS word order in declarative sentences in this language. (11) (a) Spava Lejla sleeps Lejla “Lejla is sleeping” (b) Ribu jede Amar fish eats Amar

6

The incorporation of Neg head ne and lexical verbs in Bosnian was first proposed by Rivero (1991). 7 The incorporation of the negative particle ne and lexical verbs is best illustrated in the following examples: (i) Ne volim je not love 1st Person Sing her (ii) Nema je ovdje not+have her here “She is not here” Based on the requirement for the second position clitic placement in Bosnian, we postulate that in (i) the negative particle ne and the lexical verb volim are incorporated into one unit, which functions as a host for the clitic je. In (ii), ne and the lexical verb ima are overtly incorporated into one unit, namely nema, which then functions as a host for the clitic je. The second argument in favour of the incorporation process is the fact that the construction ne+lexical verb, although written separately is always pronounced as one unit. Some speakers of Bosnian overtly incorporate the negative particle and lexical verbs in writing, thus using the form *nevolim. However, this form is prescribed as ungrammatical.

32

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

The lowest subject position in the sentence structure is spec-VP. If the lexical verbs spava and jede precede the subjects Lejla and Amar we assume that these subjects are pronounced in spec-VP. Accordingly, this implies that the lexical verbs spava and jede must have moved outside the boundaries of VP in order to precede subjects in the surface structure. All of the aforementioned examples indicate that lexical verbs can undergo movement in Bosnian. However, this movement process appears to be optional (see [12a and 12b]), and optionality is not compatible with the basic postulates of the minimalist program. (12) (a) [TP Ona T [VP þesto [VPonajede ribu]]]. The lexical verb jede does not move to T. (b) [TP Ona T jede [VP þesto [VPonajede ribu]]]. The lexical verb jede moves to T. Thus, we postulate that lexical verbs always move overtly from V to Tin Bosnian.8 Lexical verbs move to T overtly, i.e. prior to Spell-out, to check their features (if we adopt Chomsky's [1995] approach to checking). Still, this new approach poses a problem for (5a), since in its surface structure the VP-adjoined adverb þesto precedes the lexical verb jede and it appears to be impossible if jede moves to T. To overcome this particular difficulty we shall refer to the copy theory of movement (Chomsky 1995) and the mechanism of lower copy pronunciation (Pronounce Lower Copy [PLC]) motivated by PFconsiderations first proposed by Franks (1998).9 In Chomsky's theory, a moved element leaves a copy in its base position and in all positions through which it has moved. The process of deletion applies at PF. There, all of these copies are deleted, except for the highest one, i.e. the one at the head of the chain. In our analysis, we shall apply the copy theory of movement, but we shall add the mechanism of lower copy pronunciation to it. Franks' claims that a chain ought to be pronounced in the head position (the highest copy of a non-trivial chain is pronounced) unless its 8

Stjepanoviü (1999) and Boškoviü (2001) also argue for the V-movement in Bosnian, i.e. Serbo-Croatian, although they do not give the full structure of the examples such as (5a), as opposed to (5b). Stjepanoviü claims that lexical verbs move to the head position of the PredP projection, namely Pred, which is placed between V and T in the sentence structure. Strictly speaking, she claims that PredP is positioned between AgroP and FP in the proposed sentence structure in (i). (i) [AgrsP [TP [FP [PRedP [AgroP [VP ]]]]]] 9 See more about the Pronounce Lower Copy mechanism in Boškoviü (2001) and Boškoviü & Nunes (2007).

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

33

pronunciation would lead to PF-violation is vital to PLC. If this PF violation can be avoided by pronouncing the lower copy of the chain, only then would the lower copy be pronounced. Thus, the pronunciation of the lower copy of a movement chain is used to avoid PF-violation which would otherwise occur. Therefore, we postulate that in (5a) the lexical verb jede moves from V to T overtly and that, subsequently, its lower copy is pronounced and the higher copy is deleted in PF (13a). In (5b), as well, the overt V-movement applies, followed by the subsequent deletion of the lower copy and the pronunciation of the higher one (13b). (13) (a) [TP Ona T jede [VP þesto [VPona jede ribu]]]. PLC mechanism is applied. (b) [TP Ona T jede [VP þesto [VPonajede ribu]]]. PLC mechanism is not applied. As to the exact PF-violation allowing for PLC in (13a), we have not yet quite found out what it might be, but we believe it might have something to do with the difference in the information structure of (13a) and (13b) and the assignment of stress. Boškoviü (2001, fn 38) assumes that in free word order languages, such as Serbo-Croatian, i.e. Bosnian, the freedom of word order might be “a result of an unusual freedom in the possibility of deletion of heads of non-trivial chains.”10 If we allow for such a small amount of freedom in our syntactic analysis, then the structures in (13a) and (13b) might be on the right track. Along these lines, we shall propose the structures in (14a) and (14b) as the appropriate structures for (6b) and (6c). (14) (a) [CP da Q li [TP ona jede1 [VP þesto [VPona jede2 ribu ]]]] Lower copy in the non-trivial chainCH (jede1, jede2), i.e. jede2, is pronounced (b) [CP da Q li [TP ona jede [VP þesto [VPonajede ribu ]]]] Higher copy in the non-trivial chain CH (jede1, jede2), i.e. jede1, is pronounced

10

Stjepanoviü (1999) applies PLC mechanism, along with prosody and information structure, to explain the derivation of different word orders in a sentence in Serbo-Croatian. We assume that such an approach could be helpful in the analysis of (5a) and (5b). However, as it is far beyond the scope of this chapter, we shall not adopt it here.

34

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

4. T-C movement in Bosnian While previously explaining (6a), which I repeat here in (15) for ease of reference, we mentioned that the lexical verb jede moved to C, and in order to get to C it had to pass through T head according to HMC. This was used as one piece of evidence in favour of V-T movement. Since Bosnian has V-T movement, we expect that based on (15a) the subsequent T-C movement also applies. (15) (a) Jede li ona ribu? (b) [CP jede Q li [TP ona jede [VPonajede ribu ]]] However, the movement of lexical verbs outside the boundaries of TP appears to be quite problematic, if an adverb placement or adverb interpretation test is applied (especially in declarative sentences). Thus, Stjepanoviü (1999) claims that in the examples such as (16a) the adverb mudro can be interpreted both as a manner adverb and a sentential adverb, i.e. both a VP-adjoined (16b) and TP-adjoined adverb (16c): (16) (a) Oni mudro štede novac They wisely save money (b) ¥ VP-interpretation: “They save money in a wise manner” (c) ¥ TP-interpretation: “It's wise of them to save money” In (16b) the manner adverb mudro is VP-adjoined and the lower copy of the verb movement chain is pronounced, and the word order in (16a) is obtained. On the other hand, in (16c) mudro is adjoined to TP, while štede is moved to T. When the highest copy of the verb movement chain is pronounced, we obtain the word order in (16a).11 Stjepanoviü then notices that if a lexical verb precedes an adverb, this adverb can only be interpreted as a VP-adverb. (17) (a) Oni štede mudro novac (b) ¥ VP-interpretation: “They save money in a wise manner” (c) * TP-interpretation: “It's wise of them to save money”

11

This is very questionable, since not all of my informants interpreted (16a) as both (16b) and (16c). Seven of them (41%) said that (16a) could be interpreted as both (16b) and (16c), while the other seven informants (again 41%) said that for them the only possible interpretation of (16a) is (16b), namely VP-interpretation.

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

35

In (17b) the lexical verb štede moves to T and its higher copy is pronounced, while the adverb mudro is VP-adjoined. Thus, we get the surface word order in (17a). On the other hand, in (17c) mudro is TPadjoined and this means that the adverb mudro should move across this sentential adverb into a higher position (in Stjepanoviü's approach into Agrs). Since this interpretation could not be assigned to this sentence, that, according to Stjepanoviü, is the proof that lexical verbs cannot move across sentential adverbs in Serbo-Croatian, i.e. Bosnian. Still, seven of my informants (41%) accepted both (17b) and (17c) as possible interpretations of (17a), while ten informants (59%) interpreted (17a) only as (17b). Since these types of adverbs give opposing results, we shall try to use clear sentential adverbs (that can never be interpreted as manner adverbs), such as vjerovatno (“probably”) and nesumnjivo (“undoubtedly”).12 (18) (a) Oni nesumnjivo lažu they undoubtedly lie (= tell lies) (b) *Oni lažu nesumnjivo13 They lie undoubtedly (c) Lejla vjerovatno zna Amara Lejla probably knows Amar (d) *?Lejla zna vjerovatno Amara14 All the examples in (18) show that lexical verbs can never cross sentential adverbs, at least in declarative sentences in Bosnian. Since declarative sentences project only as far as TP (or AgrsP in splitIP), in order to find out whether there is T-C movement in Bosnian we 12

It would be more appropriate, according to Boškoviü (1997) and in our opinion, to use split-IP in all these constructions and, generally, in each analysis of sentence structure in the Bosnian language due to its complexity. However, we have used a simple sentence structure for ease of exposition, since the basic theoretical framework of this chapter is the minimalist programme and we wanted to fully abide by its rules. This does not pose any problems for our further analysis, since sentential adverbs could be analyzed as T-adjoined adverbs as well. 13 This sentence would be grammatical, if a comma in writing and a pause in speech between the adverb nesumnjivo and the verb lažu were present. 14 The adverb vjerovatno in this sentence cannot be a sentential adverb and cannot be interpreted as (i): (i) “It is very probable that Lejla knows Amar.” The sentence might be grammatical for some speakers if it is enlarged by the construction denoting the presence of focus in the sentence, such as (ii): (ii) Lejla voli vjerovatno Amara, a ne Asmira Lejla loves probably Amar, and not Asmir

36

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

have to take a closer look at interrogative sentences. In this analysis, we refer to Izvorski's paper (1993), where she uses the adverb placement test in questions to show that Bulgarian lacks T-C movement. Consider (19a) (19b): (19) (a) Koga Lejla savjetuje? (b) Koga savjetuje Lejla? Both word orders WHSV and WHVS are grammatical. If we were to assume that there is T-C movement, we could easily explain (19b). We would posit that the lexical verb savjetuje moves from V to T and then to C, while the subject Lejla moves to spec-TP to check T's EPP feature. On the other hand, in (19a) we would also posit that both verb-movement operations apply and the verb undergoes both V-T and the subsequent T-C movement, but that the lower copy of the lexical verb has to be pronounced due to the information structure of this sentence. However, if we insert adverbs, things start to get complicated. Consider (20a) (20b) (20c) and (20d): (20) (a) Koga savjetuje Lejla mudro? (b) Koga mudro savjetuje Lejla? (c) Ko štedi novac mudro? (d) Ko mudro štedi novac? In (20a) and (20c) the lexical verbs savjetuje and štedi precede the adverb and this adverb can be interpreted only as a VP-adverb, namely the only interpretation it can be assigned is (21a), hence the adverb mudro is VP-adjoined. (21) (a) “Whom does Lejla advise in a wise manner?” / “Who saves money in a wise manner?” - VP-interpretation of the adverb mudro. (b) *”Whom was Lejla wise enough to advise?” / “Who is wise enough to save money?” - TP-interpretation of the adverb mudro. Since the lexical verb štedi can only be assigned the interpretation in (21a) and not the interpretation in (21b), we assume that lexical verbs in these examples can cross the VP-adverb mudro and thus move to T, but

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

37

that they cannot cross mudro when it is interpreted as a TP-adverb.15 This implies that lexical verbs cannot move outside TP in Bosnian and cannot undergo T-C movement in questions. Although some of the sentential adverbs are incompatible with interrogative sentences, we shall try to devise some interrogative sentences containing this type of adverb for ease of exposition. (22) (a) Ko nesumnjivo ruši ovu državu? who undoubtedly destroys this state (b) *Ko ruši nesumnjivo ovu državu? (c) *Ko ruši ovu državu nesumnjivo? Since nesumnjivo is a TP-adjoined adverb and can never be interpreted as a manner adverb, we conclude, based on (22b) (22c) that lexical verbs cannot cross TP-adjoined sentential adverbs in questions as well. However, the interrogative sentence in (15a) mentioned at the beginning of this section and the structure (15b) assigned to it pose problems for this claim. If question clitic li is inserted in C, a lexical verb has to be able to move to C to function as its host. Still, if we try to insert an adverb into the structure, we can see, firstly, that sentential adverbs cannot be inserted into questions beginning with lexical verbs in Bosnian (23a) and, secondly, that when there is an adverb present in such sentences, it has to be interpreted as a manner adverb (i.e. VP-adjoined adverb) (see 23b). (23) (a) *Ruši li naš ministar nesumnjivo državu? (b) Štedi li Lejla mudro novac? / Štedi li Lejla novac mudro? “Does Lejla save money in a wise manner?” Thus, we posit that lexical verbs can never cross TP-adverbs and thus move to C. However, this claim has to be based on syntax—namely, there has to be a syntactic rule which prevents lexical verbs from moving to C. We assumed earlier in Brdareviü-ýeljo (2011; 2012) that C in Bosnian does not have strong T-features and cannot trigger T-C movement of lexical verbs, while, on the other hand, T has strong V-features and lexical verbs move to T to check their features with the features of T.16 Still, we 15

This was confirmed by 15 of our informants (88%). This claim is partially based on Boškoviü (2002), and in his own terms we might say that C is not a PF-affix in this language. However, we depart from Boškoviü in his claim that since C is not a PF-affix, it could be inserted in LF, and, thus, some interrogative sentences could be analysed as simple AgrsP projections. In our 16

38

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

maintain that all interrogative sentences should be analyzed as CP projections in this language. Accordingly, interrogative particle li is basegenerated in C. Since it is a clitic, it has to be preceded by an appropriate host. In sentences such as (6b) and (6c), the complementizer da is present in the numeration and is inserted directly into C, thus functioning as the appropriate host for the clitic li. On the other hand, in the examples such as (15a) there is no complementizer present in the numeration and some other element has to function as the host for li. Since lexical verbs and complementizers are the only possible hosts for “pure” interrogative li17, we conclude that verbs have to be somehow able to function as hosts for li in these sentences. As there is a strict syntactic rule forbidding the movement of lexical verbs to C, we assume that the operation li-hopping or li-lowering applies in PF only as a last resort, clearly when there is no other possibility for the second position requirement of clitics to be fulfilled. Since subjects always follow the V+li construction, we suppose that its lower copy is always pronounced in this type of question. In (24) a new structure for (15) is proposed. (24) (a) [CP Q li [TP ona jede [VP ona jede ribu ]]] (b) In PF: [CP Q li [TPonajede+li [VPonajederibu ]]] li-hopping (last resort) (1) li-hopping applies (2) The deletion of copies of non-trivial chains.

5. Conclusion In this chapter, we have tried to determine whether the overt or covert instance of head movement applies in Bosnian. By applying three original tests used and proposed by Pollock (1989; 1997), namely adverb placement, sentence negation and inverted questions, we have come to the conclusion that V-T movement is certainly overt in Bosnian, similar to French. Although Bosnian differs from French in that V does not paper Brdareviü-ýeljo (2012), we tried to prove that all interrogative sentences have to project into CP in Bosnian and we rejected the proposal that C be covertly inserted into structure. 17 There is “another” instance of clitic li, which certainly has a different interpretation from this “pure” interrogative li. (i) Koga li Lejla voli? (ii) Kjnigu li kupuješ! In this brief analysis of yes-no questions, we focus on this first instance of li, i.e. pure interrogative li.

Amna Brdareviü-ýeljo

39

obligatorily precede an adverb, but can also follow it, we still maintain that V-movement is overt, but that, in order to obtain the word order V+Adv, the Pronunciation Lower Copy mechanism has to be referred to. Then, we have tried to determine whether lexical verbs undergo subsequent movement from T to C by primarily applying an adverb placement test. We have come to the conclusion that T-C movement does not apply in Bosnian due to the weakness of the V-features of the complementizer C. We have cautiously proposed this, since lexical verbs precede question particle li in yes-no questions positioned in C. To overcome this obstacle, we have come up with a solution which suggests that last-resort li-hopping PF-operation might be an option in Bosnian. Thus, the question particle li lowers onto lexical verbs positioned in T and the lower copy of subjects is pronounced. We firmly believe that these new proposals provide new insights into verb movement operations in Bosnian and offer a possible solution to the problems raised.

References Boskovic, Ž. 1995. “Participle Movement and Second Position Cliticization in Serbo-Croatian.” Lingua 96: 245–266. —. 1997. “Fronting wh-Phrases in Serbo-Croatian.” In: Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Indiana Meeting, eds. S. Franks & M. Lindseth, 86–107. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. —. 2001. On the Nature of the Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticization and Related Phenomena. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. —. 2002. “On Certain Differences between Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian C(P).” Balkanistica 15: 35–48. Boškoviü, Ž. & J. Nunes. 2007. “The Copy Theory of Movement: A View from PF.” In: The Copy Theory of Movement, eds. N. Corver & J. Nunes, 13–74. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam. Biberau, T. & I. Roberts. 2006. “Subject, Tense and Verb movement in Germanic and Romance.” Proceedings of GLOW V in Asia. Brdareviü-ýeljo, A. 2011. Contrastive Analysis of Wh-questions in English and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. MA. Sarajevo University. —. 2012. “An Alternative Approach to the Analysis of Multiple Whquestions in theBosnian/Croatian/Serbian language.” In Contemporary Foreign Language Education: Linking Theory into Practice, eds. A. Akbarov & V. Cook, 67–76. International Burch University. IBU Publications, Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge.

40

Verb Movement in Bosnian: Overt or Covert?

Izvorski, R. 1993. “On wh-movement and focus movement in Bulgarian.” Paper presented at CONSOLE 2, University of Tübingen. Pollock, J.-Y. 1989. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar and the Structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365–424. Pollock, J.-Y. 1997. “Notes on Clause Structure.” In Elements of grammar: A Handbook of Generative Syntax, ed. L. Haegeman. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Radford, A. 2009. An Introduction to English Sentence Structure. Cambridge University Press. Rivero, M. L. 1991. “Long Head Movement and Negation.” The Linguistic Review 8: 319–351. —. 1993. “Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian yes-no questions: V-raising to li versus li-hopping.” Linguistic Inquiry 24: 567–575. Roberts, I. 1999. “Verb Movement and Markedness.” In Language Creation and Change, ed. Michel deGraff, 287–328. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sportiche, D. 1988. “A Theory of Floating Quantifiers and their Corollaries for Constituent Structure.” Linguistic Inquiry 19: 425–449. Stjepanovic, S. 1999. “What do Second Position Cliticization, Scrambling, and Multiple wh-Fronting Have in Common?” Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Taraldsen, T. 1979. “The Theoretical Implications of a Class of Marked Extractions.” In Theory of Markedness Ingenerative Grammar, eds. Adriana Belletti, Luciana Brandi & Luigi Rizzi, 475–516. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore. Travis, L. 1984. “Parameters and Effects of-Word Order Variation.” Doctoral dissertation, Cambridge, Mass., MIT. Watanabe, A. 1993. AGR-based Case Theory and its Interaction with the A-Bar System. Doctoral dissertation, Cambridge, Mass., MIT.

ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN ELT F. ILKE BUYUKDUMAN

1. Introduction Assessment is the systematic process of collecting, analyzing and acting upon data related to student learning (Huba & Freed 2000). The aims of assessment could be summarized as follows: x To determine whether the intended learning outcomes of the course have been achieved x To provide feedback to students, teachers, administrators, curriculum designers and parent-child students’ learning x To enable and encourage students to analyze their performance according to the outcomes of the assessment x To inform all stakeholders on student attainment, and to take necessary actions accordingly.

42

Alternnative Assessm ment Tools in EL LT

Evaluatioon, on the otther hand, refers to “the pprocess of monitoring m progress durring and after instruction” (Nelson & Pricce 2007, 65). Thereforre, questions regarding r assessment, evalluation and in nstruction could be vieewed as in Figg. 1 below. Fig. 1. Questiions regarding assessment, evaluation and innstruction (McIn ntyre et al. 2010)

Traditionnal assessmennt in English language teacching involvees tests of all kinds (m multiple choicce, gap fill, clloze tests, maatching, true/ false/ no information,, arranging paragraphs/sen p ntences/wordss, transformattion, etc.) essay writinng and oral asssessment (question-answerr or interview w with the examinee, ccreating a diaalogue on a given situationn, debating, etc.) e Such tests are usuually not interractive and no ot based on reeal life experieences. To illustrate, stuudents are alm most never asked to transfoorm an active sentence into the passsive form in real r life, but in n paper-and-p en tests they are. a Tests and exams are direct eviidence of stud dents’ academ mic achievem ments, and are thus beliieved to be moore objective, valid and rel iable. In fact, these are the basic ffundamentals of any asseessment methhod, which sh hould be reliable, vallid and relatively easy to operate (pracctical and fun nctional). Although trraditional papper-and-pen tests t can covver a lot of material reasonably w well, are fair,, effective in assessing decclarative know wledge of content and easier to consstruct and adm minister, they hhave some weeaknesses such as theyy require a lot of forethough ht, and are lesss effective in assessing

F. Ilke Buyukduman

43

procedural knowledge and creative thinking. Besides, the construction of good higher-level recognition items in traditional tests is rather difficult. Many language teachers would agree that the ultimate goal of language teaching is to enable students to use the target language in meaningful, real life situations. If the aim is to develop communicative language skills, then students’ performances using those skills should be tested. As Weir (1990) states, “a communicative approach to language teaching is more likely to be adopted when the test at the end of a course of instruction is itself communicative. A test can be a powerful instrument for effective change in the language curriculum.” Therefore, the content of tests has become broader with more emphasis on the sub-skills involved in listening, speaking, reading and writing. In the communicative era, tests tend to focus on learner ability to extract meaning and convey messages in both written and oral forms. Task types become more life-like, and grading rubrics focus on aspects of communicative language use as opposed to the traditional criteria concerned with the accurate command of language (Hedge 2000). When alternative assessment tools are used, the focus is on assessing the process of learning, higher-order thinking skills, knowledge construction and the ability to apply the knowledge in flexible contexts rather than an assessment of task completion and factual knowledge through standardized tests (Jonassen 1991). Alternative assessment could include but may not be limited to performance assessment, authentic assessment and portfolio assessment. Performance assessment is either project-based or problem-based. Students demonstrate their knowledge and/or comprehension through performance. Such assessment includes projects, interviews, presentations, constructed response questions that require critical thinking as opposed to prescribed, predictable responses, demonstrations, etc. Authentic assessment calls for the application of concepts to real life expectations. According to Wiggins (1989), in authentic assessment the criteria for meeting the course objectives are given greater attention than the criteria applied to the traditional assessment approach. The critical difference between performance and authentic assessment is students’ self-assessment. Students are expected to present and defend their work to demonstrate mastery. Portfolio assessment, on the other hand, is the collection of many iterations of a paper or a project that shows student development and growth. These are process-oriented portfolios. Product oriented portfolios focus on the best work of the student in a particular learning unit, discipline or concept. In a university where the medium of instruction is English, the goal of the English preparatory program is to enable students to follow their

44

Alternative Assessment Tools in ELT

departmental lectures in the target language and take notes, to have them write research assignments and answer exam questions, to take part in class discussions, to deliver presentations on a given topic, to read lengthy texts and derive meaning, and so on. Therefore, the instruction along with the assessment has to be in line with the expectations of what students are expected to do in their departments. For this reason, in Turkey the English preparatory programs of all universities where English is the medium of instruction strive to achieve this aim. The comparison between traditional assessment and alternative assessment can be summarized as in Table 1 below. Table 1. Traditional Assessment versus Alternative Assessment Traditional Assessment

Alternative Assessment

One-shot, standardized exams Timed, multiple choice format Decontextualized test items Scores suffice for feedback Norm referenced scores Focus on right answer Summative Oriented to product Non-interactive performance Fosters extrinsic motivation

Continuous long-term assessment Untimed, free-response format Contextualized communicative tasks Individualized feedback and washback Criterion-referenced scores Open-ended, creative answers Formative Oriented to process Interactive performance Fosters intrinsic motivation.

Istanbul Sehir University English Preparatory Program is one of those programs whose aim is to raise the English competency of high school graduates to a level where they can handle coursework in their faculties held in English. The instructional program lends itself to this end. However, it is usually a challenge to adopt alternative assessment tools instead of traditional paper-pen tests, because the Turkish educational system is mainly based on exams. On completion of secondary school, students wishing to be placed in better high schools have to take a national exam, and on completion of high school there is another national exam for a place at university. Having high-stakes exams in mind, students have to go through a paradigm shift when they start the English preparatory programs of universities, especially when the assessment system is different from what they were accustomed to throughout their prior educational practices.

F. Ilke Buyukduman

45

2. The study At Istanbul Sehir University English Preparatory Program, the program goals are assessed through an alternative assessment approach. The tools utilized for this purpose are video projects, oral presentations, group discussions, process writing and vocabulary logs. The program is comprised of five levels: Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate and Pre-Faculty. It is a modular program, each module lasting seven weeks (approximately 35 days). Video projects are only for lower levels, namely for elementary and preintermediate students. This assessment requires students to record themselves speaking on a given topic or performing a task. There is a set rubric for grading the task. Process writing is two drafts on a provided prompt. The first draft is corrected using error correction codes and students receive detailed oral feedback during tutorials. They then write the second draft, and both drafts are graded using a rubric. Oral presentation starts in the pre-intermediate level and continues until the last level, pre-faculty. The nature and the requirements of the task vary depending on the level. However, the rationale stays the same—having students deliver a presentation in a logical order and using visuals (usually PowerPoint), having done research and collected data. The duration of the presentation gradually increases according to the level, starting with 5 minutes in pre-intermediate, and ending with 15–20 minutes in pre-faculty levels. Group discussion also starts as of pre-intermediate and ends in upper-intermediate. It requires the students to discuss a given topic, which varies according to the objectives of the program for each level, in groups of 3–4. For instance, at the pre-intermediate level students are expected to read graded readers and discuss the plots and characters, whereas in the upper intermediate level they are expected to read academic journal articles provided for them and discuss the ideas. Finally, the vocabulary logs are found at all levels and the expectation is to have the students keep track of their own vocabulary building by recording at least 15 words per week in a meaningful manner by writing the synonym, definition, collocation and forming a sentence of their own. All these assessment tools have a separate rubric shared with the students both electronically and physically. The above comprises 60% of their overall assessment. For this particular study, the perception of students towards these assessment tools has been analyzed.

46

Alternative Assessment Tools in ELT

2.1 Method The method used in this study is quantitative. The responses were gathered from 474 participants that started the English preparatory program from one of the four levels. For this particular study, the correlation between student perceptions and the level they have started from has not been analyzed. Rather, the data gathered was evaluated holistically regardless of level-based expectations and perceptions.

2.2 Research questions The research questions of the study are: (1) To what extent are the alternative assessment tools used to evaluate the speaking skills of students perceived as useful? - Video projects - Oral presentations - Group discussions (2) To what extent are the alternative assessment tools used to evaluate the writing skills of students perceived as useful? - Process writing (3) To what extent are the alternative assessment tools used to evaluate the vocabulary building of students perceived as useful? - Vocabulary logs.

2.3 Participants of the Study The participants of the study were the students of Istanbul Sehir University School of Languages English Preparatory Program in the 2012–2013 academic year. The students were grouped according to the levels at which they started the program, namely elementary (ELE), preintermediate (PIN), intermediate (INT) and upper-intermediate (UPP). The reason for this division was due to the different alternative assessment tools utilized for each level. The summary regarding the participants is as in Table 2 below:

F. Ilke Buyukduman

47

Table 2. Participants of the Study ELE N 177

% 37.35

PIN N 167

INT

% 35.23

N 75

% 15.82

UPP N 55

% 11.6

Total N % 474 100

2.4 Data analysis The questionnaire used in this study consists of three parts. The first part is designed to collect data about the alternative assessment tools used so as to evaluate their speaking skills as perceived by the participants. The second part is writing skills and the last concerns vocabulary building. The data were gathered using a 5-point Likert scale from Very Useful (5) to Not Useful At All (1). This part consisted of five items: video project, oral presentation, group discussion, process writing and vocabulary logs. Under each part, participants were asked to write their comments related to the relevant assessment component in a box provided for them. Data were analyzed using the Microsoft Excel program. The frequencies and percentages of student responses were taken and used for data analysis.

3. Findings 3.1 Alternative assessment of speaking The data regarding the students’ perceptions on the usefulness of video projects as a tool for alternative assessment is given in Table 3. On the perceived usefulness of video projects, the highest percentage belongs to “no idea” (32.22%). The reason for this could be that video projects are only utilized in elementary and pre-intermediate levels. Because the participants of the study are from all levels, intermediate and above starters obviously do not have any idea. Yet, when we combine the percentages of “useful” and “very useful” (44.59%) it is clear that that nearly half of the entire group believes them to be useful. Those who believe they are “totally useless” and “useless” comprise 23.19%, and further analysis is needed to understand why this is. A qualitative research on those exposed to the video projects only could give a more thorough result on this assessment tool.

48

Alternative Assessment Tools in ELT

Table 3. Perceived usefulness of video projects f

%

Totally Useless Useless No idea Useful Very Useful

47 43 125 111 62

12.11 11.08 32.22 28.61 15.98

TOTAL

388

100

As regards the perceived usefulness of oral presentations, the frequencies and percentages of student responses are presented in Table 4 below. Table 4. Perceived usefulness of oral presentations f

%

Totally Useless Useless No idea Useful Very Useful

48 44 44 203 131

10.21 9.36 9.36 43.19 27.87

TOTAL

470

100

Table 4 clearly shows that students regard oral presentations as a useful assessment tool, with 27.87% believing they are “very useful” and 43.19% “useful.” As oral presentations are used in all levels except for elementary, students have a good idea what they are and they can better assess their value compared to video projects. Those that have no idea (9.36%) probably cannot really decide whether they are useful or not. For this assessment tool, students distinctively have positive ideas, as the percentage of those who think they are “totally useless” and “useless” is 19.57%. In Table 5 below, the perceived usefulness of group discussions can be seen.

F. Ilke Buyukduman

49

Table 5. Perceived usefulness of group discussions f

%

Totally Useless Useless No idea Useful Very Useful

33 48 53 231 108

6.98 10.15 11.21 48.84 22.83

TOTAL

473

100

Student responses on the usefulness of group discussions as an assessment tool are definitely on the positive side, with a total of 61.67% students thinking they are either “useful” or “very useful.” Those that believe group discussions are “totally useless” and “useless” comprise 17.03%, the lowest among the three assessment tools used for speaking. The reason for this difference could be that students are aware that this assessment requires them to use skills in an integrated way and it has the highest predictive value for their faculty courses. Interacting with their peers from the faculty, they must have heard that discussions take place quite frequently. Thus, the majority believe that this tool directs them towards the most needed skill for their future studies. Students in general believe that the alternative assessment tools are useful. The most useful according to them are the group discussions, followed by oral presentations, and the least useful are video projects. However, in the process of cultivating their speaking skills video projects play an important role but cannot be expected to evaluate it. They think it is not a realistic, down-to-earth assessment method, whereas for oral presentations and group discussions they know they will be expected to execute similar tasks in their departmental studies.

3.2 Alternative assessment of writing The perceptions of students on process writing as an alternative assessment tool are shown in Table 6 below.

Alternative Assessment Tools in ELT

50

Table 6. Perceived usefulness of process writing f

%

Totally Useless Useless No idea Useful Very Useful

17 26 49 208 169

3.62 5.54 10.45 44.35 36.03

TOTAL

469

100

A thorough look at Table 6 tells us that a good majority of the students believe that process writing is a useful component of the alternative assessment system. When the percentages of “very useful” and “useful” are combined, 80.38% of responses are on the positive side, while only 9.16% think they are either “totally useless” or “useless.” Therefore, it is possible to conclude that process writing is regarded as a useful assessment tool.

3.3 Alternative assessment of vocabulary building The data gathered concerning the perceived usefulness of vocabulary logs have been presented in Table 7 below. Table 7. Perceived Usefulness of Vocabulary Logs f

%

Totally Useless Useless No idea Useful Very Useful

100 83 60 142 87

21.19 17.58 12.71 30.08 18.43

TOTAL

472

100

Regarding the perceived usefulness of vocabulary logs, 48.51% of the students think they are either “useful” or “very useful.” However, the percentage of students that think they are “useless” or “totally useless” is

F. Ilke Buyukduman

51

not negligible, being 38.77%. It could be concluded that students have ambiguities about this assessment component. More in-depth analysis is needed to analyze the uncertainty as regards vocabulary logs.

References Hedge, T. 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: OUP. Huba, M. E. & Freed, J. E. .2000. Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses: Shifting the Focus from Teaching to Learning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Jonassen, D. 1991. “Evaluating Constructivist Learning.” Educational Technology 31 (9): 28–32. McIntyre, M., Degraffenreid, D., Nishball, L. & Vilders, B. 2010. Assessment and Evaluation of L2 Learning. TESOL 410. http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CIRCLE/Presentations/assesseval n.pdf (accessed March 27, 2013). Nelson, K. L. & Price, K. M. 2007. Planning Effective Instruction. Blmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Weir, C. R. 1990. Communicative Language Testing. New York: Prentice Hall. Wiggins, G. 1989. "A True Test: Toward More Authentic and Equitable Assessment." Phi Delta Kappan 70 (9).

A PERIODIZATION ATTEMPT ON THE LAYERS OF TURKISH CULTURE IN THE BALKANS FATIH øYIYOL

Introduction The Balkans, constituting an important part of south Eastern Europe, has a meaning beyond being merely the name of a peninsula or a mountain range. The term “Balkans” has intense significance and connotations in terms of folklore, politics, science, language and culture. Initially used for the "Haimos Mountain," the term was later used for the name of the peninsula (Todorova 2010, 58) and has undergone a semantic expansion over time, and new concepts like "Balkanization" and "Balkanism" that have especially negative connotations in the field of political science and international relations have emerged. The Balkans as a geographical region is bordered by the Aegean Islands and the Black Sea in the east, the Adriatic in the west, and the Mediterranean Sea in the south. Although there is debate over the northern boundaries of the peninsula, the fact that the area covered by the Danube, the Sava and Drava rivers is called the Balkans is generally agreed (Özey 2012, 1748). This seems to be true especially in cultural terms. Indeed, this definition is consistent with the frontier of the Eastern Roman and Ottoman Empire that had shaped the cultural texture of the Balkan Peninsula (Todorova 2010, 36). In line with this definition, the current Balkan countries can be listed as follows: Turkey (Thrace), Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia.1 1

Croatia and Slovenia are Catholic societies, and that their interactions with the Ottoman-Turkish culture are comparatively less intense may be thought of as a reason to not include them in our conception of Balkan countries. However, their languages, which are Slavic dialects unique to the Balkans, their common past in the former Yugoslavia, and their historical-cultural relationships with the Bosnian Muslims are enough to include Croats and Slovenes in the cultural and historical map of the Balkans.

Fatih øyiyol

53

The Balkans were a haven of cultures and communities as a result of their being a bridge2 between the east and the west and their particular geographical conditions, with different religious and confessional groups living together. Human communities have also shared the characteristic diversity and complexity of the region. To meet people from different ethnic communities in the same village is a common experience of the Balkan spirit. Since it has a rich and complex historical formation, American historian Noel Malcolm points out the difficulty of determining the ethnic origin of a community or a single individual in the Balkans (2002, 1–2). It is true, as argued by Malcolm, that it is one of the rare cultural areas in which it is very hard to know the ethnic genealogy of individuals or groups. In the region, one of the differentiating elements for the masses of people has been their religious or confessional identities. What makes a great difference between a Serbian, a Croatian, a Macedonian, a Bulgarian and a Bosnian when they seem to resemble each other physically? It is truly beyond doubt that religion or confession is the most fundamental element differentiating one from another. The reason behind this difference is derived from the phenomenon of religion. The melting together of the faiths or folkloric exchanges between peoples contributes to the complexity of this cultural situation. One of the major communities that have contributed to the cultural fabric of the geography of the Balkans is the Turks, whose influence on the cultures of the Balkan societies, seen from the perspective of both the Turkish and Balkan cultures, has been very deep. Even though there have been attempts of the newly formed nation-states to purify and isolate the Ottoman-Turkish influence in the region in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, its continuity in the culture of Balkan societies is important. The effect of Ottoman Turkish on the Balkan languages is a demonstration of this influence which is still objectively detectable.3 In my attempt to classify the layers or periods of Turkish culture in the Balkans, I argue that cultural stratification should be differentiated from 2

The metaphor of “bridge" is often used for the Balkans. Indeed, it is in the spirit of the Balkans and has been a subject of literary and cultural imagination. The Bridge on the Drina, Ivo Andric's novel, is a significant work that takes the Yugoslav period viewed from the perspective of Serbian nationalism as its background. Today, the emotional bond of Turks and the Balkan Muslims with the Mostar Bridge and its destruction during the civil war are examples of popular attempts to read, understand and come to terms with their geography through the bridges in the Balkans. 3 For the Turkish vocabulary in the Balkans see Elm (2008), Skaljic (1966) and Metaj (2009).

54

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

political sovereignty, even though these layers or periods are often convergent on periods of the states founded by Turks and their power in the region. For this reason, the periodization of Turkish culture in the Balkans should not be made in terms of a dichotomy of Turks and others, but by taking into account the interactions between Ottoman-Turkish and Balkan cultures.

I. The Early or Faint Period (from the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century) The presence and cultural influences of Turks in the Balkans can be traced back to ancient times. Various Turkish communities settled in Eastern Europe, and from time to time founded powerful states,4 and Hun, Pecheneg, Oghuz and Kuman-Kipchak presence and influences are well known in the literature on the region (Marinkovic 2012, 21–22). These communities left traces on the Balkan languages and cultures. According to Hungarian linguist Istvan Schütz, the influence of Turkish on the Balkan languages began in the tenth century. Schütz derives this claim from the example of kadun-katun. He points out that during Pecheneg raids on the Albanian villages, men left them with animal herds and only women stayed. Because the Pecheneg Turks found only the women and children during their raids, they called those villages katun-kadun. This word katund is still used for village in Albanian (Bayraktar 2009, 1084). Just like Pechenegs, the Kuman Turks’ influence in the Balkans is easily seen in the toponyms, as many places and cities in Macedonia and other Balkan countries are still known as Kumanovo today (Acaro÷lu 2006). A more noticeable cultural presence in the Balkans among the Turkish communities is the Avars, who settled in the Balkans with the Slavs in the sixth century. Despite the fact that they had never attained a large population in the region, their historical remains show that they had a dynamic community. Settled in western Bosnia, Montenegro and Herzegovina, they especially influenced the culture of the Balkan Slavs. The word Avars used for their chiefs, "Ban" title, was adopted by the Croats and Bosnians and used for the heads of state. The fact that they were once culturally active in the region can be seen in the still-used place-names. The Serbians and Croatians called the Avars "Obri." Today, many place names are "Obrovac," meaning “the lands of Avars” (Malcolm 2002, 6). 4

Bulgarians and Hungarians are not included in our classification since their historical origins are open to controversy.

Fatih øyiyol

55

In this early period, in which the Turkic communities began to settle in the Balkans, these tribes melted away with the other Balkan cultural groups after a certain time. Today, there is no group of people that could be called the direct heirs of these Turkish tribes. These groups left behind a very limited amount of cultural influence, especially in the Balkan languages. Therefore, it seems right to call this period “early” or “faint” in the perspective of culture.

II. A Period of Development or Blooming (1260–1448) In the years 1260–1261, Izzzettin Keykavus II fled the Mongols with nearly forty Turkomen tribes and took refuge in the Byzantium Empire, settling in the region of Dubrovnik (ønalcÕk 2009, 195). These Turkomen tribes, who migrated from Anatolia to the Balkans, had some differences from the other Turkish tribes which settled in the Balkans in the early period, such as that these Turkomen were Muslims, and because these communities came through the north of the Black Sea, they had Anatolian Tatar-Kipchak characteristics. On the other hand, those later communities who migrated from Anatolia to the Balkans in the second half of the thirteenth century had a history of interaction with the Arab and Persian cultures. With the Turkish migration to the Balkans in 1260–1261, the hero of the famous Turkmen epic tales, SarÕ Saltuk, also migrated to the Balkans. The thesis that Saltuk—who was mostly thought of as being a legendary and heroic figure more than a historical personality—migrated to Dobruca during this period could be considered as having a solid historical basis (Ocak 2002, 28–32). The religious-epic narratives about and developed around SarÕ Saltuk as "the epic pioneer of popular Islam in the Balkans" have made an incredible impact on Balkan folklore. Indeed, the Seljuki migration in 1260 was a historical event, and the SarÕ Saltuk narratives representing the human side of the migration process are, even today, among the most important folkloric elements in the Balkans. The Narratives about SarÕ Saltuk were so influential that his impact exceeded the Balkans and spread to Anatolia, the Middle East and North Africa. This reputation of SarÕ Saltuk attracted the attention of the Ottoman court, and Cem Sultan ordered Abu al-Khayr Rumi to transcribe and compile the narratives in the famous Saltukname (Yüce 1987, 10–13). Why were these folkloric narratives that developed around SarÕ Saltuk so effective in the Balkans? This question forms a layer in our classification scheme.

56

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

First, it should be noted that SarÕ Saltuk was both a religious and military figure in these narratives. Sayyid,5 with just a wooden sword, had a miraculous power to defeat his enemies, and is the person who beats the beast from which everyone suffers. Against his enemies and the evil beast, he simultaneously uses his miracles and his bravery (AkalÕn 1988, 29). Analyzing the stories of SarÕ Saltuk transcribed in the Saltukname shows us that he has very similar characteristics to a type of protagonist of the classic Turkish culture, "Gazi." As mentioned in a famous article by Ömer Lutfi Barkan, many thousands of dervishes emigrated to the the Balkans following the foundation of the Ottoman Empire (2008, 141–191), and each of these dervishes were likely to have a separate story and adventure. The stories developed around the conquest movements contain the spirit of this period. The cultural production developed around Turkish migrations and forays into the West since the thirteenth century seems to be symbolized by SarÕ Saltuk. Until victory in the Battle of Kosovo (1448), the Turkish culture in the Balkans had the dominant character. For this reason, we might claim that the main protagonist of the Turkish culture in the Balkans during this development period is SarÕ Saltuk, and the basic sources are these epic stories of the Saltukname. It is possible to see how influential SarÕ Saltuk was as a symbol in the Balkans and to what extent his narratives spread in the Saltukname. It is told in the Saltukname that, after the death of SarÕ Saltuk, the rulers of the lands of Tatars, Karnata, Edirne, Wallachia, Moldavia, Russians, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Bosnians, Babadagis and Berevatis came to take Sayyid's body to their countries and, through insisting on this, risking a battle. It was said that coffins in which SarÕ Saltuk could miraculously be seen were prepared, and his body was buried in every one of these countries (AkalÕn 1990, 298–302). This historical-epic hero's fame, if we take the narratives to be true, seems not only to be limited to the Dobrogea region of Bulgaria and Romania, but also reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, and even beyond the Balkans. These countries referred to in the Saltukname did not have fantastic features like the the scheme of space-geography in the classic Oriental tales. Lands in the classic oriental tales, such as Egypt and China, are allegorical reflections of geographies one was expected to barely imagine. The majority of these lands, referred to as having a tomb of Sayyed SarÕ Saltuk in the Saltukname, had either an Office (makam) or a lodge (tekke)

5

In the Saltukname, the title of "Sayyid" was often used for SarÕ Saltuk emphasize his being a descendant of the Prophet of Islam.

Fatih øyiyol

57

established in his name.6 Therefore, it is possible to conclude that these narratives spread to these lands and that his cultural symbol was functional in these countries. The elements depicting the spirit of the gaza in the development period are not limited to the Saltukname. Although written in a later period, the “gazavatname” is another important work that reflects the spirit and culture of this period. The Gazavatname of Mihalo÷lu Ali Bey on the history of the conquest of the city of Prizren in Kosovo by the Ottomans is an example of these literary products. This work, in terms of the relationship between text and context, has the same character as the Saltukname: They open the gates of gaza From Danube to the enemy lands They seize the crowns of mighty kings GazanÕn kapasÕnÕ anlar açalar/ Tuna’dan kâfiristâna geçeler / BaúÕndan Kayser’ün tacÕn kapalar … Being in the death agony in the bed is a curse Being a gazi with a wound by sword is a pride. Döúekte can çekiúmek key belâdur/ KÕlÕçtan yara irmek hoú safâdur (Levend 2000, 258–287).

III. The Classical Period (1448–1829) The second Kosovo War made the Ottomans the dominant power in the Balkans. After this war, the Balkan societies and the Europeans ceased to attack the Ottomans, and became the defensive side for a long time. The war, in the words of historian YÕlmaz Öztuna, "completely ended the hope of the West to cast the Turks away from the south of the Danube" (1994, 206). The Ottoman Empire, which gained a very important part of the Balkan lands as a result of the war, soon conquered all of the Balkans. In this period, the Ottoman rule extended from Edirne to the central and east Balkans and the Adriatic and was dominant in almost every region of the peninsula, a political hegemony also reflected in the cultural field. The social ground formed by the voluntary dervishes helped Ottoman-Turkish culture become active in the Balkans. The newly formed or ancient cities in the Balkans gained an Ottoman character quickly. The reconstruction of mosques, madrasas, lodges, inns, baths and other structures in the city 6

For the offices (maqams) and lodges established in his name, see Ocak (2002, 103–125).

58

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

centres served to form the neighbourhoods. For this reason, Turkish culture in the classical period was dynamic and active in these cities. The extent to which the Ottoman culture influenced the Balkans is described by a Prussian visitor to Serbia in the sixteenth century: “The whole city is full of shops, caravanserais, beautiful Turkish mosques, Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. Besides, beautiful fountains and baths are also available. Everything one wants could be found in the shops of Belgrade as people in the most elegant cities of Spain or Germany can” (Marinkovic 2012b, 48). The Ottoman cities emerging in the Balkans became centres of Turkish culture. As we can read in the accounts in the Seyahatname of Evliya Chelebi, the Balkan cities such as Sofia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Edirne, Larissa, Silistra, Thessaloniki and Monastir were not so different from Belgrade (Evliya Chelebi 2001) Turkish culture experienced its golden age in the Balkans in the classical period. Reading the Turkish cultural presence in the Balkans through its examples of architecture is common in academia. However, this should be considered only part of the whole story. The effect of the Ottoman-Turkish culture, from the material culture to literature and folklore, had a series of natural repercussions on all the communities in different spheres of life in the Balkans. One example can be seen in the folk culture, and scholars who carried out in-depth research in the field of Balkan studies have noticed this situation. Marija Todorova, a Bulgarian scholar in Balkan studies, focused her analysis on this area. According to Todorova, Ottomans left a “permanent and continuous impact in the field of demography and folk culture" (2010, 36). As she argued, the Turkish folk culture had a deep and lasting impact in the region and this has continued to the present. Turkish home life, food culture, traditions, music, clothes, proverbs, idioms and the major figures of folk literature like Nasreddin Hodja can be seen in all the Balkan Muslim communities, whether Muslim or not. It has come to be regarded as natural that Nasreddin Hodja anecdotes were transmitted in the Muslim communities of Bosnia and Albania. The Nasreddin Hodja type, despite being a comedy hero, has the characteristics of a Muslim cleric. It is a remarkable fact that these anecdotes have also circulated among Bulgarians, Macedonians, Greeks and Serbs. Yet, Christian communities have kept the figure of Nasreddin Hodja alive under another name. For example, the anecdotal figure of the Serbian folk culture "Ero" is none other than Nasreddin Hodja. On analysis of these anecdotes, almost nothing else is different except for the substitution of the name Nasreddin Hodja with Ero (Marinkovic 2012, 53).

Fatih øyiyol

59

The impact of Turkish food culture can easily be seen in Balkan societies. The dishes, desserts and drinks of Ottoman-Turkish cuisine formed the basis of the culinary culture of these societies. Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Albanian, Romanian, Montenegrin, Macedonian and other Balkan societies have very strong traces of Turkish cuisine (øyiyol 2010, 469–475; Marinkovic 2012, 49; Gokcel 2012, 1443; Metaj 2009). Balkan Turks and other ethnic groups writing in Turkish contributed to the cultural life of cities like Prizren, Skopje and Sofia. For example, there were sixteen poets who wrote under pseudonyms, like Cenanî, Fethî, Feyzî, Himmetî, Hazanî, Nazirî, Râsih, Resmî, Rusûhî, ùükrî, Vahîd, Vaslî, Visalî, Vuslatî and Zühdî, who were born in Sofia (Isen 2009, 76). This is also true for other Balkan literatures. As it is determinable from Tazkiras, the number of poets from the Balkans who contributed to Turkish literature are as follows: Edirne (150), Bosnia (28), Serez (21), Yenicesi (20), Vardar Skopje (19), Abbey (17), Thessaloniki and Plovdiv (16), Belgrade (11), Prizren (7), Novipazar (5), Kalkandelen (4) and Mostar (3) (Isen 2009, 40–44). If those local poets whose names were not included in the tazkiras are included, it could be easy to predict the extent of cultural-literary production in the region. The classical period in our classification lasted nearly four centuries, and it may be true to say that it is easy to find traces of the Turkish culture in the Balkans. Since the Balkans has attained a high cultural level during this period, it could be said that the literature of this land became part of Ottoman literature, and the Ottoman culture became part of the Balkan culture. It is very accurate and very appropriate to define the peninsula during this period as the "Ottoman Balkans." Turkish culture, especially in the first century of the classical period, experienced its golden age in the region. In parallel with the last two centuries of stagnation in the political structure, the cultural life has also experienced a recession. Despite the recession, up to the establishment of Greece as the first independent state in the Balkans, Turkish culture experienced uninterrupted productivity during this period.

IV. A Period of Retreat (1829–1913) In the Balkans, Greece was the first country to declare its independence from the Ottoman state. Along with the independence of Greece, the other communities firstly won their autonomy within the new monarchical structure of the state, and then became completely independent states. In fact, in 1812 the loss of northern Bessarabia by the Ottomans was the the

60

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

harbinger of "The Longest Century of the Empire." Though Bessarabia was a significant loss of territory for the Ottoman Empire, it was not within the boundaries of the Balkans. Although the empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary previously conquered the lands in which the Ottomans were in power, the independence of Greece was of a crucial difference in that it meant precisely an irreversible separation from the Empire. During this period, the fate of Turkish culture was directly related to the fate of the the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. As a result of the wars lost, the Turkish and Muslim population migrated en masse to Anatolia and Thrace. With the loss of political sovereignty and the end of the brilliant era of the Ottoman Empire, three different cultural structures began to be active in the region. The first of these, of course, is that the process of the formations of nation-states triggered an intense interest in the local cultures. The second is the increasing accent of the Orthodox communities by Slavic nationalism and the Catholic communities by the Austria-Hungarian Empire in the Balkans. The third is that the modern Western culture began to penetrate all areas of life. It was in the spirit of the times that the communities living under Ottoman rule for five centuries were attracted to the idea of nation building. The formations of the Serbian, Montenegrin, Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Romanian nations surely had the only sources of "local culture" in the process of state-formation. Studies in folklore and linguistics gained the upper hand in these processes. The linguistic and folkloric works of the Balkan peoples began to be compiled, and this was an attempt to build a national culture and national heroism (Kutlu, 2007, 144–145). In this period there was increasing interest in local cultures all over the world. Therefore, the experience in the Balkans was not exceptional, but the rule in which the French Revolution triggered nationalism began to employ the local cultures as sources of national culture (Çobano÷lu 1996, 71–83). The Balkan Slavs, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins and Macedonians were the main communities in this region. Within these communities, the Bosnians were Muslims, and the Croats and Slovenians were Catholics. Other communities were ChristianOrthodox. Pan-Slavism appeared in the Orthodox Slavs in this period owing to the influence of Russia, and Catholic Croats and Slovenes had Germanic accents. This state of affairs in the the Balkan societies, fostered by the imperial patrons, led to shaping the cultural structure of this period of retreat of the Ottoman Empire. For example, it was possible to see an early patronage of Serbian nationalism by Russia with the ambition of uniting the southern Slavs under its banner (Banack 1997, 94).

Fatih øyiyol

61

The third element that changed the cultural structure during this period was Western culture penetrating all areas of life in the region. In a short time, the new modern Western culture, with its various elements, began to shape the Balkans in its mould. Western values, lifestyles and cultural forms were spread from the younger generations to all segments of society. Ivo Andric, the author of The Bridge on the Drina, described this situation through his observations of university students in this period: These students bring with them new words, new jokes, new songs, dances in the balls a la mode in this winter in Vienna, especially new books and new poems in Serbian, German, Czech … Now, with the help of the cultural and national associations, the children of artisans and even peasants could attend the universities, and they returned home with their thoughts and characters completely changed (Andric 2005, 253).

While Balkan people underwent these social and cultural processes of differentiation during this period, the Ottoman Empire experienced its most painful times since foundation. During this period, which was a time of defeat for the Ottoman Empire, the Turks and their coreligionist people in the Balkans were forced to emigrate to the east. This process, which began in the seventeenth century, accelerated after the nineteenth century (Popovic 1995, 186–187). The surviving Turkish and Muslim population in the regions of Peloponnese, Euboea and Athens migrated to Thrace and Anatolia during the Greek uprising for independence in the years 1821– 1833. Five hundred thousand Turks were killed during the 1877–1879 Ottoman-Russian war, 1.2 million Muslim people were forced to leave their homes, and ninety thousand Turkish-Tatar people from Romania emigrated to the provinces in the southern regions. The annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire triggered the mass migrations of Bosnian Muslims after the Treaty of Berlin. During and after the Balkan Wars, the great masses of Turkish-Muslim people from Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Western Thrace and Bulgaria had to migrate to Istanbul and Anatolia. As a result of the Treaty of Lausanne, Greeks in Turkey and Muslims in Greece had to leave their homes as a result of an agreed exchange of populations (Sancaktar 2012, 82; Popovic 1995, 124; Malcolm 2002, 139–140). The Turkish and Muslim migrations from the Balkans naturally led to a cultural withdrawal at the same time. During this period, the influence of Turkish culture continued, yet its hegemony in the region had been eliminated. The written and oral cultures comprised a large amount of songs and elegies about the separation and mourning for these hard times of forced migration. In this respect, the cultural ethos of this period of

62

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

retreat could be called a "culture of migration,” and the sorrows and sufferings of the people forced to leave their homes were reflected in the cultural works of the period. The spirit of the period of retreat, frustration and social trauma can be seen in a folk song from Bulgaria: Vidin dedikleri ufak kasaba Kesilen kelleler gelmez hesaba AldÕ kâfir saldÕ düúman nazlÕ Vidin’i Vidin’in içinde beyler kÕzÕyÕm AnamÕn babamÕn iki gözüyüm Kafeste beslenmiú güvercin kuúuyum AldÕ kâfir sardÕ düúman nazlÕ Vidin’i [What they called Vidin was a small town Its deaths and agonies were great I was a daughter of a gentleman in Vidin Only daughter of my mother, my father I was a pigeon brought up in a cage When the enemy got hold of the shy Vidin] (Hafez 1990, 205).

V. A Period of Purification (1913–1995) The period after the Second Balkan War largely shaped the political and social structure of the peninsula, except for the case of Yugoslavia which was established at a later time. During this period the Turkish people, except for a significant Turkish population in Bulgaria and Greece, were dispersed in other countries. After the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece, almost no Turkish population remained in Greece except for western Thrace. During this period, the non-Turkish Muslim population mainly lived in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo. After the first quarter of the nineteenth century Balkan Muslims became the heirs to the Ottoman-Turkish culture. Bosnians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, and Albanians in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia, constituted the majority of the Muslim community in the region. Turks likewise became the majority of Muslims in Bulgaria and western Thrace. During this period, no other country was dominated by Muslims outside of Albania. Yet, the new national structure in Albania never identified itself with Islam or related with the Ottoman past. The new identity of Albania was based on a secular imagination, and the Albanian language and

Fatih øyiyol

63

nation.7 Therefore, all the Balkan states, including Albania with its Muslim majority, never embraced the Ottoman legacy. All the western Balkan states defined and perceived themselves as European after independence. The common goal of these states was Westernisation and modernization, in the face of which was the East. The people possessing the spirit of the Orient for the Balkan states were Turks (Kutlu 2007, 145), and they felt the need to purify their national language, architecture and folklore of the Turkish influence still active on the culture. A pure national culture required a pure national language, which needed a hard process of purification. Therefore, the first step toward this goal was removing the remnants of the Ottoman-Turkish language from their languages. These projects of purification were put into practice in almost all the countries of the Balkan peninsula, and most severely in Bulgaria. Ivan Vazov once argued that the language of the Bulgarians living in the cities in the nineteenth century was half-Turkish (Elm 2009, 201). While the Turkish language and Turkish culture in Bulgaria were at this stage one or two centuries old, they were exposed to particularly harsh purification policies. The Turkish-Muslim community in Bulgaria underwent a forced assimilation policy through this purification project in practice. Turkish music, language and place names were prohibited, and the Zhivkov period (1962–1989) saw a peak in the policies of the Slavification of Muslim proper names, and the pressure to convert to the Christian-Orthodox faith (YÕlmaz 2008, 48–89; Popovic 1995, 94). Similar projects of purification in a cultural and social sense were also enforced in Greece, Yugoslavia and Albania. In fact, the battle with the past and imagining a new socialcultural order free from the burden of this otherized past, in one form or another, were not restricted to the national policies in the Balkans against the Ottoman-Turkish culture. The processes of nation-state formation went with the process of producing others in general. Since the Ottoman Turks were the others in these Balkan countries during this period, these projects of purification were applied to the cultural heritage of these communities. It is possible to add the Bosnian War, ending December 14, 1995, to this period. The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between the years 1992– 1995 was the bloodiest event in Europe after World War II. Besides the Srebrenica massacres during the war, the Ottoman architectural works in the region underwent drastic destruction, and the loss of the Mostar Bridge 7

For the process of Albania's independence see Mine (2011, 155–196). For an account of Albanian identity, human rights and the cultural revolution see Özkan (2012, 255–277).

64

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

in 1993 could be taken as a symbolic expression of the period of purification. The most fertile and productive cultural area in terms of Turkish culture in the Balkans during the purification period was in children’s literature. Turks living in the Balkan countries were interested in this literature to teach the new generation their culture and literature, and keep alive the consciousness of its past. Another reason for the appeal of children's literature was regarding the political pressures on these Turkish communities (Buttanri 2005, 32–37). Children's poems and stories were the sole works of literary personalities in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Macedonia in this period. Children's magazines published in Yugoslavia, such as Sevinç (1951), Tomurcuk (1953) and Kuú (1979), were important centres of literary production. The children's literature in Turkish in the Balkans had the character of a modern synthesis of folk literature and modern literature, and often used prosody to reflect the local dialect of Balkan Turks.8

VI. A Period of Nostalgia (1995 to the present) The dissolution of the Eastern bloc, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the increasing opportunities for supranational communication and transport in the world, namely globalization, show their impacts in the Balkans. The attempts to promote democratization in Bulgaria and Romania resulted in their being new members of the European Union. All these developments in socio-political spheres brought about a softening of the official ideologies, and although the old prejudices have not been completely removed, it is a fact that almost all the nation states underwent a process of general normalization. One prominent example of this process was Serbia's acceptance of visa exemption to the citizens of Turkey, and it is also reflected in the cultural life in the Balkans. In this period, there has been an increased interest in Turkey and Turkish culture reflected in a growing interest in Turkish TV series in Balkan countries, the most popular programs in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania and BosniaHerzegovina, shared by Muslim communities as well as the Orthodox and Catholic people. 8

An example of children’s poetry by a Bulgarian Turk, Mehmet Murat, goes as follows: It opens its wing Sparrow sparrow Flies in a jiffy Little sparrow (Yenisoy 1997, 205).

Fatih øyiyol

65

This increasing interest is reciprocal. The mutual interest of Turks in the Balkans and of Balkan people in Turkey is partly a consequence of a nostalgic interest in "Balkan Muhajirs" ancient lands and cultures. Micro nationalisms, a result of globalization, foster their interest in their ancestors’ homelands. The formation of more than one thousand Balkan associations in Turkey is an indication of this situation. These associations have the object of preserving and transmitting their folk dances, music and cultures among these immigrant communities in Turkey. This increasingly mutual interest has started a new process of recognizing the old neighbours. For this reason, this last period in our classification could be called the "nostalgic period," dominated by a romanticism of origins. The departments of Orientalism (Oriental Studies) were founded in the Balkans in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and have produced many studies on the Ottoman legacy. One opened in 1929 in Belgrade and another in Sarajevo in 1930 became the two major centres of these studies (øsen 2009, 115–116). While these academic studies began early in Balkan countries, they recently went beyond the individual efforts of intellectuals and were institutionalized in the research centres in Turkey. Studies on the Balkans in Turkey, though conducted under different names in other institutes in the previous period, had not had institutionalized structures. Thanks to the recently institutionalized Balkan Studies in Turkey an increased number of scholarly works have emerged on Turkish culture in the Balkan Peninsula.9

Conclusion There has so far been no work on the phases of Turkish culture in the Balkans. Studies on the Turkish cultural heritage in this region need historical research to attain a more qualified historical approach which needs to take into account both the interactions of the Turkish and the indigenous communities within this heritage.

9

The most obvious example of this is the state of master's and doctoral dissertations on the Balkans. Universities in Turkey, especially in the Marmara and Aegean regions, show a significant increase in the number of dissertations. An important indicator of institutionalization of these studies is the recently opened Balkan Research Centers in the universities. Currently, Trakya University, the University of Süleyman ùah, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul University, the Institute for Balkan Studies, Süleyman Demirel University, KÕrklareli University and Sakarya University have research centres and conduct scientific activities in this area.

66

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

Turkish culture in the Balkans has been directly influenced by the historical and political events of the periods, yet the cultural structure is not thought to be identical to the purely historical-political course of events. For example, the classical period of the Ottoman Empire ended in the late seventeenth century, while the cultural aspects of the classical period lasted until the middle of the nineteenth. This fact points out that Turkish culture showed a more persistent and stubborn impact on the Balkan geography than its political structure. The first phase of Turkish culture in the Balkans could be traced back to the traces of the tribes which migrated from the north of the Black Sea to the region. However, Turkish tribes were politically effective in the regions in which they settled for a period, and they commingled and melted into other Balkan communities. Besides some of the archaeological remains of this early period, their traces can be found in the local languages, state systems and toponyms up to the present. Since these traces have survived as weak elements in the cultural physiognomy of the region, this early period is here called the faint period. The second layer of Turkish culture is the spirit of the gaza composed of a synthesis of the gaza spirit and dervish movements, creating a major epic hero of the tales influencing subsequent periods. This is the main protagonist of the period, SarÕ Saltuk, and its narratives called the Saltuknames. Turkish culture in the classical period had its golden age in the Balkans. During this period, the cultural, political and geographical region could doubtlessly be called the "Ottoman Balkans." During this period, the Ottoman-Turkish culture encompassed all areas of cultural life in its oral, written and material forms. The Ottoman Balkan took shape in the cities, through which its impact extended to the rural areas, which has nevertheless been limited. For this reason, the culture of the classical period in the Balkans is here called "urban culture." In the period of retreat of the Ottoman-Turkish from the region, the Turkish culture presented a structure identical to the historical and political course. The resulting political chaos in the aftermath of Ottoman Balkans triggered the migration of Turkish and Muslim populations to the eastern lands of the Empire. Hence, the character of this period was determined by the phenomenon of migration. Trauma after migration is the main theme of almost all cultural works of this period. A series of historical and social events ushered in a new era in the Balkans. In this period there was increased interest in the Turkish culture which was othered, isolated and marginalized in the minds and hearts of the Balkan people for a long time. In addition, the descendants of

Fatih øyiyol

67

immigrants who migrated to Turkey became interested in the Balkans during this period. Today, the current interest in this regard has a nostalgic character. For this reason, the final level of Turkish culture in the Balkans could be called "nostalgic" in that it reflects the spirit of this period.

References Acaro÷lu, Türker. 2006. Balkanlarda Türkçe Yer AdlarÕ Klavuzu, IQ Kültür Sanat YayÕncÕlÕk, Istanbul. Akalin, ùükrü Haluk. 1990. Saltuk-nâme, Vol.3. Kültür BakanlÕ÷Õ YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. —. 1988. Saltuk-nâme, Vol.2, Kültür BakanlÕ÷Õ YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. Andric, Ivo. 2005. The Bridge on the Drina, Trans. Hasan Ali Eaton-Nouri Müstakimo÷lu, Fourth Edition, øletiúim YayÕnlarÕ. Istanbul. Banack, Ivo. 1997. “SÕrbistan’da Milliyetçilik” ["Serbian Nationalism"]. Yeni Balkanlar, Eski Sorunlar [New Balkans, Old Problems], Trans. Gencer Özcan, 87–117. Ba÷lam YayÕnlarÕ. Istanbul. Bayraktar, Fatma Sibel. 2009. “Arnavutçaya ve Di÷er Balkan Dillerine Geçen Türkçe Kelimelerin KarúÕlaútÕrÕlmasÕ” Turkish Studies 4 (4): 1083–1090. Barkan, Ömer Lütfi. 2008. “østila Devirlerinin Kolonizatör Türk Derviúleri ve Zaviyeler.” Tasavvuf KitabÕ, Second Edition, 141–191. Buttanri, Müzeyyen. 2005. “Bulgaristan’da Türk EdebiyatÕ” Osmangazi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 6 (2): 27–45. Çobano÷lu, Özkul. 1999. Halkbilimi KuramlarÕ ve AraútÕrma Yöntemleri Tarihine Giriú, Akça÷ YayÕnlarÕ. Ankara. Evliya Chelebi. 2001. Seyahatname, Edited byYücel Da÷lÕ-Seyit Ali Kahraman, øbrahim Sezgin, c.5, YapÕ Kredi YayÕnlarÕ, Istanbul. Gökçel, RagÕp. 2012. “Romen ve Türk Kültürünün Ortak De÷erleri” Süleyman ùah Üniversitesi Balkan AraútÕrmalarÕ Merkezi, I. UluslararasÕ Balkan Kongresi Bildiri KitabÕ, Edited by Fatih øyiyolO÷uz Uras, Istanbul, 1435–1450. Hafiz, Nimetullah. 1990. Bulgaristan Halk EdebiyatÕ Metinleri I, Kültür BakanlÕ÷Õ YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. ønalcik, Halil. 2009. OsmanlÕ ømparatorlu÷u Klasik Ça÷, Trans. Ruúen Sezer, Twelth edition, YapÕ Kredi YayÕnlarÕ, Istanbul. øsen, Mustafa. 2009. VarayÕm Gideyim Urumeli’ne, Türk EdebiyatÕ’nÕn Balkan Boyutu, KapÕ YayÕnlarÕ. østanbul. øyiyol, Fatih. 2010. “The Effect of Turkish Culture on Bosnian Cultere Exemplified by Food Culture”, Proceedings of Second International

68

A Periodization Attempt on the Layers of Turkish Culture

Sympoisum on Sustainable Development, Social Science, Sarajevo, vol. 2, 269–275. Karaa÷aç, Günay. 2009. Dil, Tarih ve ønsan, Kesit YayÕnlarÕ, Fourth edition, østanbul. —. 2008. Türkçe Verintiler Sözlü÷ü, Türk Dil Kurumu YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. Kutlu, Sacit. 2007. Milliyetçilik ve Emperyalizm YüzyÕlÕnda Balkanlar ve OsmanlÕ Devleti, Bilgi Üniversitesi YayÕnlarÕ. Istanbul. Levend, Agah SÕrrÕ. 2000. Gazavat-nameler ve Mihailo÷lu Ali Bey’in Gazavat-namesi, TTK YayÕnlarÕ. Ankara. Maden, Fahri. 2011. “Arnavutlu÷un Ba÷ÕmsÕzlÕk Süreci, 1877–1913,” Avrasya Etütleri 38, 155–196. Malcolm, Noel. 2002. Bosnia, A Short History, Pan Book, London. Marinkovic, Mirjana. 2012a. Stara Turska Književnost, Beograd. —. 2012b. “SÕrp Kültürüne OsmanlÕ DamgasÕ”, Motif Akademi 5 (10) 44– 56. Metaj, Ilaz. 2009. Oriantalizmat Shtrirja Leksiko-Semantike Ne Gjuhen Shqipe, Shtepia Botuese Drenusha, Prishtine. Ocak, Ahmet Yaúar. 2002. SarÕ SaltÕk Popüler øslâm’Õn Balkanlar’daki Destanî Öncüsü, Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. Özey, Ramazan. 2012. “BalkanlarÕn Siyasi Co÷rafyasÕ.” Süleyman ùah Üniversitesi Balkan AraútÕrmalarÕ Merkezi, I. UluslararasÕ Balkan Kongresi Bildirileri. Istanbul, 1746–1773. Özkan, Ali. 2012. “Arnavutluk’ta Enver Hoca Dönemi ønsan HaklarÕ ve Özgürlükler (1945-1985)” Turkish Studies 7 (3) Summer, 2055–2077. Öztuna, YÕlmaz. 1994. Büyük OsmanlÕ Tarihi, V. 1, Ötüken YayÕnlarÕ. Istanbul. Popovic, Aleksandre. 1995. Balkanlarda Islam, Insan YayÕnlarÕ, Istanbul. Sancaktar, Caner. 2012. “OsmanlÕ ømparatorlu÷u’nun Balkanlardaki Kültürel ve Demografik MirasÕ,” YDÜ Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 5 (2): 53–93 Škaljic, Abdullah. 1966. Turcizmi u SrpsoHrvatsom Jeziku, Svjetlost, Sarajevo Todorova, Maria. 2010. BalkanlarÕ Tahayyül Etmek, Third Edition, Iletiúim YayÕnlarÕ. Istanbul. Yenisoy, Hayriye Süleymano÷lu. 1997. Türkiye DÕúÕndaki Türk EdebiyatlarÕ Antolojisi 8- Bulgaristan, Kültür BakanlÕ÷Õ YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara. Yilmaz, Rüútü. 2008. Jivkov Döneminde Bulgaristan Türkleri ve Türkiye’ye Göç olayÕ (Türk BasÕnÕna Göre), Ankara Üniversitesi, ønkÕlap Tarihi Enstitüsü, Unpublished Master's Thesis. Yüce, Kemal. 1987. Saltuk-nâme Tarihî, Dinî ve Efsanevî Unsurlar, Kültür BakanlÕ÷Õ YayÕnlarÕ, Ankara.

AN EMIC APPROACH ON THE PERCEPTION OF “WOMAN” BY FEMALE MINSTRELS IùIL ALTUN

Introduction The Minstrelsy (ÂúÕklÕk) tradition has an important place in Turkish culture and is a live tradition which has existed for centuries and continues in verbal and written cultural media today. Minstrels (ÂúÕk) are folk artists who act as society spokespeople. They reflect the worldview of that society, and its art preferences, life orders and traditions. They maintain them and also serve as a bridge for passing them down to future generations. When the tradition is considered regarding woman minstrels, and to the extent they are determined, many have performed their art within the minstrelsy tradition since the seventeenth century. However, they have not been able to perform many aspects of the tradition (apprenticeship, traveller, being in the assemblies of minstrels etc.).The studies on female minstrels have gained more interest in the last quarter of the twentieth century, about whom there have been inadequate studies, and they have been considerably neglected. Minstrelsy has been seen as a man’s profession, and “woman” as a theme has been widely used by the male minstrels. In the present study, starting from the folk songs of the well-known woman minstrels (like Telli Suna, Özlemi, SarÕcaKÕz, Didari, ùahturna, Selvinaz and Sürmelican), the position of the “narrator-lyric hero” is examined both as a subject and an object. How women minstrels as narrator-lyric heroes see “woman” has been discussed from an emic point of view. The social roles of women minstrels in the tradition and the problems caused by these roles will be presented; it will also be revealed whether this affects their art as a “narrator-lyric hero.” The minstrels keep the minstrelsy tradition alive by maintaining their knowledge about the folk literature dating back centuries in verbal, written

70

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels

and electronic media, and become the spokespeople of the society which they represent along with their poetry and music. The expressions such as “the Minstrelsy tradition,” “Minstrel-style culture” and “minstrel-style literature” emphasize minstrelsy, tradition and literature, and the gender of the spokespeople who are the representatives of the tradition reveals itself in these definitions; however, the minstrels as the spokespeople of the tradition were thought to be men, and therefore the profession of “minstrelsy” was considered to be the man’s job; when “minstrelsy,” like “literature,” was related to the social gender practices, “women” were not much considered. This gender-based naming, such as women philosophers, women writers, women poets, women painters, women composers and women minstrels, reflects exclusion and marginalization. Although “women minstrels” were not able to fulfil some characteristics of the tradition, such as the master-apprentice relationship, or travelling and being in the assemblies of minstrels, they have held onto the tradition as “women minstrels” from the seventeenth century until today and have tried to perform their arts. “Women” have become an object for the male minstrels, who are considered to be a subject, and found a big and productive place for themselves in the literature as a theme. Women have not been able to find a big place for themselves when compared to the examples of masculine language both as a subject/narrator (lyric hero) and an object. How did female minstrels perceive themselves and their social roles? When the narrator/subject of poetry was a woman, how did she express the feminine experiences? It was not easy for the woman minstrels who were not allowed to play the sazand to recite poems to say “I am also here,” and the appearance of a woman minstrel on the stage is not directly proportional to the history of the tradition, although the minstrel-style cultural tradition dates back centuries. Female minstrels have existed in the society for as long as the tradition has been around.

Examples of Poems which Reflect the Perception of Women by Female Minstrels A woman minstrel, Derdimend Ana (Mother Derdimend—her real name is Fatma Oflaz), participated in the Sivas Folk Poets Festival on October 30, 1964 for the first time. The only women minstrels at the festival were well-known ones like Ali øzzet Özkan and Veysel, and the 70-year-old Derdimend Ana left her hometown, Kangal (Aslano÷lu 1965, 68).

IúÕl Altun

71

Despite this, the voice of a woman who had no possessions and did not know how to read and write but had self-confidence was heard in the assembly of the minstrels, which is called “the field of contest”: Derdimend’i maslahi laf sözüm yok Çok úair var provada arzum yok Ümmiyim efendi melde yazÕm yok Adaletli gördüm sultan Sivas’I [I am Derdimend; I never lie There are a lot of poets, I don’t want to rehearse I am illiterate, so I don’t have anything written I saw Sivas the sultan act justly] (Aslano÷lu 1965, 68).

She addresses an assembly in which the listeners and narrators are all men saying “Dinleyina÷alarhasbihalimi” [Please listen to my talk, Aghas]. ÂúÕkSan’ati, who cannot participate in the Sivas Folk Poets Festival, asks Derdimend Ana about her impressions; she recommends he does not question them and to not tire himself and his mind for that: O zayÕf zekanÕ beyhude yorma Kendini be÷enip bizi hor görme SakÕn benlikile meydana girme Hocam aúk elini seçtim de geldim [It is no use tiring your poor mind don’t get above yourself and look down on us don’t you dare to get into the arena with ego Master, I have chosen love and come here] (cited in Kalkan by ÇÕnar 2008, 36).

A woman drawing attention to herself by bringing her feelings and thoughts to the forefront with her narrator/subject identity is not considered to be a normal “state of femininity” in a society based on privacy. It is not among the duties and roles of women to be in a poetic arena where the number of male minstrels outweighs the number of females in the social sphere. A woman can only take her place as a lover, spouse, mother and sister from the dominant viewpoint of the literature world. Female minstrels started to speak up and tried to make the male minstrels accept them to gain independence from the gender role and inequality of the tradition attributed to them, to show their reaction against this dominant masculine viewpoint. They even tried to prove they were superior to men. ÂúÕk Ayúe Ça÷layan from Kadirli shows the superiority

72

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels

of women with the perception and privilege that she is the one who gives birth to a man, by saying: KadÕn diye hakir görmen Er do÷uran kiúiyim ben [Don’t look down on women I am the one who gives birth to a man]. Ça÷layan yoktur bendim Erkekleri ba÷lar fendim Bir çok ozanlarÕ yendim ÂúÕklarÕn baúÕyÕm ben [I am a waterfall, I do not have any obstacles in my way My ruse makes the men lose I have beaten many poets I am the head of the minstrels].

This is a fine strong voice of a woman who seems to be very selfconfident and is heard. Here, it is not important what the woman minstrel says, it is important how and why she says it. It is a resistance of a male dominant approach stating “women cannot be poets; women can never be minstrels!” Woman minstrels often hear from their fathers, spouses, brothers, uncles and colleagues that women cannot be minstrels. No matter what their social statuses are, women have always been the odd-one-out and excluded. The approach to women is as the “other” in many places in the world. Emiú BacÕ from Tunceli considers this rebellion to the approach of “the second sex”1 as women’s solidarity and invites women to show themselves and get ahead: Zeynep BacÕm, Fatma anam, gül teyzem Gelin biz de meydanlara çÕkalÕm Ezenlerin bozanlarÕn zalimin Umudunu tÕrnak yÕkalÕm [My sister Zeynep, mother Fatma, aunt Gül Come, let us go to the arena, too Let us destroy the hope of the oppressors by scratching] (øhsani 1973, 24).

1

The phrase “the second sex” stated for women belongs to Simone de Beauvoir, (1949), The Second Sex, (Vintage, United Kingdom).

IúÕl Altun

73

Considerations of women since the creation of the world have been related to their fertility. Starting from the poems with female subjects, a woman is first a “mother.” Motherhood involves goodness, compassion, affection, and love. Elifçe (Elif KÕlÕç) depicts her mother in her poem titled “Anam” (“My Mother”) as a lover, friend, a soft-hearted woman who has strong feelings and is generous in love. The need for the love of a mother is of a kind that never ends: Dizleri yastÕ÷Õm, ninnisi keman Yürekten ÕsÕtÕr sevgisi hamam Elifçe’ye güven veriúi yaman Güçlüdür hisleri kor gibi anam [His knees are my pillow, his lullaby is my violin His love makes my heart feel warm He gives confidence to Elifçe His feelings are very strong] (Turan et al. 2010, 165–166).

For ÂúÕk Didari (Pakize Altan), everything in nature is the work of women. Women represent the power of the universe, and the mystery of the sacred values. KainatÕn varlÕ÷Õndan buyana Gülün rengi balÕn özü dür kadÕn Do÷uran üreten can katan cana Tabiat ananÕn gözüdür kadÕn [Since the existence of the universe woman is the colour of rose, essence of honey the one who gives birth woman is the eye of the mother-nature] (Turan & Uysul 2010, 420–421)

In the rhymed poem of Telli Suna titled “AnayÕm ben anayÕm” (“I am a mother”), woman is depicted as the one whose son falls as a martyr for their lands, who ploughs fields, has sorrowful days and becomes Layla for Majnun and is loved by the hearts. The argument of “mother” by Telli Suna involves a soft-hearted woman who suffers from poverty, separations and distances: SunaderanalarÕz sevgi dolu gönlümüz øçimizde eziklik yanÕktÕr yüre÷imiz Papatyalar çi÷demler keklikler misalimiz Yaylalarda da÷larda açÕlmÕúÕz solmuúuz

74

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels [Suna says we are mothers, our hearts are full of love our hearts are disconsolate we are like daisies, sunflowers, partridges we blossom and fade away in the plateaus and mountains] (Gölpek 1997, 3–6).

The role of motherhood strengthens the woman, who is the symbol of birth. To give birth to and raise a child is sacred and instils pride for the homeland regarding the woman’s perception of motherhood. Women heroes giving a lot of joy and health, such as BalÕm Sultan, Nene Hatun, Kara Fatma, SatÕ KadÕn, Gül BacÕ and Halide Edip, were “mothers” treated with great respect and were also born from an Anatolian woman. Zübeyde Ana, who gave birth to Atatürk, did the greatest thing as a mother, and she is the bravest of all (Çobano÷lu 2006, 110). Women minstrels, using poetry as their witness, acquire their existence by the attribution of being the mother of a nation, a homeland, “The Voice of a Mother” in the folk poetry by Manya-ÂúÕk SarÕcakÕz (1983) reflecting the sensibility of a woman subject, and is a perception, a voice specific to the female subject. The subheading of the book Âúinâ Güzeller (Familiar Beauties) written by Iskender Pala (1998) about women/female poets is “What happens if a woman falls in love.” In a society in which a woman is beloved but not a minstrel, a poem but not a poet, woman minstrels were condemned and reprimanded. Their travelling with a saz in their hands was not considered decent and they were despised. They were not able to fulfil the conditions of the tradition such as master/apprentice relationship, getting a nickname, drinking wine, dreaming, playing the saz, travelling and taking part in the assemblies of minstrels as their male colleagues were. Even the woman minstrels with higher education and in business were not welcomed to play the saz and read a poem, and most of the woman minstrels did not have the opportunity to go to school or complete their education. They were married off at a very young age, and most were not supported by their spouses. Yeter Ana (Yeter YÕldÕrÕm) eloped with her lover Hasan YÕldÕrÕm (ÂúÕk YüzbaúÕo÷lu) from her village when she was 14 and gave birth to 9 children. She is the only minstrel of the Emlek district, where she was born and brought up. Because her husband left home she raised her children by herself working in the fields and at home. Yeter Ana, who tells us her problems with her husband in her poetry, depicts a mother who seeks solutions by saying:

IúÕl Altun

75

Gel sevdi÷im senle biryol konuúak Kim suçluyor bilmem kime danÕúak [Come my lover, let’s talk I don’t know who blames, whose advice we should take];

Who acts agreeably by saying: GünahÕm ne ise yüzüme söyle Hata senden ise gel özür eyle [Tell my sins to my face If you are wrong, come and apologize];

Who self-criticizes herself with: Sana ne ettimki kalbini kÕrdÕm Dövdün dövdün yine koynuna girdim [What I did to you to break your heart Although you beat me many times; I went to bed with you];

Who complains about her husband’s staying away from her and questions whether she deserves the violence by saying: Cilveedip saran kolunvarm’ola [Have you an embracing and flirting arm];

A benevolent and faithful woman who shows her love by saying: Sevdim de vardÕm [I loved and married];

And a devoted mother with the words: BaldÕrÕ çÕplaktan yuvanÕ kurdum Bir birinden güzel yavrular verdim [I built a nest gave birth to beautiful kids].

Minstrel GülçÕnar (Ayten ÇÕnar) narrates her husband, whom she curses as “KocanÕn Böylesi” [Such a Husband], as a liar, gambler, disgrace, poor

76

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels

lover, lacking in virtue man who prefers his home to gambling. She reflects her reproach ironically by saying Pilav yerken taú gelsin otuz iki diúine Saç kÕran derdi girsin kirpi÷ine kaúÕna Karabasan otursun her günak úamdüúüne [May a stone hit your thirty-two teeth while eating rice May you have ringworms in your eyelashes and brows May you have nightmares every night in your sleep].

Minstrel SarÕcakÕz, who says she had disappointments in her marriages, reproaches for the men not worth crying for, being offensive to parents, and even marrying by applying red henna: SarÕca’yÕ ettin koyun YapmadÕnmÕ türlü oyun El içinde böyle boyun E÷melere de÷mezmiúsin [You turned SarÕca into a sheep Didn’t you do many tricks I shouldn’t have bowed down You were never worth it] (Çobano÷lu 2006, 55).

Minstrel SarÕcakÕz, as a woman subject, considers men—calling them “these” without saying their names—as liars, abusers, predatory, beggars, cunning, evil-minded, avaricious people.2 She depicts her anger, criticizing them ironically without saying their names. 2

Minstrel SarÕca KÕz, interviewed March 1, 2012 in KadÕköy/Istanbul: Üçü birden düúmanlarÕn baúÕna Hepsi bir birinden beter bunlarÕn Tarif etmesem de bilenler bilir Biri kel, biri kör, biri tatar bunlarÕn Üçüde kendini tanÕtÕr veli TanÕyanlar bilir üçü de deli Sanma yüze güler bunlar ezeli Kalbi düúman düúman atar bunlarÕn … Güya halkÕ için çalarlar sazÕ Üçünün de iyi çÕkar avazÕ Tut ki para olsun her úeyer azÕ Biri ne bulduysa satar bunlarÕn.

IúÕl Altun

77

The husband of Minstrel Fatma (Fatma Üzüm) is disabled and unemployed; despite this, he strongly disagrees about Minstrel Fatma’s playing the saz and singing, making a living for her children and acting as their father and mother, and takes a strict attitude towards her. She questions her husband’s love and conscience and reproaches him, who she has left alone and unsupported, by saying: Mangalda kül bÕrakmazdÕn beni severken Seyirci kaldÕnya eller ezerken BaúÕnÕ yastÕ÷a koyup yatarken Hiç mi düúünmedin beni sevdi÷im [You were talking big when you loved me You just watched while people harm me When you put your head on your pillow Didn’t you ever think of me, my love] (Turan & Uysal 2010, 146).

The woman, who is not loved in return, feels sorry for her fate and chooses loneliness and silence. The woman, who was once someone loved and respected by everyone and who has lost her value in the eyes of her lover and has seen disloyalty, knows that there is no use sighing: Sendeki o tatlÕ sözlere kandÕm AúkÕn ateúiyle yandÕm da yandÕm ùimdiye kadar bilmem nasÕl dayandÕm Lalolmuú bülbüle döndüm ne fayda? [I believed in your nice words I got burnt with the fire of love [I wouldn’t wish three of them on my worst enemy Every one of them are worse than the other They know even if I don’t describe One is bald, one is blind, one is tatar Three introduce themselves as a saint those who know them know they are all insane Don’t think they always feign friendship Their hearts beat unfriendly … So to say they play the saz for their people the three of them shout well they accept anything if they get money they sell everything they find].

78

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels I don’t know how I could bear I turned into a silent nightingale, what good did that to me?] (Çobano÷lu 2006, 59).

Those women who suffer a lot, are subject to violence by men, are married off very young or become brides in foreign places are depicted by the women minstrels (Turan et al. 2010, 162). Minstrel Elifçe (ElifKÕlÕç), in her poem “Bir KadÕn A÷larken” (“When a woman cries”), narrates a story of a woman with four children who was beaten and then thrown into the street: [Open your eyes; don’t treat the one who hurt you with respect! Don’t be sorry and cry for the one who is not worth it! Don’t give away, be brave, and raise your head!] (Turan et al. 2010, 164).

Women minstrels’ talking about their own problems and their subjectobject relationships place their literal world in a thematically different position. The minstrel Vasfiye HanÕm had an arranged marriage and 6 children, and she lives with her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law accuses her of praying on the crack on the salted leather left drying, and is mentioned in her bride’s poem: KarÕ beni cayÕr cayÕr yakÕyor Kör tavuk etmiú de taras okuyor Garez gИhlÕ kahretini yÕkÕyor Böylece malumun olsun hot karÕ [The woman burns me up furiously She turns me into a blind chicken and gets me into a jam Grudge harms your next life Know about it, bad woman].

Vasfiye HanÕm also describes her bad marriage, bemoaning: Keleh erif yaktÕn beni kül ettin AzÕya çaldÕm da çabuk çürüttüm Gücüm yeteryetmez her iúek oútum Son zamanlarda yürümeyi unuttum [Hey, man! you burnt me off I did with less and wasted my life I did everything no matter how hard I forgot to walk recently].

IúÕl Altun

79

Minstrel Ayúe Kaynak, who was forced into marriage by her mother and sibling, curses them and is rebellious at her fate in the following verses: øpti anam sonra kardeú onmaya Ben de gelin olmam onun avlÕya Arzu hal gönderdim büyük TanrÕ’ya Böylemiydi benim senden dile÷im [You are my mother and my sibling I will not be a bride of them I have told the almighty God Was it what I wish from you].

The perception of love by women minstrels makes them particularly problematic during the process of being a subject of the language. ÂúÕk SarÕcakÕz, in her poem “TakÕl AúkÕn Peúine” (“Follow love”), in which she emphasizes and uses generalizations about “love” in the imperative form, says: DünyanÕ zehretmed övüúmek için Gül de var bülbül de seviúmek için Ahrette Kerem’e kavuúmak için AslÕ gibi takÕl aúkÕn peúine [Don’t mess your world to fight There is a rose and also a nightingale to make love to meet Kerem in the next world Follow love like AslÕ]. SarÕca kÕz aúk ile bakan körümki øçten içey anan sönmez korumki Bir daha yaúasam gene derimki Beden, gönül, akÕl aúkÕn peúine [SarÕcakÕz, love made me blind I am a coal burning inside I say the same if I live again Body, heart, mind, follow love].

In an individual interview with SarÕcakÕz, she said that she was embarrassed to say the words “make love” and “burning like a coal” because they were associated with sexuality, adding that she said them quietly even at home so as not to be condemned.

80

An Emic Approach on the Perception of “Woman” by Female Minstrels

A woman subject is able to talk about love; however, it is very risky to discuss such a private phenomenon.

Conclusion Female minstrels, lyric heroes/narrators of poetry, are seen as a forgiving, patient notion of a gender, which faces up to difficulties, reproaches or reacts against and complains about disloyalty, ingratitude, coldness and infidelity. The poetry by women in which feminine feelings and thoughts, pains, poverty, difficulties, longings, silence, loneliness and unanswered love are depicted opens out the inner world of the female minstrels, but does not show it clearly and completely. The formalization of her own inner world with the language of a woman is becoming a state of femininity, to which a woman hesitates. Therefore, the inside or emic perspective of women minstrels about women’s perceptions is an introverted view. This attitude causes women minstrels to be hesitant about their words and women’s perceptions of women. Female minstrels, as representatives of the minstrelsy tradition, are “women without gender” as witnessed by their poetry. When the poems of these women, the producers of their own poetry, are considered through an emic approach, that is, an inside perspective, there is a mistake and injustice in teaching women the rituals of “being a woman.” Social gender as a cultural concept causes gender differences for those who produce language. Even though the civil history of women is written in the poetry of female minstrels from Derdimend Ana to Arzu BacÕ, from ÂúÕk GülçÕnar to Telli Suna, from ÂúÕk Yeter Ana to ÂúÕk Didari, from ÂúÕk SarÕcakÕz to ÂúÕk Özlemi, women cannot naturally be the subject of the public sphere when they cannot be a subject in the literature.

References Aslano÷lu, øbrahim. 1965. Sivas Folk Poetry Festival. Sivas Garrison Social Services Branch Publications: 1, Güven Printing House, Sivas. ÂúÕk, øhsani. 1973. Anatolian Folk Poetry Full of Minstrels/Ozan Dolu Anadolu Halk ùiirleri. østanbul: May Publications. ÇÕnar, Sevilay. 2008. Woman Minstrels in Turkey in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. Istanbul Technical University Institute of Social Sciences. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis.

IúÕl Altun

81

Çobano÷lu, Aysun. 2006. Life Art and Poetry of ÂúÕk SarÕcakÕz. Ankara: Ürün Publications. Gölpek, (Telli) Suna. 1997. Özleyiú. Eskiúehir: Etam Printing House. Kalkan, Emir. 1991. Turkish Folk Poets of the 20th Century. Ankara: Publications of the Ministry of Culture. Manya, ølkin (ÂúÕk SarÕcakÕz). 1983. Anthology of Woman Poets, Mother’s Voice in the Folk Poetry. østanbul: ønanç Publications. Pala, øskender. 1998. KadÕn ùair Olursa Gör BaúÕna Neler Gelir Âúinâ Güzeller. Istanbul: Ötüken Publications. Turan, Fatma Ahsen & Ezgi, Bolçay (eds.). 2010. Sultans of the Saz and the Words of Living Folk Poets II. & EzgÕ, BolçayAnkara: Gazi Publishing House. Turan, Fatma Ahsen & Baúak Uysal (eds.). (2010) Sultans of the Saz and the Words of Living Folk Poets IV. Ankara: Gazi Publishing House.

PRE-SERVICE SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHER TRAINING AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT IZABELA DANKIû

Introduction The current trends in the field of second language teacher education emphasize the importance of practitioner knowledge resulting from their participating in the social practices associated with second language teaching and learning (Johnson 2009) and from conducting continuous, detailed and reflective examinations of their teaching practices in various contexts. Practitioner knowledge becomes part of the knowledge base of teacher education after it is made public, accessible and open for examination and discussion (Hiebert, Gallimore & Stigler 2002). In this chapter, we present practitioner knowledge in the context of social engagement as a part of English language teacher training at Mostar University, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and join the discussion on the “reconsideration of the nature of teacher learning which is viewed as a form of socialization into the professional thinking and practices of a community of practice” (Burns & Richards 2009, 2). The social engagement in higher education is being referred to as “academics (students, teachers, researchers) working, as academics, with non-academics (community members, government officials, etc.) to analyze and solve social problems in a spirit of continuous mutual learning, i.e. engaging in collaborative action-research oriented to social learning” (Boothroyd & Fryer 2004, 2). The social function of the universities in industrialized societies (particularly from the 1950s to the 1970s) was realized through government-funded education for preparing a “productive workforce” and “knowledgeable citizenry” (Boothroyd & Fryer 2004, 2). During the early Cold War period, academics became more involved with social movements concerned with civil rights, nuclear disarmament, the war in Vietnam, poverty issues and national democracy. From the 1980s, feminism, environmentalism and gender rights have dominated the social interests of academics (Boothroyd & Fryer 2004, 2–3).

Izabela Dankiü

83

Unlike Europe, the USA and Canada have longer traditions of community service playing an important role in students’ academic development and advancement, as well as in personal character development and academic advancement even prior to university education. From an early age, Americans are motivated to join and contribute to the community, and at the same time are recognized by the community for their work. A significant number of American universities practice engaged scholarship (Maurrasse 2001), which is a practice primarily of business schools promoting a learning approach that combines classroom learning with intentional voluntary service that meets community needs. Hundreds of higher education institutions are also organized to promote community service and learning programs which most commonly aid the inner city neighbourhoods in the cities where these universities are located. Several Canadian universities also developed a special community service learning program for teaching English as a second language. Academics trained and supported local English speaking residents to lead conversation groups with local immigrants to improve their English language skills. From the point of view of the social dimension, this program was successful but has not resulted in any significant scientific theory development (Boothroyd & Fryer 2004). While modern European educational reform based on the Lisbon Strategy and Bologna Declaration places importance on the improvement of individual skills throughout one's life and emphasizes the society of knowledge by promoting individual growth and learning, the social elements of education are often overlooked as a part of formal education. Although the mission of higher education is to contribute directly to national and local development, higher education initiatives in response to pressing social needs in Europe are limited and insufficient. This also applies to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The expectation of students is that they will make their contribution to society after they graduate. In the traditional higher educational setting, students are expected to study and meet their diploma requirements, and scholars to produce and transfer knowledge, and neither are concerned whether and how their knowledge is used for social-problem solving. This is particularly emphasized in the presentation made by Boothroyd & Fryer (2004) to the Colloquium on Research and Higher Education Policy organized by UNESCO, in which they initiate and provide strong arguments for a continuing dialogue on how to strengthen university action and increase

84

Pre-Service Second Language Teacher Training and Social Engagement

the social engagement role of the university by presenting its benefits, challenges and successes. The social programs for the young people in Europe, including students attending institutions of higher education, are mostly incorporated within “Youth in Action” (2010), an EU program which was to use 885 million euros of the EU funds by the end of 2013 for inspiring a sense of active citizenship, solidarity and tolerance among young Europeans through building social cohesion. This is achieved through the voluntary service action of young people doing community service and is not necessarily related to their university education. It can also be observed that some higher education institutions in Europe within the last fifteen years exhibited interest and support programs and projects promoting student community engagement learning (Millican 2007; Millican & Bourner 2011). The situation regarding social engagement at higher education institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina is similar to the situation in Europe—there is no formal commitment to social engagement at any level of education, including university level. The entire educational system is centred on academic achievement and not on knowledge acquisition and its practical use. As far as the government-funded English teacher education programs are concerned, they are characterized by an overproduction of English teachers with basic theoretical knowledge due to the financial difficulties of higher education institutions. These future English teachers are not prepared to meet the challenges related to practical work with children and are facing the prospect of waiting years for a full time teaching position once they enter the job market. On the other hand, there is a great social need for people who speak fluent English, which might be surprising as English is the primary foreign language studied in schools. Throughout education the emphasis is on getting good grades, but the system still has no way to formally test the English proficiency of public school students in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many students take additional private English lessons to master what was studied in school and improve their grades since English teachers in public schools must follow prescribed curricula and English classes are more centred towards curriculum and student evaluation than students and their needs.

Methodology The adoption of action research in English language teacher education presented in this study falls into the category of individual projects by classroom teachers/teacher educators with an objective to improve institutional

Izabela Dankiü

85

curriculum and prepare pre-service teachers for their future profession and continuing professional improvement (Burns 2009). The objective is to present the benefits and challenges of a social engagement project over a period of twelve years and propose whether social engagement programs should be a part of the English teacher education curriculum. The purpose of this action research was to develop solutions to problems identified within the social environment of severely limited offcampus clinical experience for pre-service English teachers and the serious number of elementary school students who need additional English lessons. The social engagement project was proposed by the professor of the English teaching methods course for fourth year students of the English teaching program of Mostar University, who offered to organize and supervise the project. The outline of the project proposal clearly defined that the objective was for pre-service teachers with no field teaching experience to reach out to the community where they study and live within the scope of their future work as English teachers. All participants would socially engage as volunteers and students would not receive any academic credits, although the data collected during engagement could be used for their seminars or final papers. They could choose to become studentmentors and offer free individual lessons to the Mostar elementary school students, or could suggest some other social engagement activity. “The English Workshop,” as students named the project, started its activities in 2001. It went through several cycles as the participants and the conditions necessary for the operation changed. Every year a new generation of students was presented with the proposal for this extracurricular activity. These lessons were offered for 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the classroom space available for work with the children. The elementary school students would come as needed to receive free individual lessons during the hours of operation and could also sign up for as many lessons as they wanted. The community was informed about the workshop by students personally visiting elementary schools in Mostar, as well as through advertisements in the local public media and church bulletins. The student-mentors were asked to fill out the questionnaire sheet for all students who came to obtain the following data: the name of the mentor and the student, grade and name of the English teacher and school he or she attends, the reasons for attending lessons, report on what the mentor taught and a brief mentor’s observation and reflection. The mentors were asked to keep notes and write an essay upon the completion of the work and reflect on the experience. Reflective practice allows pre-service

86

Pre-Service Second Language Teacher Training and Social Engagement

teachers to improve the ways they will act in the future or “in the midst of the action itself” (Kottcamp 1990, 183). It also plays an important role in the development of professional knowledge as a result of real experiences and their reconstruction through interaction with other learners (Loughran 2002).

Results The “English workshop” was planned to run in cycles. All four stages of the action research (planning, action, observation and reflection) for each cycle were expected. However, since the project greatly depended on the cooperation of all participants involved, five of the cycles were not realized and the reasons will be explained in the section on the challenges of this social engagement project. For the purpose of this study concerned with the benefits and challenges of social engagement of the pre-service English teachers we limited the presentation of results to reflective data analysis, while other data like linguistic data are the subject of separate analyses not included here. Some results of the first and the second cycles were presented in an article on the introduction of the new form of social work of English students by Dankic (2003). The reflective data collected over seven cycles were analyzed. Over two hundred and fifty English students from seven generations (253) took part in the project. The students from the generations who did not participate in the project (29), but who were enrolled in the class, offered their support but for personal reasons could not participate (for example, taking care of a child, taking care of the younger sibling, or a long commute). None voiced any disagreement with the project. All studentmentors taught between two and sixteen lessons. The elementary school students had from one to twelve visits during one cycle. Some of them came as suggested by their English teachers, and the parents of others heard about the workshop from the media. The analysis of all reflective essay data collected from these seven active cycles reveals that all students positively valued their community engagement through the English Workshop. The benefits can be summed as follows. Pre-service teachers found that this experience helped them independently respond to challenges of their work with young students. It helped them get experience working with children, and they applied theoretical knowledge acquired at the university in practice.

Izabela Dankiü

87

The student-mentor’s reflections indicated that they found this experience to be the most rewarding. They were also surprised to discover that the job of an English teacher is very demanding and they must be prepared to simultaneously tackle different challenges (for example, being prepared to teach different English language points and adjust teaching to the special needs of students). This experience helped them gain respect for themselves and their choice of profession. They developed a positive self-image, as one student-mentor said, by “learning to give and giving learning” to the needy members of the community. Besides benefits, unique challenges in relation to this social engagement project in Bosnia and Herzegovina were observed. Five cycles of the action research did not take place because four generations of students declined to participate in the workshop, and one generation decided to participate but comprised the responses of only four elementary students. Students from one of these four generations expressed their interest in the project if the elementary school students would agree to pay for the lessons. Students from three other generations declined to participate because they preferred to direct all of their efforts to their academic work rather than social engagement.

Discussion Social engagement for all those university students who decided to participate in the community service within the scope of their future professions was beneficial and rewarding, and offered a new perspective on their future professions. The observed challenges were to be expected because of the unique situation of many students in Bosnia and Herzegovina and it was not necessarily a reflection of their insensitivity of giving back to their communities, as the reasons are of a financial and cultural nature. Many English language students at Mostar University privately mentor younger students and are paid by the parents. Very few students (about 10%) get government-funded tuition and others cannot study and work part time, and their parents must finance their university education which, in a country which is still economically recovering from the war and where many people are unemployed, is quite a burden on their home finances. Students did not get points or grades for their volunteer work and were not motivated to get involved in social work, perceiving it as an activity which would take them away from studying. Public community service is fairly new and difficult to adopt because of the socialist mentality of many members of the community, which is based on the belief that it is the responsibility of the government to take care of all

88

Pre-Service Second Language Teacher Training and Social Engagement

needs, including the social needs of people. This is not to say that people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in Mostar, do not respond to calls from different public or religious institutions and private citizens in need of help. Some local people perceive that everything that comes for free is of lesser value than something they must pay for, including free English lessons. This position comes from the war and post-war experiences that many people had when lots of expired and old food, medicine (Berckmans et al. 1997) and other goods were distributed to people, and free intellectual services were used for the promotion of materials and ideas of which they disapproved. The other cultural reason related to the citizens of Mostar is a false sense of pride in thinking that free services are for the poor, and as some of the parents we contacted in the cycle with only four students (the ninth cycle) said, they would not send their children to the workshop because they could afford to pay for private lessons for their children. As far as the academic work is concerned, academics are more motivated to volunteer and participate in projects which will result in research that can be easily published in scientific journals and are necessary for their academic advancement. Practitioner and action-research has only lately started to gain wider acceptance in the field of second language learning and teaching research. The social engagement in Mostar was the subject of action research conducted with the lecturers and students of the other Mostar University, Džemal Bijediü University, when they reached out to different categories of needy people in Mostar. As well as in our study, students, by participating in the design of the social engagement program, grew personally (Millican n.d. 2007). They developed their skills, applied theoretical knowledge to practice, observed, reflected and helped their community members. While Millican emphasizes the post-war citizenship development as one of the outcomes of the social engagement, we must add that issues related to the nationality of student-mentors and elementary students who came to the workshop were never raised. Regardless of their nationality, no mentor-students had any questions or problems working with children who came from different Mostar schools and who were of different nationalities. From the experience of this project, these post-war generations of students were concerned with practical questions related to their future professions, and for those who would like to initiate programs like this in Mostar and Bosnia, personal growth through social engagement should be their primary concern. Social engagement learning should help students bring change and improvement in the quality of life of the community, and academics can help lead and unite all its members over a

Izabela Dankiü

89

common social goal where the national or ethnic backgrounds of the participants are either not important or are viewed as an asset. Despite challenges, we consider the English Workshop to be a positive example of how academics and non-academics can cooperate to benefit the community and attempt to change its perceptions of the social engagement. Based on this finding we propose that special programs of “learning to give by giving learning” should be a mandatory part of formal teachers’ education. One of the objectives of these programs is to help students grow into moral people who love and respect their jobs and who are sure that a teaching position is something they would like to do because it completes them as a person—that is, a person who wants to commit his or her life to “giving learning.” Students, our future teachers, must learn to use their teaching and other skills without payment to serve and benefit the underprivileged who cannot afford services that they can provide. These activities can be organized as a part of their teaching practicum. Thus, volunteerism and civic engagement gain special educational value.

Conclusion We believe that academic social engagement is required since it gives a whole new dimension to learning. We also promote the position that universities must be more directly involved in the local and national development, and should work with others to help meet the urgent social needs of the community and promote mutual learning at the same time.

References Berckmans, P., Dawans, V., Schmets, M. A. E., Vandenbergh, D. & Autier, P. 1997. “Inappropriate Drug-Donation Practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992 to 1996.” New England Journal of Medicine, 337: 1842–1845. Boothroyd, P. & Fryer, M. 2004. Mainstreaming Social Engagement in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes. Presentation to Colloquium on Research and Higher Education Policy: “Knowledge, Access and Governance: Strategies for Change”, Paris: UNESCO. http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL-ID=36308&URL_SECTION=201.html Burns, A. 2009. “Action Research in Second Language Teacher Education.” In The Cambridge guide to second language teacher

90

Pre-Service Second Language Teacher Training and Social Engagement

education, eds. A. Burns & J. C. Richards, 289–297. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burns, A. & Richards, J. C. 2009. “Second Language Teacher Education.” In The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education, eds. A. Burns & J. C. Richards, 1–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dankiü, I. 2003. “Uvoÿenje novog socijalnog oblika rada studenata engleskog jezika naSveuþilištu u Mostaru ‘Radionica za engleski jezik’.” Mostariensia 17: 169–176. Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R. & Stigler, J. W. 2002. “Acknowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would it Look Like and How Can We Get One?” Educational Researcher 31 (5): 3–15. Johnson, K. E. 2009. “Trends in Second Language Teacher Education.” In The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education, eds. A. Burns & J. C. Richards, 20–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kottcamp, R. B. 1990. “Means for Facilitating Reflection.” Education and Urban Society 22: 182–203. Loughran, J. J. 2002. “Effective Reflective Practice: in Search of Meaning in Learning about Teaching.” Journal of Teacher Education 53 (1): 33–43. Maurrasse, J. D. 2001. Beyond the Campus: How Colleges and Universities Form Partnerships with their Communities. New York: Routledge. Millican, J. n.d. Student Community Engagement and the Development of Citizenship- the Background to an Action Research Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/getting-involved/staff/76dr-juliet-millican.html —. 2007. “Student Community Engagement – A Model for the 21st Century?” www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/getting-involved/staff/76-drjuliet-millican.html Millican, J. & Bourner, T. 2011. Student-Community Engagement and the Changing Role and Context of Higher Education, Education + Training, Vol. 53 Iss: 2/3, 89–99. Youth in Action. 2010.Youth in Action in Figures [Fact sheet]. http://ec.europa.eu/youth/youth-in-action-programme/doc74en.htm

TENSE AND ASPECT IN ENGLISH: A LINGUISTIC AND PEDAGOGICAL POINT OF VIEW JASMINA MIRTOSKA

1. Introduction Most attempts to describe tense and aspect in the English language lead to a discussion rather than a straightforward explanation of these categories of the verb. Usually, the discussion involves a number of issues, among which are: the debate about the existence of the future tense, the distinction of tense and aspect as separate features of the verb, as well as, in the current chapter, the way grammar and course books portray tenses in terms of the quantity and absence of aspect. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the lack of convention concerning the above-mentioned issues and to shed light on the illustration of tense and aspect issues from a linguistic and pedagogical perspective. Furthermore, an attempt is made to explain what influence the disagreement about this issues has on the learning of the English tense-aspect system.

2. Tense and Time Learners of English, either as a second language or as a foreign language, are aware of the fact that there is a difference between the terms “tense” and “time.” The common knowledge is that “tense” is a grammatical term and “time” is a general, non-grammatical term used on a daily basis. Declerck et al. (2006, 11) introduce the difference between “time” and “tense” by referring to the first one as “extralinguistic” and the latter as “linguistic,” attempting to separate the two as concepts; “a tense expresses a tense structure [which] is a blueprint for one particular way of locating a situation in time” (Ibid., 95). This suggests that tenses serve as a means of locating when exactly an action took place in time; in other words, the linguistic “tense” identifies when something happened with regards to the “extralinguistic” “time.”

92

Tense and Aspect in English

3. Tense and Aspect In order to avoid confusion about tense and aspect in the English language some linguists make an effort to pinpoint that these two categories are indeed that—two different features of the verb with different functions and roles in the grammar of the English language. Comrie (1976) and Leech (2004) both argue that aspect and tense are separate features of the English language. In detail, Comrie (1976, 5) gives a more specific explanation as to how these two (tense and aspect) differ in terms of their approach concerning a certain action in a sentence. He says that aspect is “situation-internal time” and tense is “situation-external time.” This clearly defines the difference between tense and aspect in that it shows the direction of the approach. In other words, while aspect deals with the within-situation action, tense deals with the outer reference of the action in a given sentence. Similarly, Leach (2004, 18) refers to the continuous aspect as a feature which enables us to observe the action from the inside, namely that it gives us an “inside view.” The point of viewing the source of the information about the action, namely inside versus outside information, indicates that these two features (tense and aspect) are indeed different in approaching the action. “Aspect does not tell us anything about when the action takes place; it tells us something about whether the action is ongoing or completed” (Dypedahl et al. 2006, 89). This statement can serve as support for the claims by Comrie (1976) and Leech (2004) who argue that tense and aspect are different categories. Dypedahl et al. define aspect as a category which has no reference to time but provides information about the action itself, revealing information about the duration and the finishing point of the action. Douglas et al. (1999, 460) define tense and aspect in the following way: “tense refers primarily to past and present time orientation, aspect relates to considerations such as completion.” The conclusion can be drawn regarding tense and aspect based on the statements and quotations in this section, namely that tense and aspect are indeed two different categories of the verb of the English language with the difference that tense can be present and past and it approaches the action from the outside by giving the action reference to the external time. On the other hand, aspect indicates duration and completeness of the action and gives information about what is going on inside the action. Though the difference between tense and time, as well as tense and aspect, is more or less clear cut and can be described with a straightforward explanation, it leaves little space for dispute and the next

Jasmina Mirtoska

93

section, which deals with tenses, offers a great deal of disagreement and misconceptions according to various linguists and grammarians discussed and quoted below.

4. Tense in English 4.1 Tense in English from a linguistic point of view From a linguistic point of view there is much disagreement on whether there are two or three tenses in the English system. While some linguists say that present and past are the only tenses others insist on the recognition of the future as a proper English tense. The arguments for and against these positions are vast, some of which are stated and quoted below, representing and supporting each side. Morphologically, the existence of only two tenses in English, the past and present, is entirely based on verb inflection, and exclusion of the future forms from the label “tense” is due to the absence of inflection and reliance on modal verbs to express reference to the future. Another argument against the future tense is the uncertainty of these future actions taking place, unlike the present and the past actions which are either taking place now or have happened at an earlier point. The statement “English has only two tenses, present and past” (Seely 2007, 77) only confirms the arguments that other authors have used to contribute to this discussion in favour of excluding the future from the category of tense and rather refer to them as “grammatical realities of the English verb” (Crystal 2003, 196). Furthermore, “it is not a tense at all” (Cygan 1972, 9) is another strong statement which is not in favour of labelling future temporal forms as a tense. The future here is referred to as a mode rather a tense. Huddleston & Pullum et al. (2002, 208–9) have also established the nonexistence of the future tense by saying: “we do not recognise a future tense for English … we will argue that will is an auxiliary of mood, not tense.” The outcome of the statements outlined here is that the future tense is not a tense, but rather a mode, with modal features and doubtlessly uncertain. Additionally, Larsen-Freeman et al. (2001, 3) say that it is “well known” that English has only present and past tenses and that futurity is indicated by modals, present simple and present continuous. Stating that these declarations are well known implies a consensus among linguists and grammarians that this is indeed a shared view among all or most of them. However, arguments by other authors claim the opposite, namely that there is a future tense in the English language.

94

Tense and Aspect in English

Declerck (2010) and Declerck et al. (2006, 102–6) offer arguments against the exclusion of the future tense from the English tense system. Declerck (2010, 273) claims that “the future tense (‘will/shall + infinitive’) can be used as an absolute tense.” Furthermore, Larsen-Freeman et al. (2001, 3,8) also acknowledge “will” and “going to” as modals, indicating the future simple tense. Declerck calls the future tense a post-present tense with modal meaning and not-yet-factual, since it has not happened yet. Declerck et al. (2006, 100) claim that a tense can be realized by a free morpheme just like it can be realized by a bound morpheme, which means that “will” and “going to,” a modal verb and a modal phrase, can be used to form future tenses. They use various arguments against the exclusion of the future and illustrate and support these with example sentences and therefore see no solid ground for the exclusion in the first place (Ibid., 100–6). Dürich (2005, 20) introduces the English tense-aspect system as consisting of three absolute tenses: present, past and future, whereas the other tenses are a combination of these tenses and aspect. However, she then presents the opinions of other grammarians and linguists who say that due to the issues of inflection and modality mentioned before, English can have only two tenses (Ibid. 6, 24). Salkie (2010) says that the arguments for not labelling “will” as a future tense are that “will” is not inflectional and the future is unsure and modal. He attempts to refute these arguments by saying that “many languages use auxiliaries and particles to express time relations” (2010, 189). This would mean that if modals and auxiliaries are used to form tenses in other languages then this could be the case with the future tense of the English language. Another claim that both Declerck et al. (2006) and Salkie (2010) use against the non-existence of the future tense is the fact that the present simple can be used for future purposes, which they use to argue for the establishment of the existence of the future tense as an absolute tense. All in all, the claims here for labelling the future tense as an absolute tense are several, among which are that modals or free morphemes can be used to form tenses and the criteria for calling a tense an authentic tense should not lie in the inflection of the verb, but rather that “will” and “going to” should also be accepted as means for forming the future tense. Researchers claim that the future cannot be perceived, remembered or experienced beforehand, and therefore the future tenses are not or should not be considered as absolute tenses in grammar. However, since what is not certain or observable here is time and not tense, this argument does not automatically overrule recognizing the future tense as a real tense. The

Jasmina Mirtoska

95

intangibility of the future is a valid argument; however, the future tense does exist as a means for referring to the future. We talk about the future, make plans and arrangements and discuss the future beforehand, which almost puts us in a state of experiencing and imagining the future. What is more, using the uncertainty of the future as an argument against the perception of the future tense as an absolute tense is not a strong argument since the future does happen, plans do get realized and future actions do take place, provided unforeseeable circumstances prevent them, which is rare. Conversely, researchers like Dahl (1985, 105) refer to the future tense as predictions and intentions but not a tense, however, and the future can also be certain even if it is predicted in weather forecasts and planned events by organizations and institutions, for instance, and for the most part they do take place unless they are cancelled because of an unanticipated situation. Hence, the future tense cannot be excluded from the tense-aspect system of the English language based on its low uncertainty. Furthermore, the arguments that remain against the future are that it is modal and not inflected; nonetheless, Declerck et al. (2006) claim that tenses can and should be formed using free morphemes just as well as they can be formed using bound morphemes. The modality issue is approached by stating the argument that other languages use modals to form tenses which can and should be the case in English as well. All in all, this ongoing discussion about the acknowledgement of the future tense as an authentic tense in English has yet to reach a resolution.

4.2 Tense in English from a pedagogical point of view From a linguistic point of view there may be just two tenses according to Crystal, Seely and Larsen-Freeman; however, from a pedagogical point of view there are twelve, which are described in textbooks that dedicate entire units to them (Hewings 1999; 2005; Naylor & Murphy 1996; Nettle & Hopkins 2003; Walker & Elsworth 2000; Swan & Walter 2001; Azar 1989; Willis & Wright 1995; Murphy 1997; Carter et al. 2000; Swan & Walter 1997). From a pedagogical point of view competence and performance are the primary factors involving the English tenses. Celce-Murcia & LarsenFreeman (1983) say that knowing a grammatical item means full comprehension of the form, meaning and use. Since these three elements are connected, not knowing one of them can interfere with the correctness of the other two elements. What is more, Bourke (2005, 85) claims that pedagogical grammars do not take into consideration the work of linguists like Chomsky and Halliday, which has consequences in the classroom and

96

Tense and Aspect in English

an impact on communicative competence. Consequently, pedagogically, tense forms, meanings and use are exactly the elements that course books illustrate for the purposes of achieving competence and performance. Moreover, course books used to fulfil pedagogical requirements show no evidence of the dispute on the inclusion or exclusion of the future tense. Textbooks used in class introduce tenses as present, past and future, as well as progressive and simple tenses, which brings up another linguistic point of view—namely that tenses cannot be progressive since that is the domain of the aspect (Declerck et al. 2006, 162). Course books and selfstudy books (Hewings 1999; 2005; Naylor & Murphy 1996; Nettle & Hopkins 2003; Walker & Elsworth 2000; Swan & Walter 2001) do not dwell on the issue of the existence of only two tenses in English and they do not describe the criteria a tense needs to meet in order to be regarded as an authentic tense, like modality, inflection and uncertainty. It becomes apparent that tenses are treated very differently from the linguistic and the pedagogical points of view. While the first recognizes only two or sometimes three tenses, the latter recognizes twelve and illustrates the form, meaning, usage and accompanied adverbs that go with each tense. Consequently, it is worrisome that this way of approaching, describing and even recognizing tenses creates a gap and a contradiction which might pose a problem for learners of English as a foreign or second language, as well as future linguists. The impression when comparing the linguistic and the pedagogical view is that these do not go hand in hand and it is difficult to bridge the two or even implement them in the classroom.

5. Aspect in English 5.1 Aspect in English from a linguistic point of view “Aspect has almost as many definitions as there are linguists who have attempted to deal with it” (Tobin 1993, 3–4). This shows that much of the treatment and description of aspect in general has been left to interpretation. Providentially, from a linguistic point of view most books present the aspect of the English language in a similar way. Namely, there is a grammatical and lexical aspect in English, and furthermore grammatical aspect can be simple, progressive, perfect and habitual. On the other hand, the lexical aspect depends on the type of verb and can express state, activity, achievement or accomplishment. Nonetheless, there is still some confusion between the difference of tense and aspect in the field of linguistics discussed below.

Jasmina Mirtoska

97

“Aspect refers to a grammatical category which reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded or experienced with respect to time” (Quirk et al. 1993, 188); similarly, aspect is “the way we view an action or state, in terms of the passing of time” (Leech et al. 2001, 54). Both quotes here stress that aspect focuses on the action in the sentence and its development with regards to time. Comrie (1976, 16) gives the following explanation: “perfectivity indicates the view of a situation as a single whole … while the imperfective pays essential attention to the internal structure of the situation.” Here, Comrie clarifies the difference between the perfect aspect and the imperfect one by saying that perfect is more general and holistic whereas the imperfective aspect reveals information about the inner development of the action. Dahl (1985, 74) calls this way of viewing the situation the “totality” view, since this description of the aspect does not apply to all languages. Additionally, Dahl (1985, 139) defines the difference between perfect and perfective which are used interchangeably (Dypedahl et al. 2006; Quirk et al. 2005) but are indeed different. The perfect is marked syntactically and the perfective morphologically, which should serve as an indication for separating the two for the sake of avoiding confusion and misconceptions. When defining aspect, Declerck et al., as mentioned above, insist that progressive tenses do not exist since only aspect can be progressive (2006, 162). This is another clear distinction between tense and aspect which supports the argument that the two are different features. This distinction goes hand in hand with the distinctions made between tense and aspect in a previous section (Ibid., 3). As Dypedahl et al. mention when describing an action, aspect does not reveal information about the “when” but rather the ongoingness and completeness of the action (2006, 89). In other words, it follows that aspect in English shows how an action develops and reveals information about whether or not an action continues and whether or not an action is finished.

5.2 Aspect in English from a pedagogical point of view From a pedagogical point of view one ought to discuss the absence of aspect in this field and in course books. In other words, aspect is not explicitly taught as a category of the verb and most course books confirm this by just listing the twelve tenses and neglecting the aspect as a category of the verb. What is more, textbooks make it seem as though aspect is a

98

Tense and Aspect in English

feature of tense rather than a feature of the verb, which could be misleading for beginner linguists and learners of English. Aspect unlike tense does not have entire units in course books used for teaching English as a foreign language (Kortmann 1991, 14). This negligence of the category of aspect altogether in course books leaves the learners of English in the dark, and consequently when they approach tense-aspect linguistically novice linguists will be taken aback about the existence of this separate feature of the verb called aspect. “The progressive aspect is thought to be an expression of tense” in Japanese textbooks that teach English tenses and aspect, claims Imai (2008, 24). This only confirms the misconception and misrepresentation of aspect as a feature of tense rather than the verb.

6. Discussion and Conclusion When discussing verb tense-aspect of English, it is inevitable to mention the discussion about tense versus aspect regarding their separability, the issue of existence of the future tense, as well as the linguistic and pedagogical view and acknowledgement of tenses in terms of the exact number thereof. The discussion of tense versus time, with the help of previous common knowledge, is somewhat straightforward and easily conceivable. Moreover, the distinction between these two is crucial for the comprehension of the tense-aspect system since it sheds light on the diverse features of tense and time and offers grounds for further exploration of the issue of tense. Once the distinction is made clear, a language learner or student has properly been introduced to the issues of time reference of tenses and how the latter interact with the general term “time.” Furthermore, the tense aspect distinction is also crucial for the overall comprehension of the tense-aspect system in English. Based on what other linguists state, aspect and tense have different approaches to the action namely one is internal and the other external where the latter one makes reference to the outer factors the action itself relates to. Furthermore, the lack of aspect in course books seems to be another issue which has different representations from pedagogical and linguistic points of view. While in linguistics aspect has a firm position, the situation is different in course books since here aspect does not have sufficient dedication. What is more, aspect can be mistakenly considered a feature of tense since course books refer to progressiveness and perfect as tenses. Learners of English and beginner linguists will need to be acquainted with

Jasmina Mirtoska

99

both views in order to grasp the importance of aspect. This being said, if course books introduce aspect and its types then the comprehension of the tense-aspect system of the English language might have a higher chance of being understood and acquired by its learners and becoming a firm part of their competence and performance. What might be challenging for novice linguists when dealing with the issue of tense, linguistically and pedagogically, is the way tenses are approached. The mismatch between the linguistic and the pedagogical description and presentation of tenses can confuse the language learner, language student or even beginner linguist. Being instructed in only a linguistic or pedagogical way and the consequent lack of knowledge of one or the other can have a great negative impact on the overall competence and performance for the learners of English as a second or foreign language and future linguists. Therefore, the implication here is that both views need to be learned for the tense-aspect system to be fully understood and mastered. In conclusion, the discussion of the pedagogical and linguistic approach of the English tense-aspect system suggests that there is some need for change and improvement in the way these issues are dealt with. In other words, course books and teachers might need to instruct and describe tense and aspect from a pedagogical and a linguistic point of view to allow learners of English to see the whole picture. Approaching tense and aspect linguistically and pedagogically will offer the students and the learners of English the opportunity to discover the tense-aspect system from different angles, which can only serve to their advantage.

References Azar, B. S. 1989. Understanding and Using English Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Bourke, J. M. 2005. “The Grammar we Teach.” Reflections on English Language Teaching 4: 85–97. Carter, R., Hughes, R. & McCarthy, M. 2000. Exploring Grammar in Context. Cambridge: CUP Celce-Murcia, M. & D. Larsen-Freeman. 1983. The Grammar Book. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House. Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University. Press

100

Tense and Aspect in English

Cygan, J. 1972. “Tense and Aspect in English and Slavic.” Anglica Wratislaviensia 2: 5–12. Dahl, O. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems. Basil: Blackwell Inc. Declerck, R. 2010. “Future Time Reference by Be To in Present-Day English.” English Language and Linguistics 14: 271–291. Declerck, R., Reed, S. & Cappelle, B. 2006. The Grammar of the English Tense System: a Comprehensive Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Douglas, B., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. England: Pearson Education Ltd. Dürich, K. 2005. “The Acquisition of the English Tense and Aspect System by German Adult Learners.” MA Thesis. Philosophische Fakultät, Technische Universitat Chemnitz Dypedahl, M., H. Hasselgård & B. Løken. 2006. Introducing English Grammar. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Hewings, M. 2005. Advanced Grammar in Use.(2nd ed.) CUP —. 1999. Advanced Grammar in Use. CUP Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Imai, T. 2008. “A Reconsideration of How to Teach Tense and Aspect from the Viewpoint of Cognitive Grammar.” ℩ᮌᏛᅬ⣖せ [Segi School Bulletin] 2 (10): 23–32. Larsen-Freeman, D., T. Kuehn & M. Haccius. 2001. “Helping Students Make the Appropriate English Verb Tense-Aspect Choice.” TESOL Journal 11 (4): 3–9. Leech, G. 2004. Meaning and the English verb, 3rd edition. Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited. Leech, G., B. Cruickshank & R. Ivaniþ. 2001. An A–Z of English Grammar and Usage. Harlow: Pearson Education Murphy, R. 1997. Essential Grammar in Use (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Naylor, H & R. Murphy. 1996. Essential Grammar in Use Supplementary Exercises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nettle, M. & D. Hopkins. 2003. Developing Grammar in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quirk, R. et al. 1993. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London, N.Y.: Longman Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech & J. Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, 20th Impression, 2005. London: Pearson Education Limited.

Jasmina Mirtoska

101

Quirk, R. & S. Greenbaum. 1973. A University Grammar of English. London: Longman Salkie, R. 2010. “Will Tense or Modal or Both?” English Language and Linguistics 14 (2): 187–215 Seely, J. 2007. Grammar for Teachers. Tiverton: Oxpecker. Swan, M. & C. Walter. 2001. The Good Grammar Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 1997. How English works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tobin, Y. 1993. Aspect in the English Verb—Process and Result in Language. New York: Longman Publishing. Walker, E. & S. Elsworth. 2000. Grammar Practice. Pearson Education Limited Willis, D. & J. Wright. 1995. Collins COBUILD Basic Grammar. London: Harper Collins.

READING THERAPY: AN EVALUATION OF LITERARY BOOKS ABOUT PUBERTY ON THE AXIS OF BIBLIOTHERAPY KEMALETTIN DENIZ

Introduction In his essay “Library and Reading,” Montaigne says that he spends most days in his library, and that he finds peace in a room where he is alone with books and even away from his family. His relationship with books is so valuable that he does not want anyone else to be involved. Montaigne, who believes that reading elevates, sanctifies reading in his inner world. Of course it would not be right to expect all adolescents to take pleasure from reading as much as Montaigne, but when we consider that their interests shape their desires, the parallelism between the lines read and their lives will affect their attitudes towards reading in a positive way. In a 2007 study carried out with 4,000 young people in the Paris Book Reading Hall on the types and quality of pastimes of young people it was found that they spend most time with music, radio, television, computer games and the internet. At the same time, the young people were asked what kind of books they read. The kinds of books that attract young people’s attention from most to least are as follows: adventure novels, fantasy fiction, series, horror tales, detective novels, stories, philosophical articles, travel writing, poems, treatises and classics (Güneú 2010, 213). The data are important in terms of displaying young people’s interests, desires and needs. For example, the fact that the reading rate of stories decreases and is replaced with romances in this age group shows the focus of interests of adolescents aged between 12 and 15. In light of the data showing interests, students can be helped with bibliotherapy by considering problems faced during puberty.

Kemalettin Deniz

103

Bibliotherapy is the process of using books to identify needs in people, to satisfy them and help them recover (Öner 2007). One main application of bibliotherapy is clinical bibliotherapy implemented by psychological counsellors. The implementer must be an expert in mental health and the problem must be an important emotional/behavioural one, distinguishing this type of bibliotherapy. In this study, developmental bibliotherapy applied by educators is examined. Developmental bibliotherapy, a type of therapy applied in schools and libraries, is about students’ characters and reading processes, and gives advice. The use of developmental bibliotherapy will be effective in coping with problems of puberty, helping young people accept these problems and come up with solutions. Developmental bibliotherapy can be used for emotional problems, simple adaptation problems and needs related to young people’s development (YÕlmaz 2002). Developmental bibliotherapy is applied in a process as follows. Table 1. Phases of developmental bibliotherapy (Öner 2007) Whether the student is ready for the therapy is determined. That the book appeals to the student’s reading level, his/her problems, attracts his/her attention and has literary value are given attention.

Preparation Book Choice

Application

Identification and Reflection Phase

The student is introduced to the book. The student is expected to see similarities and differences between his/her problems and those in the book. That student understands the features of characters, their relationship with each other and its place as a whole are preconditions of this phase.

Reading Therapy

104

Catharsis Phase

Inner vision and Union Phase

The student is expected to be relieved by revealing his/her emotions. S/he notices the pent-up emotions they cannot name. The student expresses in what ways h/she is similar to the character and his/her emotions about it. The student is expected to share the emotions by writing or verbalizing. The student gains inner vision and unity within himself/herself. The person comes up with different solutions about the issue by using his/her creativity. S/he learns how to cope with his/her problems.

Reading therapy became commonly discussed during the twentieth century. Bibliotherapy was first used in libraries and hospitals and then started to be used in self-help centres. At the beginning of the 1900s, the Library of Congress1 (USA) founded libraries for hospitals and other therapeutic institutions, and librarians carried out studies to find and list books that had remedial effects on people. In the 1930s the Menninger Clinic2 began using books in dealing with struggles with simple neurological diseases, alcohol problems, and patients’ problems on these topics. Shrodes’ thesis in 1950 was the first academic discourse to stress that bibliotherapy was a psychological method. Twelve years later, the publication Library Trends focused solely on this topic. At the end of the 1970s, by reviewing the literature, Rubin found that of the articles published on bibliotherapy, 35% were in library journals and 65% were in publications about psychology, education, nursing and therapy. In 1983, Belcher utilized bibliotherapy in studies on the field of child abuse. In his 1984 study, Wilson talks about the basic logic behind the use of bibliotherapy to educate about death. Sheridan, Baker & Lissovoy used bibliotherapy for children whose families were in the process of change in 1984. In 1987, Nickolai & Mays studied the use of bibliotherapy for children who were socially lonely. In 1989, Bernstein & Rudman indicated 1 2

www.loc.gov/ Houston, USA. menningerclinic.com/

Kemalettin Deniz

105

that bibliotherapy was a credit course at Villanova University in 1980 (Pehrrson & McMillen 2005). J. T. Pardeck and J. A. Pardeck have specialized in the field of bibliotherapy since the beginning of the 1990s. In 1990, J. T. Pardeck studied the use of bibliotherapy in the treatment of child abuse, while in 1991 examined bibliotherapy in the prevention of chemical addiction in young people, and in 1998 studied bibliotherapy in the treatment of social work applications. Together with J. A. Pardeck he studied the treatment of young people who have social and developmental problems with book advice, bibliotherapy for needy children in clinical implementation, the use of children’s books to increase cultural richness and the use of bibliotherapy in the adoption and care of children. In 1999, Shectman stressed that bibliotherapy can be used for aggression in childhood, while James W. Forgan focused on bibliotherapy and problem-solving in 2002 (Pehrsson & McMillen 2005. Table 2. Distribution of articles published between 1961–2000 according to fields of study (Pehrsson & McMillen 2005) Year

Education

Psychology

Medicine

Health Care -

Library

1961–70

-

1971–80

26 (in 5 years) 155

61

8 (in 6 years) 34

1981–90

174

160

47

22

66

1991–00

128

136

68

44

69

-

-

Although bibliotherapy is a field that has been studied from time to time, it is a method whose importance has only been understood in recent years and which is studied in the field of psychological counselling and guidance. When we look at the related literature it is seen that the history of bibliotherapy development in Turkey originated in the Reform Era. When we look at the recent history, the first study we see was carried out by Altay in 1969, where in Bibliotherapy and Librarians he researched the use of bibliotherapy in hospitals and stated how librarians helped on this subject. YÕldÕrÕm (1975), in Library Service for Patients at Hacettepe Üniversity, based on clinical bibliotherapy, demonstrated why library services for patients should take place at Hacettepe University. Öner, in Bibliotherapy

106

Reading Therapy

(1987), elaborates that bibliotherapy can be used for children whose parents are divorced and who face child abuse. Uçar (1996), in his M. A. thesis “Utilization of Literary Works in Guidance Services in Secondary Education,” talks about the contributions of literature and other branches of art to character development. His work has applications recommended to a group and discussed within clinical bibliotherapy. The M. A. thesis of YÕlmaz (2002), “The Effects of Bibliotherapy on Conflict Levels of Young People in Conflict with Their Families,” focuses on puberty, conflict and bibliotherapy, and examines the work FatihHarbiye on the axis of mother-father-child in terms of bibliotherapy. In “Utilization of Children’s Literature in Solving Problems of Children Who Have Difficulty in Making Friends,” Turan (2005) stresses that making friends is one of the most important social problems children face. The story Is Making Friends Difficult? was examined as an example. In “Bibliotherapy: Utilization of Children’s Literature in Psychological Counseling and Guidance Programmes,” Öner & Yeúilyaprak (2006) give an example of application after providing information about the process of bibliotherapy and its use in guidance programmes. TopuzkanamÕú & Uysal (2010) touched on young people’s problems and stated that a Turkish language course could be effective in solving these problems in “Bibliotherapy and Turkish Language Education.” Bolat (2010), in his M. A. thesis “Turkish Language Course Teaching Materials In Terms Of Cognitive and Affective Abilities of 8th Grade Students at Primary School,” stresses that in Turkish language courses the texts which appeal to the period in which the individual lives are in fact treatment tools, and that texts in course books should have bibliotherapeutic properties, too. In “Use of the Bibliotherapy Method for Psychological Counseling and Guidance at Schools,” Öncü (2012) emphasizes the importance of schools’ and guidance teachers’ roles in self-help after mentioning the phases, aims and benefits of bibliotherapy. The use of bibliotherapy is especially crucial for adolescents. In this phase where personality and the mind start to develop, reading texts help students aged between 12–15 to find solutions to their problems, see that the problems do not only belong to them, evaluate and take lessons from the text without experiencing problems and help their minds get used to finding solutions by appreciating that situations have different solutions, all of which are factors showing that in Turkish language courses the texts which appeal to adolescents are, in fact, treatment tools (Bolat 2010). The Turkish Language Teaching Programme (2006) expects students to help

Kemalettin Deniz

107

themselves via the basic skills of: speaking Turkish correctly, effectively and well; critical thinking; creative thinking; communication; problem solving; searching; using information technologies, entrepreneurship; deciding; intertextual reading; and valuing personal and social values, all of which, along with what bibliotherapy contributes to a person, overlap. All the texts in the Turkish language courses cannot be expected to be bibliotherapeutic, but as the basic skills are taken into consideration in the choice of texts, most probably the texts will be bibliotherapeutic (øúcan & O÷uzhan 2012). People choose books for various reasons, such as to have fun, to improve themselves psychologically, to realize tehmselves, to strengthen attitudes, to get new information, to organize previous knowledge and to use psychological defence mechanisms (Dökmen 1994). That the individual identifies their needs and decides accordingly are indicators of applying book therapy. Research shows that 24% of adolescents choose to read a book based on the cover. This is followed by recommendation from a friend (20%), presentation of the text (13%), parental advice (11%), teacher recommendation (9%), radio and television advertisement (8%), sibling advice (8%) and internet advice (6%) (Güneú 2010). While this is so for those who choose and read a book consciously, it is a little different for students during puberty, and it is not possible for people in this phase to identify their problems well and choose a book accordingly. Even if the chosen book is thought to be beneficial the problem may get worse, which is not a desired situation. In order to not come across such a problem, students aged between 12–15 need to get help from a person who is specialised in the work the student chooses. The most important criteria for the books in bibliotherapy applications are to serve the purpose; that is, being devoted to the problem. Along with students’ interests and reading levels, that the work has literary value is also among the points that must be considered (Öner 1987). According to Pehrsson & McMillen (2005), the moral of the mistakes made in book choice and experiences is important. The deficiencies of advisors who could not improve themselves can be seen from the difficulties they have when they cause harmful results with wrong book choices. Choosing remedial works among appropriate literary works is a personal and ethical responsibility. Regarding the properties of books used for bibliotherapy, Altay (1969) proposes the following stipulations: (1) They must be instructive

108

Reading Therapy

(2) They must have a universal philosophy that does not differentiate internationally (3) They must have the necessary properties to spend time in a fun way (4) They must help the reader to appreciate life and contribute to the removal of life’s negative side (5) They should encourage the adoption of the opinion that behaviours and ideas which are considered criminal should be corrected with education instead of punishment (6) They should have the necessary properties to tell the reader not to attack ideas, people and societies, but to be near and live with them. (7) They should be suitable for patients’ general levels and their needs. People aged 12–15 fit into Ericson’s theory (Elkind 1978) of psychosocial development, that is “The 5th phase: Identity development versus role conflict.” “Identity seeking, physical change and future planning” are the things paid attention to most in this phase. For Bolat (2010), people aged 12–15: are anxious and choosy; react quickly; are fussy; are pessimistic; pull faces; are not pleased with anything; often cry; have a decreasing interest in lessons; demonstrate deterioration of study habits; are messy and careless; are often clumsy; eat frequently; have untidy rooms; have unpolished shoes but have a haircut in line with the latest fashion; spend hours in front of mirrors dealing with pimples and hair; and experience their being thin, fat, tall, short and their eye colour becoming problems at any time. Changes seen in young people are: desire to be alone, reluctance to study, boredom, disharmony, unrest, social conflict, resistance to authority, contrast with the opposite sex, increase in sentimentalism, making sex hard work, excessive shyness, and daydreaming (Bolat 2010). Those who undergo these changes have some problems, such as: step mother/father, puberty, denial of socio-economic status, being ashamed of family, introduction to bilateral relationships and new concepts, addiction, neglect, child sexual abuse, test anxiety, death of a family member/relative, violence from family or acquaintances, and physical appearance deficiencies (disabilities, structural deficits, emaciation or obesity) (TopuzkanamÕú & Uysal 2010). People aged 12–15 affected by the factors above choose detective novels, crime novels, horror tales and historical novels, while “emotional and adventure” stories are the most popular. These criteria should also be taken into consideration while applying bibliotherapy.

Kemalettin Deniz

109

Problem The main problem of this study is to find whether it is possible to establish a bibliotherapeutic link between book choice and self-help of young people aged 12–15, while the sub-problem is to find what kind of books young people aged 12–15 prefer.

Aim This study aims to find out to what extent the books preferred by young people aged 12–15 reflect their problems and contribute to Turkish language teachers’ and students’ self-help in educational contexts.

Significance This study is important in terms of evaluating the self-help efforts of young people aged 12–15 with their book choices on the axis of bibliotherapy and contributing to Turkish language teachers’ and students’ self-help in educational contexts.

Limitations The study is limited to the examination of three library catalogues and four publishing firm catalogues.

Assumptions The problems included in Ericson’s theory of psychosocial development —that is the 5th phase of identity development versus role conflict—were regarded as the problems that young people aged 12–15 are likely to encounter. It is regarded that young people aged 12–15 borrow or buy books from libraries and publishing firms with their free will, and thus publications among the 100 basic works advised at primary schools were not included since they may hinder objectivity.

Definitions Bibliotherapy is the process of utilizing books to identify and satisfy people’s needs and help them to recover (Öner 2007).

Reading Therapy

110

Developmental bibliotherapy can be used by experts and educators to prevent daily problems encountered in the normal development process or to cope with these problems more effectively (Öner 2007). Young Adulthood: Puberty (TDK 2005). This developmental stage covers girls aged approximately between 11–18 and boys aged between 13–20 (AydÕn 2002, 40). Literary work: Each work written in a specific genre that has literary value (TDK 2005).

Method Research Design The study is a descriptive research intended to find "what it is" and "what it was" (Borg & Gali 1989, 331, in Balci 2001). Content analysis, a qualitative research method, is used in this study.

Sampling The sample of the study includes the list of books bought or borrowed from children's libraries in Ankara and the list of publishers for adolescence that shows lending and best-selling books.

Procedure (Data collection) In this study, lists of the most borrowed books were provided from the children's books section in Adnan Ötüken City Public Library. The first of these lists is an all-time list, the second covers the period September 2011 to July 2012, and the third covers the period April 2012 to July 2012. However, books with more copies in the library appear at the top of the lists which causes a distortion of the results. The lists of best-selling books for children of 12 or older were also taken from Imge Kitabevi3 and Timaú YayÕnlarÕ.4 In addition, lists of the bestselling youth and children's books were taken from the D&R5 and Kitapyurdu6 websites. The top 10 books on these lists were included in the study, and are as follows:

3

www.imge.com.tr/ www.timas.com.tr/ 5 www.dr.com.tr/ 6 www.kitapyurdu.com/ 4

Kemalettin Deniz

111

(1) Can, Ç. 2008. Mucitler ve øcat Öyküleri (Stories of Inventors and Inventions). østanbul: Carpe Diem Kitap. (2) ùahan, S. 2010. Büyük Hayatlar—Büyük Düúünceler (Great Lives—Great Thoughts). østanbul: Timaú YayÕnlarÕ. (3) Behrengi, S. 2007. Küçük Kara BalÕk (Little Black Fish). østanbul: Can YayÕnlarÕ. (4) Karadaú, H. 2008. Düúünüyorum Öyleyse SÕnavdan Kaç AlÕrÕm (I Think, Then What Would I Take from the Test). østanbul: Carpe Diem Kitap. (5) Ongun, ø. 2012. Bir Genç KÕzÕn Gizli Defteri (A Young Girl’s Secret Book). østanbul: Artemis YayÕnlarÕ. (6) Erbulak, D. 2012. 14 YaúÕnda Bir Genç KÕzÕm Ben (I’m a 14 Year Old Young Girl). østanbul: Do÷an YayÕncÕlÕk. (7) Bezmen, N. 2009. Bizim Gizli Bahçemizden (From Our Secret Garden). østanbul: Do÷an YayÕncÕlÕk. (8) DayÕo÷lu, G. 2012. Yeúil Kiraz (Green Cherry). østanbul: YapÕ Kredi YayÕnlarÕ. (9) Apuhan, R. ù. 2012. Meúhur Olan Fakir Çocuklar (Poor Children Who Became Famous). østanbul: Timaú YayÕnlarÕ. (10) Toprak, K. 2012. Durdurun DünyayÕ ønecek Var (Stop the Word There is Someone to Get off). østanbul: Carpe Diem Kitap. After determining the books involved in the study, the data was analysed.

Analysis of Data The top 10 books in the lists were used to analyse the data. The themes in these books were paired with the puberty status dealt with in Ericson's theory of psychosocial development. The results obtained were examined by two education experts who are specialists in the field. The adjustments were made so that the evidence has been finalized.

Findings When the changes and possible problems faced by young people aged 12–15 were analysed, their book preferences reflect the situations they are placed in. Interests have been shaped by the characteristics of the development period.

Reading Therapy

112

Table 3. Themes in the books and the occasions for this period identified by Ericson No.

Name of Book

Theme

1

Bir Genç KÕzÕn Gizli Defteri

2 3

Küçük Kara BalÕk Mucitler ve øcat Öyküleri

4

Meúhur Olan Fakir Çocuklar

5 6

Büyük Hayatlar—Büyük Düúünceler Yeúil Kiraz

7

Durdurun DünyayÕ ønecek Var

8 9

Düúünüyorum Öyleyse SÕnavdan Kaç AlÕrÕm 14 YaúÕnda Bir Genç KÕzÕm Ben

Pursuit of similarity Self-discovery Pursuit of role model Pursuit of role model Pursuit of role model Differences in socioeconomic statuses Norm/normless conflict Test anxiety

10

Bizim Gizli Bahçemizden

Realizing opposite sex Realizing opposite sex

Occasions for this Period Identified by Ericson Pursuit of identity Pursuit of identity Pursuit of identity Pursuit of identity Pursuit of identity Resistance to authority Resistance to authority Concern for the future Dealing with gender Dealing with gender

Bir Genç KÕzÕn Gizli Defteri (A Young Girl’s Secret Book), Küçük Kara BalÕk (Little Black Fish), Mucitler ve øcat Öyküleri (Stories of Inventors and Inventions), Meúhur Olan Fakir Çocuklar (Poor Children Who Became Famous), and Büyük Hayatlar-Büyük Düúünceler (Great Lives-Great Thoughts ) can be dealt with by the axis of pursuit of identity as identified by Ericson (Elkind, 1978). However, they reflect the pursuit of identity with different facets. In Bir Genç KÕzÕn Defteri (A Young Girl’s Secret Book), the character in pursuit of similarity is the owner of the diary, Serra Noyan. Serra's mother and father are divorcing and she is concerned about how to tell her friends. Cüneyt, whom she meets in øzmir and later becomes close friends with, also loves the books that Serra reads. The guidance counsellor at Serra’s school does not give permission for the publication of Serra’s first letter in the school newspaper and she defends the letter with the approval and support of Özge and Selin. She tries to gain the favour of the the most

Kemalettin Deniz

113

popular boy in school by mimicking her friends’ styles of dress. All of this shows Serra’s pursuit of similarity in the novel. Küçük Kara BalÕk (Little Black Fish) is a curious fish who is not satisfied with the opportunities afforded to him and wants to learn what is going on elsewhere. The fish wants to live and wants to know the world instead of doing the same things as his predecessors. When he wonders about the end of the stream in which he lives, he thinks of going away. In spite of his mother's efforts to make him give up the idea of going and his neighbours’ condemnations, he follows his dreams. While the obstacles in his path cause him to ask more questions, Little Black Fish comes to the end of the stream by keeping everything he saw in his mind with a sense of exploration and astonishment. Even the most feared birds, the pelicans and herons, cannot prevent him from seeing new things. Looking at the name of the book Mucitler ve øcat Öyküleri (Stories of Inventors and Inventions), one gets the impression that it describes which invention was invented by which inventor and under what conditions. However, the emphasis of the book is on inventions rather than inventors, and some of the inventors are even unknown. Many inventions which make life easier, such as the sewing machine, the shopping cart, the telephone and cutlery, are emphasized. Mucitler ve øcat Öyküleri focuses on the pursuit of the role model but it is also appropriate for creating a field of interest. The common characteristic of the people in Meúhur Olan Fakir Çocuklar (Poor Children Who Became Famous) is that they live a poor and financially difficult life and have their education disrupted. However, these disadvantages do not cause them to be resentful and interrupt their work, but rather help them to study more and to understand the value of their work. Dostoyevsky could not get pocket money from his family for sixteen years; Edison lost his hearing following a slap from his boss because of an explosion in the lab; Ahmet Mithat learned to read and write while hiding from the owner of neighbour’s shop when he was an apprentice selling spices and fragrances; Mehmet Akif signed up for an Agriculture and Veterinary School to find a job as soon as he graduated because he had lost his family and was forced to work—all these children never gave up working despite the obstacles they faced. In Büyük Hayatlar—Büyük Düúünceler (Great Lives—Great Thoughts), the people who became successful and their success stories are presented. It tells how these people, brought up in different socioeconomic environments, were able to use the resources in their hands in the best ways possible, how they faced their situations and how they used their minds to improve their conditions. The book includes profiles of

114

Reading Therapy

James Watt, who invented the steam engine after examining his aunt's tea pot in his childhood; Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity with the help of a falling apple; Elias Howe, who was considering the preliminary plans of the sewing machine while working in a mill; John Vanamarker, who started the first employee education programme on smiling after realizing how powerful it was in persuasion during experience in his shops; and Louis Pasteur who, after being bitten by a dog, thought that there must be a solution to problems related to this incident. All these examples show us that being successful by looking at things considered as normal by others differently is only possible through widening one's horizons. Both Yeúil Kiraz (Green Cherry) and Durdurun DünyayÕ ønecek Var (Stop the World There is Someone to Get Off) can be considered under Ericson's category of “resistance to authority.” However, each reflects a different face. Yeúil Kiraz is the nickname given to Kiraz, the main character, by his lover Özgür, a name that reflects her naivety and innocence. Kiraz's family has immigrated to the city from a village and are working as concierges in an apartment. She is hiding this from her classmates, teacher and lover. She is jealous of her friends from school and the apartment block who enjoy luxurious lives, and she lies as if she has a similar life. She hates her family and fights with them often, and the socioeconomic differences disturb her tremendously. She is humiliated by her lover Özgür and her friends. In the next book of the series, Green Cherry 2, motivated by her situation she attends a school in England and takes revenge on the past. The second book also reflects her concerns for the future. In Durdurun DünyayÕ ønecek Var (Stop the World There is Someone to Get Off), we see templates created by the behaviours of those individuals who react to existing rules and authority. “Inside every one of us lives a chronic opponent,” “I love tenaciously, to whom does it matter?”, “Once a student falls in love, his classes go on honeymoon,” “Tell me your grades, I tell you your father's blood pressure,” “Not knowing is not a disgrace as long as you cover it” and similar sayings are ways to say: “I am here, I also live; what I want and what I think are as important as you.” Düúünüyorum Öyleyse SÕnavdan Kaç AlÕrÕm (I Think Therefore What Score I Would Get from an Exam) is composed of texts written by students who reply to questions in philosophy exams even though they do not know anything about the answers. The student who is asked to reply to a question about “nothingness” replies: “A teacher gives lessons to his students the whole year. The student does not listen. Then comes the time for the oral exam, and there is nothing in his head.” A second student is asked to comment on the concept of “freedom,” taking into account the

Kemalettin Deniz

115

main idea in the following paragraph: “According to some philosophers, man is just an actor on the world stage. He cannot choose his role, he cannot intervene in the game. A mastermind determines everything that man does on this stage. He can only choose his manners and aspirations. He should be content with what he has and should not be hungry and envious for the things he can't own.” His reply is the following: “Freedom is not being under the command of anybody, and acting one wishes. However, the world is such a place that we are under command willingly or unwillingly. For instance, I am in the exam now and I have to fill up that paper. We cannot get out of the roles given to us.” Another student is asked to write a text taking into account the subjects of philosophy and the things taught in the class about the following words from Witgenstein: “What is your purpose in philosophy? Showing the way out to the fly in the bottle?” His answer is: “I do not have any purpose in philosophy. Now, the only thing occupying my mind is my future, that is life in university. But if a fly goes into a bottle, I can help him get out.” All these students stress that they are taking that exam because they are anxious about their future. The books 14 YaúÕnda Bir Genç KÕzÕm Ben (I am a 14 Year Old Girl) and Bizim Gizli Bahçemizden (From Our Secret Garden) are among the literature that can be evaluated through the axis of “dealing with gender” as identified by Ericson for this period. Both books get attention with the theme of noticing the opposite sex. 14 YaúÕnda Bir Genç KÕzÕm Ben shows that physical changes in this period also occupy the mind of the person concerned. Özge's attempts to become a more attractive person, who tirelessly follows changes in her body in the mirror every day to get Orçun's attention, her interest in clothing brands because of Orçun, and her feeling that she is in love for the first time are all examples of this situation. Another book that can be considered under realizing the opposite sex is Bizim Gizli Bahçemizden (From Our Secret Garden). The theme of the book is love and marriage; the reason why an adolescent is reading such a book is to know the opposite sex better and to give meaning to that. In this book, Nermin Bezmen is writing a long letter to her ex-husband Pamir after his death explaining how their love started. Their first meeting, realizing their love and interest, Nermin's belief in finding real love, and their insistence despite all opposing views are issues that can capture the interest of youngsters aged 12–15 in noticing and understanding the opposite sex. When the reading choices and problems of young individuals are compared, it is seen that such themes as pursuit of similarity and belonging,

116

Reading Therapy

self-discovery, search for role models, differences in socio-economic statuses, norm-normlessness conflict, test anxiety, and noticing the opposite sex are common. It is seen that books related to stepparents, addiction, neglect, child abuse, change of location, death of a family member/relative, violence by family/acquaintances, and physical deficiencies are not in the list of choices. The reason for this could be the limited number of books dealing with these themes.

Suggestions As a result of studies carried out, the following are suggested: A list of books should be prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and publishing houses, which is to be suggested by teachers in Turkish language classes where students are more likely to encounter the books. The books should be suggested under a section where there are also lecture textbooks. A selective course on bibliotherapy and its coverage in faculties of education may result in creating new educators who are experts in that area. Libraries and publishing houses should publish reading suggestion lists, taking into account not only the wishes and interests of young individuals, but also their likely problems. Teachers should suggest books with a view to solving students' problems, taking into account the differences between regions as well as schools and also the fact that students may be at different levels of development.

References Altay, G. 1969. “Bibliyoterapi ve Kütüphaneciler” [“Bibliotherapy and Librarians”]. Türk Kütüphaneciler Derne÷i Bülteni [Bulletin of Turkish Librarians Association] 4 (18): 241–243. AydÕn, B. 2002. “Geliúimin Do÷asÕ” [“Nature of Development”] Geliúim ve Ö÷renme Psikolojisi [Ed. Binnur Yeúilyaprak]. Ankara: PegemA YayÕncÕlÕk. BalcÕ, A. 2007. Sosyal Bilimlerde AraútÕrma [Research in Social Sciences]. Ankara: PegemA YayÕncÕlÕk. Bolat, A. 2010. ølkö÷retim 8. SÕnÕf Ö÷rencilerinin Biliúsel ve Duyuúsal Becerileri AçÕsÕndan Türkçe Dersi Ö÷retim AraçlarÕ [Turkish

Kemalettin Deniz

117

Language Course Teaching Materials in Terms Of Cognitive and Affective Abilities of 8th Grade Students at Primary School]. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Bolu: Abant øzzet Baysal Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Türkçe E÷itimi Ana Bilim DalÕ. Bulut, S. 2010. “Yetiúkinlerle YapÕlan Psikolojik DanÕúmada Bibliyoterapi— Okuma Yoluyla Sa÷altÕm—Yönteminin KullanÕlmasÕ” [“Use of Bibliotherapy—Treatment with Reading—Method in Psychological Consultation of Adults”]. Türk Psikolojik DanÕúma ve Rehberlik Dergisi 4 (33): 46–56. Dökmen, Ü. 1994. Okuma Becerisi ølgisi ve AlÕúkanlÕklarÕ Üzerine Psikososyal Bir AraútÕrma [A Psychosocial Survey on Reading Skill Interest and Habits]. østanbul: MEB YayÕnlarÕ. Elkind, D. 1978. Erik Erikson: ønsanda Geliúimin Sekiz Evresi [“Erik Erikson: Eight Stages of Development in Humans”]. Trans: Ali Dönmez. Dialoque 11 (1): 3–13. Forgan, J. W. 2002. “Using Bibliotherapy to Teach Problem Solving.” Intervention in School and Clinic 38: 75–82. Güneú, F. 2010. “Okuma Kültüründe Okuma ølgisi ve Kitap Seçiminin Önemi ile Ekran Okuma AlÕúkanlÕ÷Õ” (“Reading Interest in Reading Culture and Importance of Book Choice and Screen Reading Habit”). Okuma Kültürü ve Söz VarlÕ÷ÕnÕn Geliútirilmesi ÇalÕútayÕ KonuúmalarBildiriler KitabÕ. Ankara: Devlet KitaplarÕ BasÕmevi. øúcan, A. & S. O÷uzhan. 2012. “Türkçenin E÷itimi ve Ö÷retimi AlanÕnda YapÕlan Yüksek Lisans Tezlerinde Geçen Anahtar Kelimelere Dönük Bir øçerik Analizi” [“Content Analysis of Keywords in M. A. Theses in Turkish Language Education and Teaching”]. Turkish Studies— International Periodical For The Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 7 (1): 1863–1873. MEB 2006. ølkö÷retim Türkçe Dersi 6–8. SÕnÕflar Ö÷retim ProgramÕ [Turkish Language Course Curriculum of 6th and 8th grades at Primary School]. Ankara: Devlet KitaplarÕ BasÕmevi. Öncü, H. 2012. “Bibliyoterapi Yönteminin Okullarda Psikolojik DanÕúma ve Rehberlik AmacÕyla KullanÕlmasÕ” [“Use of Bibliotherapy Method for Psychological Counseling and Guidance at Schools”]. Türkiye Sosyal AraútÕrmalar Dergisi 15 (1): 147–170. Öner, U. 1987. “Bibliyoterapi” [“Bibliotherapy”]. Ankara Üniversitesi E÷itim Bilimleri Fakültesi Dergisi 20: 143–149. —. 2007. “Bibliyoterapi” [“Bibliotherapy”]. Çankaya Üniversitesi Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Journal of Arts and Sciences 7: 133–150. Öner, U. & B. Yeúilyaprak. 2006. “Bibliyoterapi: Psikolojik DanÕúma ve Rehberlik ProgramlarÕnda Çocuk EdebiyatÕndan Yararlanma”

118

Reading Therapy

[“Bibliotherapy: Utilization of Children’s Literature in Psychological Counselling and Guidance Programmes”]. II. Ulusal Çocuk ve Gençlik Edebiyat Sempozyumu Bildiriler KitabÕ, 559–565. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi E÷itim Bilimleri Fakültesi YayÕnÕ, Nu: 203. Pehrsson, D. & P. S. McMillen. 2005. A Bibliotherapy Evaluation Tool: Grounding Counselors in the Therapeutic Use of Literature. Library Faculty/Staff Scholarship & Research. TopuzkanamÕú, E. & B. Uysal. 2011. “Bibliyoterapi ve Türkçe E÷itimi” “Bibliotherapy and Turkish Language Education”) III. UluslararasÕ Dünya Dili Türkçe Sempozyumu Bildiri KitabÕ, 884-890. øzmir: KanyÕlmaz MatbaasÕ. Turan, L. 2005. Arkadaú Edinme Güçlü÷ü Çeken ÇocuklarÕn Problemlerini Çözmede Çocuk EdebiyatÕndan Yararlanma [Utilization of Children’s Literature in Solving Problems of Children Who Have Difficulty in Making Friends] KâzÕm Karabekir E÷itim Fakültesi Dergisi 12: 124– 135. TDK. 2005. Türkçe Sözlük [Turkish Dictionary]. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu YayÕnlarÕ. YÕldÕrÕm, Ü. 1975. “Hacettepe Üniversitesi Kütüphanesinde Hastalara Kütüphane Hizmeti” [“The Effects of Bibliotherapy on Conflict Levels of Young People in Conflict with Their Families”]. Türk Kütüphaneciler Derne÷i Bülteni 2 (24): 141–146. YÕlmaz, E. B. 2002. “Bibliyoterapinin Aileleriyle ÇatÕúma øçinde Olan Gençlerin ÇatÕúma Düzeylerine Etkisi” [“The Effects of Bibliotherapy on Conflict Levels of Young People in Conflict with Their Families”]. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi E÷itim Bilimleri Enstitüsü Rehberlik ve Psikolojik DanÕúmanlÕk Bilim DalÕ.

THE MANY FACES OF BE LIDIJA PERKIý

Introduction The English verb to be (often termed "the principal copula") is one of the most frequently used verbs in the English language. This monosyllable, seemingly the verbal equivalent of the single-celled organism, has the ability to be used in three ways (namely, that of an auxiliary, copular and main/lexical verb), which it realizes by means of eight different forms (the base, be, two morphologically related forms to the base, being and been, and as many as five suppletive forms: am, is, are, was and were). Also, it has a quite large number of modification patterns. No other verb in English comes near be in this respect. It would appear that these are some of the reasons why contemporary linguistic theory has not yet indisputably, or unanimously, confirmed the proper status of this verb. To complicate matters further, there are more than a few linguists who argue that the uses of to be in the English language are only twofold, namely that it may be used as an auxiliary verb, while they seem to regard its copular and lexical usages as being equivalent, despite certain very apparent differences between the two. Others maintain that its copular and auxiliary usages should be considered as identical. The third group supports the view by which to be is not to be considered the "principal" copula, but rather a complex-intransitive verb. Unfortunately, this list of the possible references to be does not stop here; therefore, one of the goals of this chapter is to account for as many of them as possible. In order to successfully determine the threefold usage of to be, this chapter provides occasionally quite different viewpoints among the consulted authors, which enables us to question the correctness of their opinions regarding certain usages of to be. Bearing in mind that to be plays an important role in the theory of phrase structure and other domains of syntax, the discussion on the complementation patterns of this verb shall lead to a claim by which to be may be used in three distinct manners.

120

The Many Faces of be

Theoretical Background The mysterious world in which to be rules may best be described by showing how this short verb “helps” us to “exist” in the outer world, and in what way we are “linked” to it. The “helping” part relates to be being used as an auxiliary (or primary) verb; by definition, it may be used in the formation of the progressive/continuous aspect, where it is found in combination with the – ing participle (He is/was eating), as well as in all fully-fledged passive forms (He was seriously injured by his opponent). Since only two illustrations seem to be sufficient to show the auxiliary usage of be, it may be said that this is the only straightforward usage of this verb; however, contemporary linguists have managed to make this simple usage even more complicated. In particular, the chapter on "Primary verbs: be" (and then directly underneath it a heading, "Main verb be") in Student Grammar by Biber et al. (2003) is quite intriguing, in that it offers a cocktail-like definition of the AUXILIARY usage of be: "As a main verb, be—the COPULA—is the most important COPULAR VERB in English" (emphasis in original). The very title of the chapter informs us that the verb be is a primary verb. But instead of telling us something about it, the authors chose to employ two other categorizations first (main, and then copular). The only problem is that these two classifications are essentially different from the primary (auxiliary) one. Also, according to these grammarians, this short verb seems to exhibit all these properties simultaneously! Moreover, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) offer a fairly interesting argument in which they claim that to be acts as an auxiliary in sentences such as He is acting strangely and He is insane (progressive aspect vs. a copular construction), based simply on the similarities that appear when transforming these sentences into their respective interrogative and negative forms (Is he acting strangely?/Is he insane? and He isn't acting strangely/He isn't insane). In other words, these authors equalize the auxiliary and copular usages of to be. If we bear in mind that copular verbs are established on the basis of three copular complementation patterns, namely ADJECTIVAL (The girl seemed restless), NOMINAL (William is my friend), and ADVERBIAL (The kitchen is upstairs), then Huddleston & Pullum's claim may not be too far from the truth, because the syntactic behaviour of the copula be follows the auxiliary verbs rather than main ones. In particular, the copula be (a) inverts with the subject and (b) occurs to the left of the negative marker

Lidija Perkiþ

121

not, (c) it can contract with it and (d) can contract with pronominal subjects and lastly (e) it appears to the left of adverbs: (1) Is Beth writing her dissertation? vs. Is Beth upset? (auxiliary vs. copular) x *Wrote Beth her dissertation? (lexical/main verb) (2) Beth is not writing her dissertation vs. Beth is not upset. x *Beth wrote not her dissertation. (3) Beth isn't writing her dissertation vs. Beth isn't upset. x *Beth wroten't her dissertation. (4) She's writing her dissertation vs. She's upset. x *She'ote her dissertation. (5) Beth is often writing her dissertation vs. Beth is often upset. x *Beth wrote often her dissertation. By definition, a verb is said to have copular complementation when it is "followed by a SUBJECT COMPLEMENT (Cs) or a predication adjunct, and when this element cannot be dropped without changing the meaning of the verb. The verb in such a clause is a copular (or linking) verb, and is equivalent in function to the principal copula, the verb be" (Quirk et al. 1985). Therefore, linking seems to be the primary function of copulas; also, they may be followed by a PREDICATION ADJUNCT (adverbial related to subject, AS ). Neither of these elements may be freely dropped without affecting the meaning of the verb, and, consequently, the meaning of the sentence which shows that copulas have to be followed by some kind of a complement, without which the meaning of the verb would not be complete. As the etymology of its name suggests, the copula (from Latin copulare "to link") "serves to link the predicate to the subject. Since the copula does not contribute lexical meaning of its own, those who argue that the copula is a verb often argue that it is a verb of a special sort, for example a verb empty of semantic or syntactic features" (Becker 2000). Huddleston & Pullum (2002) also claim that be "should be regarded as semantically empty" when used in sentences such as Kim is fond of animals, in which case it is "serving the purely syntactic function of carrying the tense inflection, which has to be associated with a verb: note in this connection that translation equivalents in a good number of languages contain no verb." Indeed, the copula be is also often omitted in African American English, while Russian does not even have an overt copula be because this verb seems to have no meaning there.

122

The Many Faces of be

Yet, Huddleston & Pullum (2002) make mention of constructions in which the copula be undoubtedly expresses a semantic predicate, as in their example, The chief culprit was Kim. Another piece of evidence that establishes be as a verb comes from the rather mundane observation that the participial forms of be are like the participial forms of other main verbs: be can take the progressive –ing affix (being), as well as the perfect –en affix (been). Unlike be, the inflected copula cannot appear with these affixes (*is-ing/*is-en) (Becker 2002). In contrast to all the other auxiliaries, however, the copula be is not followed by a verbal category (by definition) and therefore must be the rightmost verb. In this respect, it is like a main verb. Having mentioned lexical (or main) verbs, Huddleston & Pullum (2005) provide a rather crude definition of a lexical verb as a "verb belonging to the vast majority that are not auxiliary verbs." Therefore, main verbs may be classified into several basic clause patterns which show that all languages in their syntactic rules have certain places reserved for verbs to occupy them (for instance, in English verbs are usually placed immediately after the subject). Naturally, as soon as something is described as "main" it is inevitably given a sense of the utmost importance. However, there is a certain very conspicuous illogicality in Quirk et al.'s division of these verbs into "intensive" and "extensive" types. More specifically, we are told that intensive verbs are copular verbs only; since copulas are apparently set apart from all other types of verbs, there seems to be no reason why the same type of verbs should actually be repeated in their list of extensive verbs, which they themselves claim to be entirely different types of verbs. Thus, they have made copulas join the group of verbs that may, or may not, be complemented by objects. Hence, copulas, although "intensive," are at the same time also "extensive." Regrettably, this problem does not stop here. Huddleston & Pullum (2002) give their own contribution to what they find should be the "proper" division of different types of verbs. For this purpose, they employ a new, rather inelegant structure which they call COMPLEX-INTRANSITIVE. Thus, in This seems a good idea/fair, the copular verb seem is complexintransitive, which is the term used for "a clause containing a predicative complement but no object, and complex-transitive for one containing both types of complement," such as I consider this a good idea/fair (Huddleston & Pullum 2002). Still, it is interesting that these authors should "see" the adjectives and nouns that follow copular verbs as being connected to the predicate (hence the term PREDICATIVE complement),

Lidija Perkiþ

123

rather than to the subject (which would be the viewpoint typical of Quirk et al., since the term they use for this is SUBJECT complement). There are more ways in which to refer to these complements. Becker (2000), for instance, introduces "permanent" properties (which she calls individual-level [IL] predicates, such as He is TALL), and opposes them to those "temporary" ones (or stage-level [SL] predicates, such as He is IN THE GARDEN). It follows that IL predicates are realized by Noun and Adjective phrases, while the SL ones are realized by Adverbials. These two levels cannot appear in a successive order, i.e. we cannot have He is tallILin the gardenSL. However, there is one Prepositional Phrase predicate that is exclusively individual-level, namely be from, as in Rodney is from Encino, which indicates the place where an individual originates or comes from; it cannot change, and remains a property of the individual for the duration of the individual's existence. More difficulties regarding copulas lie in the fact that many of them may also be used as ordinary lexical verbs: "In addition to the general meaning 'exist', [to be] can have a number of meaning senses when used as a full lexical verb in combination with noun phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases" (Brdar, Kuþanda & Omaziü 2001). This is why problems emerge when assigning be either to the lexical or copular class of verbs, because the same three types of phrases are used to determine both. The lexical be is usually found in existential sentences where it makes no sense to treat be as a copular verb; if we have the subject which by definition denotes the existence of something, then the verb (as the central and most important part in the predicate of a clause) must also denote existence, and not simply a grammatical link between the existential subject and whatever (if anything at all) comes after it. For example, the be in René Descartes' famous example I think, therefore I am must be existential, not copular, because it cannot be expanded with properties so typical of copular constructions:

124

The Many Faces of be

The meaning changes considerably with the insertion of either the adjective smart, or the noun phrase a smart person, or the prepositional phrase in the study. Although these additions do make perfect sense, they are actually representatives of copular constructions (hence the placement of the asterisk). Moreover, if we were to replace be with exist to check the role of this verb we could see that we cannot have anything such as I think, therefore I exist smart. Existential sentences are also easily recognized by the so-called existential there; according to Biber et al. (1999), existential there is a function word which has developed from the locative (position) adverb there, and which—syntactically—functions as a grammatical subject rather than as adverbial. The authors claim that this device is used with intransitive verbs to "predicate the existence or occurrence of something," where such a clause typically has the structure "there + be + indefinite NP." What truly sticks out in the above definition is that be is again qualified as an intransitive verb. This noun phrase following be is usually referred to as the notional subject; in There is a man in the garden the noun phrase a man is indefinite, and as such may freely appear in the existential construction; of course, regular copular sentences may be derived from this (A man is in the garden), which is formed by raising the subject NP of the small clause to matrix subject position. In the existential construction, "there is simply inserted in subject position (an empty preauxiliary NP position), whereas in the non-there-insertion case, the NP is raised to fill the (underlyingly empty) subject position" (Becker 2000). However, with examples such as A friend of mine is a real jerk, the corresponding existential construction may not be possible (*There is a friend of mine a real jerk), because existential there sentences cannot be derived from "NPbeNP" constructions that show be as "a transitive (now thought to be unaccusative) verb that takes an NP ‘object,’ possibly followed by an AP, PP or gerundive verb, but not another NP" (Becker 2000). Apart from proclaiming be as now being a transitive verb, it might be possible to make the existential version grammatical by inserting a relative clause (There is a friend of mine who is a real jerk), or by using apposition (There is a friend of mine, a real jerk). An important distinction between copular and existential sentences may also be observed in the fact that we may produce sentences like I in the kitchen (where the copula is missing), whereas in existential sentences be is generally not omitted.

Lidija Perkiþ

125

Material and Method The collected data and examples come from various sources. Research consists of Dean Koontz's book Seize the Night, which was the principal source of examples and results presented below. Advantage has also been taken of many TV series, movies and sports channels, as well as various internet sites and e-mail messages. Based on certain similarities that arose between the collected examples, the following complementation patterns are established: complementation of to be by an adjective (compounds included), a noun, a number, an adverb, a prepositional phrase, a clause, and to be in ellipsis.

Results Since the analysis has produced more than the aforementioned three complementation patterns, we shall focus our attention on those that have not been covered in the traditional grammar books. Firstly, it must be pointed out that be appeared 4,327 times in total in Seize the Night; considering the fact that the original book has 443 pages, it means that there were about 9.76 instances of this verb per page. Table 1 below shows the seven complementation patterns and the number of instances of each:

The Many Faces of be

126

2,500

2,354

2,000 1,500

1,121

1,000 500

148

319 48

118

219

0

Table 1. Seven complementation patterns of to be As evident from the table above, adjectives have by far exceeded all other types of complementation patterns. They are "closely" followed by nouns, and consequently prepositional phrases, which is in accordance with the traditional division of complementation patterns following to be. The least frequent were numbers, with single adverbs appearing merely 148 times. The two newly-proposed complementation patterns, clause and ellipsis, are discussed below.

Discussion Of the seven patterns, it is perhaps the elliptical one that stands out the most, which came in the form of nominal clauses (introduced with what; cf. "He'LL finally BE WHAT HE WAS MEANT TO BE.—He already WAS WHAT HE WAS MEANT TO BE."). To-infinitive and that-clauses appeared rather frequently, which shows that this type of complementation has been unfairly left out in the grammar books consulted. Moreover, by ellipsis we mean those cases in which to be appeared either at the end of sentences (thus showing similarities with its lexical usage), or the cases where to be did not appear at all; let us use the square

Lidija Perkiþ

127

brackets to show the full sentence which became elliptical: "[The luminosity of a streetlamp is less dangerous to me than the full ferocity of the sun, but it's not entirely safe.] Nothing IS." Apparently, the subject complement was left out from the unbracketed sentence; had it not been omitted, we would have a fully-fledged copular sentence ("Nothing IS[entirely safe]." We have "found" the missing complement in the sentence that preceded the elliptical one. However, there is also a different kind of ellipsis, to which we shall refer here as the "false" one. Namely, examples such as, "… but Big Head – or Big Foot, or the wolfman, or the Loch Ness monster in drag, or whatever the hell this W A S – …" would at first sight look elliptical due to the inverted word order, but they would still not be included in this “elliptical” complementation pattern because they do have their complements expressed inside of the same sentence in which they themselves appear. Sadly, the consulted grammar books seemed to lack any detailed work on the several complementation patterns which emerged in the course of research, which may account for the fact that there certainly is some room for improvement in that regard.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the three manners in which to be may be used in the English language. On the basis of its syntactical behaviour, and the inconsistencies throughout the consulted grammar books, we have been able to give evidence why to be in the English language should be considered as having three distinct usages: as an auxiliary, copular and lexical verb. Moreover, several complementation patterns of to be have been provided; apart from the three most important ones (adjectival, nominal and adverbial), corpus analysis has produced four more (complementation by a number, adverb, clause and to be in ellipsis). By doing data analysis, it transpired that to be has been complemented by seven different patterns, none of which could have been disposed of without affecting the meaning of the verb and, consequently, the sentence. But although the chapter has maintained that to be may be used in the aforementioned three distinct ways, the purpose of it has never been to force the decider (or tie a break, so to speak) between which authors and which grammar of theirs is THE most authoritative on the matters discussed. On the contrary, it is these very differences of opinion among grammarians and their seeming inability to uniformly decide the correct status(es) of to be that have actually made this work possible.

128

The Many Faces of be

References Becker, Misha Karen. "The Development of the Copula in Child English: The Lightness of Be" (PhD diss., Los Angeles: University of California, 2000), accessed November 15, 2003, ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/ircs/tr/00-05/00-05.pdf. —. “Is Isn't Be” (paper presented at the Workshop on Microvariation in the Syntax of Auxiliaries in Leuven, August 2001, and published in Lingua, vol. 114). Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan, Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (London: Longman, 1999). Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad & Geoffrey Leech, Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (London: Longman, 2003). Brdar, Mario. Unpublished course material: Syntactic and Semantic Valency of the Predicator (Osijek: Pedagoški fakultet, 2002). Brdar, Mario, Dubravko Kuþanda & Marija Omaziü, Grammatical Functions and Categories: Part I – The English Verb (Osijek: Pedagoški fakultet, 2001). Huddleston, Rodney, & Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Huddleston, Rodney, & Geoffrey K. Pullum, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Koontz, Dean. Seize the Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1999). Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Ian Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London: Longman, 1985).

TRADITIONAL VS. MODERN TEACHING METHODS: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES MAHIRA HADŽIMEHMEDAGIû AND AZAMAT AKBAROV

Introduction To become a teacher or to maintain being one requires many obligations and sacrifices. There are age-old questions hanging over teachers' heads, such as: “How can I deliver my lesson in the best possible way?” or ''Will my teaching methods wake up an interest in all my students'?' There are too many questions posed to teachers, especially the younger ones. Should the teacher be the centre in the classroom and teach topic after topic, or just guide students' interests? Those who are already involved in the educational system know that the methods we use have a big influence on how students acquire the target subject. This chapter is related to the acquisition of a second language. Here, we come to a point where we choose our place as teachers in the classroom and arrive at two widely used terms: traditional and modern (advanced) teaching methods or methodologies.

Traditional vs. Modern Methodology To gain or imply some method or strategy in the classroom we must begin to think about the most important factors in the educational system, namely students and their abilities, interests, motivations and intelligences. We should start our teaching with understanding, developing and directing students in logical steps of learning. Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of learning objectives identifies within the cognitive domain a hierarchy of six categories:

Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods

130

Cognitive domain (1) Knowledge (2) Comprehension (3) Application (4) Analysis (5) Synthesis (6) Evaluation

Behaviours or outcomes Recall the facts that students attain Makes use of the knowledge Deal with issues that inspire us to learn and reveal the creative potential with each student

Teachers should know their students' needs and abilities, and at the same time they should know how their students learn and develop during the learning process within the social concepts. Teachers build up the teaching strategies in the classroom according to these objectives. According to Gardner, all human beings possess different intelligences in varying degrees and each individual manifests varying levels of these different intelligences, so each person has a unique ''cognitive profile'' (Gardner 2006, 8). Teachers can improve their teaching and educational practices by being aware of these multiple intelligences and acting according to them to get the best feedback from the students. The multiple intelligences by Gardner (2006, 9–14) are: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Linguistic/Verbal intelligence Logical/Mathematical intelligence Spatial/Visual intelligence Musical intelligence Bodily/Kinesthetic intelligence Interpersonal intelligence Intrapersonal intelligence Naturalistic intelligence.

The multiple intelligence theory opens the door to a variety of teaching strategies which can easily be applied in the language classroom, and gives teachers opportunities to widen modern teaching strategies by using various assignments and activities (Armstrong 2009, 51). Being aware of the students' intelligences, teachers can manage the classroom atmosphere and impose the question of using traditional or modern teaching methods, including a huge number of different teaching aids and strategies which could help each child to adopt the knowledge in their own way.

Mahira Hadžimehmedagiü and Azamat Akbarov

131

Traditional Method Traditional methods of teaching related to language acquisition are still widely used in many schools, especially in public ones. A teacher dominates interactions, and the teaching is deeply teacher-centred and follows textbook steps for activities and demonstrations. The traditional way of education is that teachers serve as the source of knowledge while learners serve as passive receivers (Boumova 2008). In the case of traditional methods, the teachers are at the centre of the classroom and lead a prepared lesson following an established pattern, comprising revision of the previous material, repetition, introduction of the new topic, grammar, reading, translation, exercises, and correction of mistakes. These topics are included in lessons every day. The aim of this method is memorization, regardless of whether the students understand the material, and tests are very important. All the students do the tests, which are the main measure of someone's knowledge, but they are not made to take into consideration their own background knowledge, abilities or interests. There is very little interaction in the classroom and little chance for students to practice and improve, especially in foreign language acquisition and conversation. There are three main methods used in traditional education:

(1) Direct instruction and lectures (2) Seatwork (3) Students learning through listening and observation.

Modern Teaching Methods We can surely say that all teachers seek the best ways of teaching and using modern methods and strategies. Unlike traditional methodology, modern methodology is much more student-centred. According to Jim Scrivener, the teacher’s main role is to “help learning to happen,” which includes “involving” students in what is going on “by enabling them to work at their own speed, by not giving long explanations, by encouraging them to participate, talk, interact, do things, etc.” (Scrivener 2005, 18, 19). Today’s classrooms are equipped with different visual aids, whiteboards, literacy resources, educational toys, computers and a wide range of art and craft materials, mathematic equipment, books (electronic as well as print), readers, science equipment, puzzles, games and construction sets, and there is a great need for a teacher who is able to incorporate all of these into the teaching process. The teacher in the

132

Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods

modern teaching process is there not to explain but to encourage and help students to explore, to try things out, and to make learning interesting. Instead of grammatical competence, which was the priority in traditional methods, communicative competence should be the priority Ronald V. White articulated three principles of modern methodology: “the primacy of speech,” an emphasis on “the centrality of connected text as the heart of teaching learning process,” and an absolute priority of an oral methodology in the classroom. Instead of memorizing grammatical rules and isolated vocabulary, modern methodology prefers “to present contextualized language and to develop skills'' (White 1998, 11). The main skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing, and can be classified into two groups: receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and writing). These skills consist of sub-skills; for example, reading includes skimming and scanning (reading for specific information), intensive reading, and extensive reading. Nowadays, we face a large number of methods used in schools to improve teaching and most of them give very good results, especially when incorporated with each other. Some of these methods, commonly used today, are: Direct instruction: this is the most common form of instruction, and is the lecturing method of teaching. However, this is not the most effective teaching method to reach all students, especially younger ones, who often need a more engaging, hands-on strategy to learn effectively. Inquiry-based learning: using inquiry-based learning takes a lot of time, energy and planning, but it is often very effective. Students practice problem solving and critical thinking skills to arrive at a conclusion. This teaching method is extremely student-centred and student-directed. Cooperative learning: students are put in small groups to work together. They are usually not grouped by ability but put in a group with children at a variety of levels. The students are then given tasks to accomplish together. Informal instruction: this is, as the name suggests, much less formal. Good teachers know their students. If you have been teaching a particular group of students for some time, you probably already know quite a bit about their interests, ability levels and learning styles (Wisegeek.org 2014).

Mahira Hadžimehmedagiü and Azamat Akbarov

133

Most of the methods are grouped in families of models so we can talk about the Information Processing Family of Teaching Models, the Social Learning Family of Models, the Personal Family of Models, the Behavioural Systems Family of Models, and Constructivist Models (Integrated). This shows that school systems around the world try to define the best approach to teaching. Among all the methods cited above, I would single the other model, which is, in most researchers' opinion, the best nowadays. The main focus of this work, related to modern, advanced teaching methods, is the SIOP model which is widespread and implemented in districts throughout all fifty states in the U.S. and has the tendency to be the best method for teaching in classrooms all over the world. It was founded by Jana Echevarria, a Professor Emerita of Education at California State University, Maryellen Vogt, Professor Emerita of Education at California State University, and Deborah J. Short, professional development consultant and a senior research associate at the Centre for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. This model is supported under the Education Research on Development Program, The Centre for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE) and many other research centres around the world (Echevarria, Vogt & Short 2008, 3).

The SIOP Model The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model is a research-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners throughout the United States. It is a comprehensive, well-articulated model of instruction for preparing teachers to work with English learners, but it is also applicable in all the other subjects. SIOP includes specific lesson planning and delivery suggestions and teacher observation protocols. Providing this SIOP model also helps to prepare students for life after high school in colleges or their careers (Echevarria, Vogt & Short 2008, 4). The SIOP model was ''invented” through' the years and is intended for a modern teacher for use in every-day teaching. It can be implemented in all school subjects and in all types of lessons. It requires teachers to be well organized and highly prepared when entering the classroom, and also to follow the steps which the model contains. The SIOP model develops listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills through its components. The SIOP Model consists of eight interrelated components:

Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods

134

x x x x x x x x

Lesson Preparation Building Background Comprehensible Input Strategies Interaction Practice/Application Lesson Delivery Review/Assessment (Echevarria, Vogt & Short 2008, 16).

Each of these components helps and guides the teacher to plan and deliver the lesson and get the best results and feedback from the students. The SIOP model has thirty features in lessons for English learners and English speakers alike. These features are all incorporated in these eight interrelated components. The result of using this method is high-quality, effective instruction and improved student achievement. The SIOP components or features which are implemented while teaching are: content objectives, language objectives, content concepts, supplementary materials, adaptations of content, provide meaningful activities, students’ background experiences, links between past learning and new concepts, emphasize key vocabulary, use speech that is appropriate, provide clear explanations of academic tasks in simple language, use a variety of techniques to make content concepts clear, provide ample opportunities for students to use/apply learning strategies, meta cognitive, cognitive and social/affective strategies, consistently use scaffolding techniques, use a variety of questions or tasks, provide sufficient wait time for student responses, provide ample opportunity for students to clarify key concepts in L1, provide hands-on materials for students to practice using the new content in context, provide activities that allow students to apply content and language knowledge together, integrate all language skills into content area instruction, content objectives must be clearly supported by lesson delivery, language objectives must be clearly supported by lesson delivery, students must be engaged 90–100% of the time.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Traditional and Modern Methods Modern methods of teaching include many different aids during the lessons. Children definitely enjoy lessons full of different visual materials, such as flashcards, smart boards, colours CDs, etc. In this way they are more attentive and memorize things more easily, transferring their long-

Mahira Hadžimehmedagiü and Azamat Akbarov

135

term memory much faster than the teachers’ explanation in the traditional way. These aids also “support students’ recollection of facts in explicitdeclarative memory’’ (Ortega 2009, 87). The teachers also benefit from it, as it is surely much easier for the teacher to show a slide show of a growing plant, or the parts of a plant, and use the same example more than once than drawing a picture on the board whenever they need it. The good use of aids incorporated in teaching methods can prevent the teacher and the children from being disappointed in school and the school system. There are disadvantages to modern methods which, on the contrary, contribute to traditional methods. As said, the modern methods include the usage of modern teaching aids, which can cause many disadvantages such as the lack of interaction between teacher and student, the high costs of the equipment and maintaining the same, and that teachers must be trained to use these aids properly. Traditional teaching methods have been used for a long period. We cannot say that the traditional model of teaching is totally wrong or unacceptable today; it can be used today, but of course incorporated with other methods. The well-known disadvantages of the traditional method of teaching are: - The teacher delivers instruction, typically through lecture - The teacher models the skill, often on a blackboard or overhead projector - The student is given practical work, usually in workbooks or on handouts - The teacher reviews the student's work and/or tests the group using pencil and paper tests - The teacher provides feedback on the student's performance, usually in the form of a grade for the work and marks items missed.

Conclusion It is difficult to say which method to use in the classroom, especially to a young teacher. In the teaching process everything must be taken into consideration: the classroom itself, the number of the students, the equipment the school owns, the students’ background knowledge, abilities, social conditions, motivations etc. The teacher can use all pedagogical methods allowed by the educational system, either traditional or modern, but should use a wide range of them.

136

Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods

Teachers should work on themselves and keep improving their teaching skills every day. The teacher must be a good example to the students, as an academic person as well as the happy, amusing and interesting person that will induce students to learn. Being a teacher is a great job and also a great responsibility. Teachers must be aware of all the potential difficulties when they enter the classroom. They do not find objects there, but lively, happy children eager to do whatever they are supposed to do, but only if it is done in a good way. A teacher’s personal touch goes a long way in making a student comfortable in the learning process. If the teacher sees their students as those that need a teacher to help them when they need it during their education, and if the teacher is able to provoke a smile, some joy, happiness and a shiny sparkle in students' eyes, we do not have to ask questions about traditional or modern methods. That kind of a teacher is able to make everything work.

References Bloom, B. S. & D. R. Krathwohl. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals: Handbook I, Cognitive Domain. New York: Longmans, Green. Christison, M. A. 1996. “Teaching and Learning Language through Multiple-Intelligences.” TESOL Journal 6: 10–14. Create Brief—The SIOP® Model: A Professional Development Framework for a Comprehensive School—Wide Intervention. http://www.cal.org/create/publications/briefs/professionaldevelopment-framework.html (accessed January 21, 2013.) Differentiated Instruction Meets Needs of Diverse Students. http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/instructionalmaterials/tp/differi nstruct.htm (accessed January 13, 2013. Echevarria J, M. E. Vogt, D. J. Short. 2008. Making Content Comprehensible—The SIOP Model (4th edition). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Gardner H. 2006. Multiple Intelligences. http://books.google.ba/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8K54fg6YU4EC&oi=fn d&pg=PR7&dq=gardner+h.+(1993).+multiple+intelligences+the+theo ry Larsen-Freeman, D. 2000. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masaryk University Faculty of Art. Traditional vs. Modern Teaching Methods: Advantages and Disadvantages ...

Mahira Hadžimehmedagiü and Azamat Akbarov

137

is.muni.cz/th/86952/ff_m_b1/ V Boumová 2008. Models of Teaching. Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/events/winterconference/2008/content/Monday /Models%20of%20Teaching. Ortega L. 2009. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. London, Great Britain: Hodder Education, Hachette UK Company. Scrivener, J. 2005. Learning Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan. Scrivener18, 19 as cited in http://is.muni.cz/th/86952/ff_m/MgrDiplomkaBoumova.pdf SIOP: Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. http://www.siopinstitute.net/. Traditional education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_education (accessed January 8, 2013. The SIOP Model. http://www.msdwt.k12.in.us/msd/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/10/siop-model-and-research-findings (accessed January 24, 2013. TLC—Non-Traditional Teaching & Learning Strategies. www.montana.edu Resources › Teaching Strategies (accessed January 22, 2013. What are Some Different Teaching Methods? http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-some-different-teachingmethods.htm White, R. V. 1988. The ELT Curriculum. Oxford: Blackwell

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, THE IMITATION THEORY AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING MEHMET DEMIREZEN

Introduction The Behaviorist Theory, which is basically an educational psychological theory in its essence, was founded by J. B. Watson in 1913. Behaviorism was advanced in America as a new approach to educational psychology by placing a particular emphasis on the importance of verbal behaviour, and received considerable attention from the educational world of the 1950s, declining in the 1960s after attacks from Noam Chomsky (1959). It is actually a theory of native language learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar, called the Grammar Translation Method. The upholders of this theory are L. Bloomfield, and in the past have included J. B. Watson, O. N. Mowrer, B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), A. W. Staats, I. Pavlov and, and E. L. T. Thorndike. In 1913, J. B. Watson coined the term Behaviorism which immediately gained currency both in America and Europe. Basically, "the Behaviorist Theory of stimulusresponse learning, particularly as developed in the operant conditioning model of Skinner, considers all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of reinforcement and reward" (Rivers 1968, 73). Skinner, by working on Watson's S–R behaviourism, emphasized the theoretical idea that "reinforcement" from the environment controls behaviour. This gave a push for the production of Imitation, Reinforcement, Analogy and partially Mediation Theory. Even though Imitation Theory is welcomed by all foreign language learning approaches, theories and methods, it must be noted that not all L1 and L2 learning totally depends on imitation theory. It is true to say that it always remains the hub of language learning as the establisher of skills, but to what extent it provides the creative and productive use of language is questionable. Therefore, research on L1 and Second language acquisition (SLA) has offered alternative views on the role of imitation (Ellis 1985).

Mehmet Demirezen

139

The Birth and Development of Imitation Theory As explained before, Imitation Theory is an offspring of the Behaviorist Approach, which has five characteristics—imitation, practice, reinforcement, mimicry, and memorization—all of which lead to habit formation towards skills. In L1 learning, children observe the world around them, especially when adults are speaking to them. They produce what they hear in their environment and even produce words that are not seen in adult grammar. It must be noted that speech is a complex process, actually requiring great muscular effort, a coordination of approximately one thousand muscles in the mouth and the face. Little kids are simply inept at production and that is why they memorize some of the words they hear around them. Many parents do encourage their children to imitate, often instructing the child to say this word and that expression by means of Reinforcement Theory, and giving models in a simple and model manner of speech that has been called "caregiver talk" or "motherese." Since they cannot create voices of their own, the voices of others invade them. Caregiver talk used by parents has certain regular characteristics like using proper nouns for pronouns, repetitions, expansions, a high percentage of questions and imperatives, a slow rate and carefully pronounced words in special intonation, sometimes exaggerated intonation, and simple sentences. Imitation Theory claims that children learn to speak by simply imitating what grown-ups are saying (Trask 1998, 168). It is true that children do not imitate a great deal during the babbling, holophrastic and telegraphic stages, especially in learning the sounds and vocabulary. They can imitate only the language structures that correspond to those they have learned in their environment. Imitation, being a fundamental skill builder, has valuable contributions to SLA, L1 and L2 Learning. It must be remembered that, even though there are common similarities among SLA, L1 and L2 Learning, there are distinct differences among them. FLL is different from SLA, which takes place in a target language environment and provides learners with plenty of language input in contextually meaningful situations of native-speaking environments. In contrast, FLL takes place under extreme time limits in a first-language cultural context, providing the learners with comparatively poor environmental conditions for language acquisition. There has been disagreement on the criteria defining imitation and its borders as well as on the conditions under which imitation facilitates language acquisition and learning. Even though some traditional psycholinguists such as Bloom (1974), Clark & Clark (1977), Chomsky (1986) and Dale (1976) have not accepted imitation as accounting for language acquisition in

140

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

children, it is really at the root because these scholars have overlooked the concept of generalized imitation as presented in the context of operant learning theory. It must be noted right from the beginning that generalized imitation describes in an orderly way the conditions under which firstlanguage acquisition takes its place in the language learning skills of children. In the meantime, there are some hidden puzzles and assumptions in children's language acquisition. These "hidden assumptions" (Jang 2006) allow children to quickly figure out what is and is not possible in the grammar of their native language, and allow them to master that grammar by the age of three via mimicry-memorization. They are the greatest imitators of adults up to this age. Imitation Theory, therefore, can explain how some aspects of language are learned before others. The basic principles of imitation theory can be outlined as follows. Throughout the history of psychology, learning theorists have regarded imitation as such an important construct that virtually all of them have addressed imitation in one way or another (Kymisis & Paulson 1990, 113). Since it is indispensable in language learning, its principles can be enumerated as follows: (1) The primary medium of language is oral. (2) Imitation facilitates language acquisition and learning. (3) Learning is an observable behaviour which is automatically acquired by means of stimulus and response in the form of mechanical repetition. (4) The environment controls behaviour (Watsonian behaviourism). (5) It emphasizes conditioning and building from the simplest conditioned responses to more and more complex behaviours (Palermo 1978, 19–20). (6) A child’s mind is seen as a blank sheet, a Tabula Rasa, which is a place for new input from the child’s environment. (7) Language acquisition is not an innate process; children are not born ready for it at all. (8) Language acquisition is a habit forming process. (9) Imitation is a must; if the encouragement for correct imitations is provided, the learner forms habits. (10) In child language acquisition, children’s imitation of caretaker’s or adults' speech is the key. (11) Children produce what they hear around themselves. (12) Language acquisition must involve a lot of memorizing; children can memorize some of their utterances.

Mehmet Demirezen

141

(13) The language learning of children is also based on imitation (Skinner, 1950). The cases of Genie, Elizabeth, Wolf Children and Chelsea provide solid proof on this issue. (14) Positive reinforcement given by adults to children during the acquisition times facilitate and quicken the acquisition process. (15) The assumption that children learn poorly when reinforcement is given to them is wrong. (16) Errors have to be corrected as soon as they occur because they may fossilize. Error correction is highly important. (17) Some errors become permanent and are resistant to change if not corrected. (18) When the L2 structures differ from L1 structures, reinforcement is needed. (19) More practice (repetition) means more success in L2. (20) Experiments on language using operant conditioning can be extended to complex behaviours or habits. In order to evoke complex behaviours, another element like shaping or progressive approximation is added to the conditioning paradigm. (21) In terms of multiple-response learning, a language learner always learns a chain of behaviours in L2 in the same order. This is the extended principle of behaviourism to cope with the “creative aspect of language.” They gradually build up associations between the words and groups of words. (22) Being a successful L2 learner depends on how similar or different the L1 is toL2; second language learning is strongly tied to first language acquisition. (23) Learning also comes from the outside or the environment; it does not come from mental activities. The above principles indicate that children imitate single words in the holophrastic stage, and two words in the telegraphic stage, yet their imitations may not contain new structures. However, expansion may coincide with repetition. For example, when the child says “Daddy talk,” the parents reply, expanding this utterance: “That’s right, daddy is talking.” The behaviorist Theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models through a process involving imitation, rewards and practice. Human role models in an infant’s environment provide the stimuli and rewards” (Cooter & Reutzel 2004). Therefore, parents must provide simple, clear, well-designed model structures to be imitated by children. But it is claimed that the imitation theory can only explain a minor aspect of language acquisition because children can

142

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

produce complex utterances which they have never heard before. Children only listen and memorize, they do not produce by using their creativity.

The Failure of the Imitation Theory The following counter-arguments are made upon the working principles of the behaviorist theory. Imitation theory fails because of the following counterarguments. (1) It is accused of being highly mechanical. (2) It cannot explain the way children handle the irregular grammatical patterns. (3) If children really acquire all of their linguistic knowledge from what they hear, how can we explain their frequent errors due to overgeneralization? Children use overgeneralizations, i.e. they say *goed, *doed and *speaked in the past tense forms in place of went, did and spoke in past tense forms, assuming that language is regular. They may not hear these words from their parents or adults. Wrong utterances cannot be learned through a process of imitation. Such errors are also made by deaf children. (4) This very case signifies that the child is applying their intelligence and creativity towards their mother tongue. Therefore, they are not merely imitating. That is why children sometimes acquire the utterances that are not actually addressed to them. (5) Researches made on the acquisition of learning have demonstrated that children’s imitation of structures show evidence of almost no innovation; moreover, children "vary considerably in the amount that they imitate" (Bloom 1974, 380–420). (6) Children can understand sentences they have never heard before, which points to the fact that there is a creative aspect of their language acquisition. Thus, this ability to create and understand novel sentences cannot be acquired by any form of stimulusresponse learning because it is not controlled by past experiences. (7) The emergence of language is also triggered by external factors, but this fact is not properly handled by the Imitation Theory. (8) Children can make novel utterances, the production of which leads to the creative aspect of language use. Child language, in fact, is creative. For example, by saying things like *doed, *goed, *mans and *tooths, which they have not heard from others, they create new words and phrases.

Mehmet Demirezen

143

(9) In foreign language teaching, after the initial phases of learning, the learners’ linguistic system of interlanguage does not simply result from imitation of what is heard in the input but illustrates that learners acquire the ability to create syntactic and morphological combinations that could not have been heard before, resulting in many novel constructions (Richards et al. 1992, 174). (10) Other linguists argue that UG is not a good explanation for SLA, especially by learners who have passed the critical period (i.e. CPH does not work in SLA). (11) Behaviourism emphasizes stimuli and responses but ignores the mental processes that are involved in learning. (12) Problems with this view of FLL include the fact that imitation does not help the learner in real-life situations. (13) Lightbown & Spada (2006, 14) confidently declare that "imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of the forms created by children." (14) The objectives of second language learning are not necessarily entirely determined by native language competence (Stern 1983, 30). (15) As for reinforcement, "unfortunately this view of learning receives little support from the available evidence" (Clark & Clark 1977, 336), for the parents only correct the sample structures, and complex structures are occasionally corrected. (16) Many of the foreign language learning processes are too complex; in addition, there are intervening variables which cannot be observed between the stimulus and response process during learning. This is solid evidence signalling that language acquisition cannot take place through habit formation. If language learners are torn between the stimulus and response chain, in short a learning process, this makes the skill too complicated to be learned in such a matter. (17) “[B]ehaviorism undermined the role of mental processes and viewed learning as the ability to inductively discover patterns of rule-governed behavior from the examples provided to the learner by his or her environment” (Johnson 2004, 18). (18) Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991, 266) consider that S-R models offer “little promises as explanations of SLA, except for perhaps pronunciation and the rote-memorization of formulae.”

144

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

The principles given above create certain major flaws in this theory, since memorizing alone is not adequate to acquire a language or a second language. The problems don't end here, however. The stories of Genie, Isabelle, Chelsea and Victor point to a fact— these are cases of children who, because of abandonment or neglect, had little or no contact with other human beings and never quite developed their mother tongue. The fact here is that there are likely to be critical periods during which language acquisition is possible, and after which language acquisition becomes highly unlikely, if not impossible. This notion is generally accepted in one form or another by most linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists and anthropologists. All of these criticisms do not square with imitation theory because it is an emerging skill. The habit formation has to be built before it seems necessary.

Relations of Imitation Theory to Foreign Language Learning First and second language acquisition processes are similar to each other in many ways. We can use our knowledge and observation about how children learn language L1 and L2 together in education. Although there are many similarities in these two processes, there are also some important differences. Some basic theories are advanced to describe how language is acquired, learned and taught. The Behaviorist Theory, Mentalist theory (Innatism), Rationalist theory (otherwise called Cognitive theory) and Interactionism are some of these theories. Of these, the Behaviorist and Mentalist theories are mainly applicable to the acquisition of native languages, while the Rationalist Theory and Interactionism can account for foreign language acquisition. Yet, it must be noted that these four fundamental theories of language acquisition cannot be totally divorced from each other because they are very much complementary. A person learning an L2 starts with the habits formed in the L1, and these habits would interfere with the new ones needed for the L2. That is why behaviourism was often linked to the Contrastive Analysis (CAH) between the L1 and the target language and Universal Grammar (UG). If there are similarities between L1 and L2, the learner will acquire targetlanguage structures with ease; where there are differences, the learner will have difficulties which may be predicted. Similarities of micro-and macrolevel language structures trigger positive transfer. This is definitely a result of similarities between the L1 and the L2, because habits used in the L1 can easily be transferred to the L2. On the other hand, negative transfer is caused by differences between the L1 and the L2, because a great majority

Mehmet Demirezen

145

of errors result from using habits from the L1 in the L2.

The Behaviorist Basis of Imitation Theory The Behaviorist Approach views language acquisition as habit formation. In L1 acquisition, interaction being a cornerstone of second language pedagogy, the motherese, fatherese and otherese connections around the children provide them with the input of language upon which they labour continuously. As Lantolf & Thorne (2006, 166) gloss it: "Imitation is the process through which socioculturally constructed forms of mediation are internalized." In other words, the transition from skill building to regulation of utterances is engineered by imitation. In the realm of L2 learning in relation to imitation, the teacher provides new language stimuli, using listen and repeat sessions with a variety of exercises. Learners respond by imitation, and the teacher offers feedback and gives appropriate error corrections which reinforce appropriate responses. Imitation is accompanied by repetition, which must be in appropriate doses. As Swain et al. (2011, 58) point out, the notion of imitation must be far from mindless parroting. The basic idea in Imitation Theory, then, indicates that children learn to speak like adults because they are taught to do so by being praised via reinforcement and reward for saying the speech utterances correctly. Thus, they become fluent speakers of their native languages within three years, a relatively short period, and this is what is called a puzzle. At the same time, in the process of being exposed to these treatments, they are helped because parents "correct" them when they make mistakes. Yet, it must be noted that speech is a complex activity requiring great muscular coordination, and little kids are simply inept at production which boils down to meaning that they make errors in words, phrases and clauses, but they may still be simply memorizing some of these utterances.

Contrastive Analysis (CAH) and Imitation Theory CAH has some criticisms. Firstly, though a learner’s L1 influences the acquisition of an L2, researchers have found that L2 learners do not make all the errors predicted by the CAH. Secondly, some errors are similar across learners from a variety of L1 backgrounds (e.g. third person singular forms like he/she; [Lj, ð] sounds; the use of the present perfect tense; the relative clauses, articles [a, an, the]), all of which are potential error establishers if the target language does not have the same typology with the L1. Still it must be borne in mind that the L1 influence may not

146

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

simply be a matter of the transfer of habits. By the 1970s, many researchers were convinced that Behaviorism and the CAH were inadequate explanations for FLL, ELT and SLA.

Universal Grammar Theory (UG) and Imitation Theory Although Chomsky is not concerned with ELT and SLA, his supporters try to unearth the secrets of SLA in the light of his Universal Grammar (UG) Theory, which claims that L1 is an innate human endowment. In fact, UG in relation to second language development offers one of the best perspectives to understand FLL, ELT and SLA. There are similarities and differences among languages, and these are common to all languages of the world. These commonalities are called language universals (Horwitz 2008). If there are differences between languages, they are parameters. The nature and availability of UG are the same in L1 and L2 acquisition because children are born with a brain system that has universal aspects of languages, and this system is called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). UG may be present and available to L2 learners, including children and grown-ups, but its exact nature has been influenced by the prior acquisition of the first language. In addition, connectionists suggest that learners gradually build up their knowledge of language through exposure to the thousands of instances of the linguistic features they hear or see. Nativists believe that children are born with LAD, but Behaviorists believe that children learn all the aspects of languages by practice, repetition and reinforcement, which paves the way for habituation. According to UG, students may need different types of exercises or activities in class depending on their L1, which have different marked features that can lead them towards erroneous learning, which, in the long run, brings in fossilization. According to the universal grammar theory, learners should be made aware of the differences between L1 and L2 during the process of error correction. Teachers should correct errors in the most appropriate ways. Even the UG is not perfect. As Mitchel & Myles (2004, 94) remind us, “the Universal Grammar approach is only interested in the learner as a processor of a mind that contains language” and not as a social being.

Krashen’s Natural Approach and Imitation Theory Innatism firstly developed by Chomsky and further elaborated by Krashen’s “monitor model” (1982) attempts to explain the facts of

Mehmet Demirezen

147

language learning. Again, the natural order hypothesis of Krashen demonstrates that L2 learners acquire the features of the target language (TL) in predictable sequences. The language features that are easiest to state (and thus to “learn”) are not necessarily the first to be acquired. The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis developed by Krashen insists that there are two ways for adult learners to develop L2: acquisition and learning. In terms of acquisition, we unconsciously acquire as we are exposed to samples of the L2 that are meaningful. In terms of learning, we learn L2 consciously by a process of study and attention to form and rule learning. Learning cannot turn into acquisition. In other words, we cannot turn explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge. For Krashen, acquisition is more important than learning. He states that a learner can be successful by lowering the affective filter and using opportunities for listening and reading at an appropriate level (i+1). Krashen (2004), in his comprehension hypothesis, emphasizes the mental process as responsible for acquisition. Similarly, according to Krashen (2004, 1) the Comprehension Hypothesis is closely related to other Hypotheses by referring to subconscious acquisition, not conscious learning. If the language acquirers are given the comprehensible input appropriately, the emergence of grammatical structure comes in a predictable order. Comprehension hypothesis (Krashen 2004) emphasizes that the mental processes are responsible for acquisition. A strong affective filter, due to high anxiety and exam fears, will prevent input from reaching those parts of the brain that promote language acquisition. Since Krashen’s model (1978; 1985) lacks research evidence, Cook (1993, 65–6) points out that “it [Krashen’s model] makes sense in its own terms but is not verifiable.”

Merits of Imitation It cannot be denied that there must be a certain amount of imitation, repetition and reinforcement in language acquisition. In fact, children are born appliers of the mimicry-memorization method. The following traits of imitation are defendable: (1) Imitation is a fundamental establisher of skills. (2) Imitation requires repetition practice, which leads to habit formation. (3) Practice should be based on repetition and memorization so that learners can make habit formations; the more learners repeat the forms of L2, the better they will learn.

148

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

(4) Vygotsky, in Thought and Language (1986, 188), states: "In learning to speak, as in learning school subjects, imitation is indispensable." It must be noted that Vygotsky differentiated imitation from automatic copying. (5) In Vygotsky’s view, imitation is a potentially transformative mechanism that is applied consciously and is goal-directed. (6) Bakhtin’s (1981, 428) claim that to make an utterance is to "appropriate the words of others and populate them with one’s own intentions." (7) Imitation is a potential form of plagiarism in which the child puts words and word groups together in a cut-and-paste fashion up to the age of three. (8) Imitation is practically useful if it is applied creatively in small doses and in proper places at proper times. (9) Imitation has a matched-dependent behaviour as a submechanism (Kymissis & Poulson 1990, 118). It corresponds to the teacher's “listen and repeat instructions” and exhortations in the foreign language learning process. (10) If there is no imitation, no true learning can take place; it is true that most second-language teaching today makes extensive use of imitation reinforced by repetition of one type or another. In general, the development of the theories of imitation has followed the development of theories of learning, so that the history of imitation reflects in part the history of learning theory (Kymissis & Poulson 1990, 113). It must be noted that no language learning skill can be mastered without the practice of adequate doses of imitation. No language behaviour can emerge without imitation. Simply, the imitation theory basically states that children learn grammar in small steps by imitating the words and sentences of their language, and within this procedure they imprint the imitated material to their mental dictionaries up to the age of three.

Conclusion Freeman (1997, 141) clearly states that SLA is a chaotic and very complex process. Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991, 227) indicate that “at least forty ‘theories’ of SLA have been proposed,” and it is my contention that none of these attempts to explain SLA present a thorough explanation for the phenomenon. There is not yet agreement on a “complete” theory of second language acquisition. Apparently, behaviourism has its shortcomings,

Mehmet Demirezen

149

but it cannot be denied that the learning process is for the most part a behaviouristic processing, a verbal behaviour. In the field of child language acquisition, it is not totally right to claim that parents never attempt to correct their children's grammar. When they do, even though there is little evidence that this has any great effect on the language development of the child, it is still there as the skill or habit builder up to the age of three. Repetition may lead the way to memorization. Young children under three do not speak in fully formed sentences because speech is a complex activity requiring great muscular coordination, and little kids are simply inept at production. They activate one hundred muscles of speech year by year, and that is why they have an affinity towards simply memorizing. How can an acquired skill be improved if it is not established as a habit? Is it true that children seem determined to continue to produce incorrect forms in spite of correction from adults? And when adults insist on trying to make the child "do it right" do they totally ignore it? Do they not produce many things that are not encountered in the adult grammar? Do they not produce utterances that are not produced by adults? This means that they are also creative in language use to some extent. And yet, language acquisition is not simply learnt through reinforcement and imitation, as Skinner (1957) would suggest. In language teaching, behaviourism establishes the basic background of exercises and testing, either oral or written, in viewing language as stimulus and response. In addition, it has given, for the first time in the history of foreign language learning, ELT, and SLA in the 1950s, a great deal of insight into the recognition of the use of controlled observation to discover the directions of foreign language learning behaviour. It has made the field of foreign language teaching an industry. It has exerted, like a foreign language teaching machine, a great impact by influencing many teaching methods in the area of language teaching. For example, it has made fundamental contributions to the birth of the Stimulus-Response Theory, Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis, Audiolingual Method, Total Physical Response, and the Silent Way, which embody certain very clear-cut traits of the behaviourist view of language. In addition, British Structuralism has created the theory of language called Situational Language Teaching. In a word, the Behaviorist Theory aims at discovering behavioural justifications for planning and designing language teaching lessons in certain ways. It must not be forgotten that it has given a push for the creation of empiricist language learning which became very fashionable in the USA and Europe. It also gave proof for the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis, first put forward by Lenneberg in 1964,

150

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

and its final shape in 1967. The cases of Genie, Isabelle, Chelsea and the wolf child Victor lend some solid support in favour of Imitation Theory, Reinforcement Theory, and Analogy Theory in relation to Marcov’s Processes and Skinner’s claims on operant conditioning. Nobody can say that Imitation theory has no effect on learning, but its effect is partly on learning. All of these theories help to describe only some aspects of first and second language acquisition. Not even two or three of these theories are able to adequately, collectively and wholly encompass the complexity and chaotic state of language acquisition Yet it must be noted that foreign language learning is still a matter of conditioning by means of imitation, practice, reinforcement and habituation to a certain extent. If imitation is fundamental to first language acquisition, it is naturally so for foreign language learning. If the consequence of the imitated language behaviour is negative, one does not necessarily repeat the behaviour, which may require error correction. If the response is positive, one repeats the behaviour. All of the theories mentioned in this article build on each other. As Pinker (1994) indicates, imitation theory seems not to be an intuitively appealing theory since languages are not mainly and totally learned through imitation. In other words, learning languages, neither L1 nor L2, nor foreign languages, does not take place solely and totally through imitation. Nobody can deny that imitation, made within adequate doses, supported by a creatively designed appropriate repetition practice makes for perfect skill building, which happens to be the fundamental prior basis for the mastery over the learned or acquired language skills.

References Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bloom, L. M. 1974. "Imitations in Language Development: If, When, and Why." Cognitive Psychology 380–420. Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Clark, H. & E. Clark. 1977. Language and Psychology: an Introduction to Psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich. Chomsky, Noam. “Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner.” Language 35 (1959): 26–58. Chomsky, N. 1976. Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon. —. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origins, and Use. New York: Praeger. Cooter, D. R. & Reutzel, R. B. 2004. Teaching Children to Read: Putting

Mehmet Demirezen

151

the Pieces Together. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Cook, V. 1993. Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Dale, P. S. 1976. Language Development: Structure and Function (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Ellis, R. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horwitz, E. K. 2008. Becoming a Language Teacher: A Practical Guide to Second Language Learning and Teaching. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Johnson, M. 2004. A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition. New York: New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. Krashen, S. D. 1978. "The Monitor Model for Second Language Acquisition." In Second-language Acquisition & Foreign Language Teaching, ed. R. C. Gingras, 1–26. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics. —. 1985. The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. London and New York, Longman. —. 2004. "Applying the Comprehension Hypothesis: Some Suggestions." Paper presented at 13th International Symposium and Book Fair on Language Teaching (English Teachers Association of the Republic of China), Taipei, Taiwan, November 13. http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/index Kymisis, E. & C. L. Paulson. 1990. "The History of Imitation in Learning Theory: the Language Acquisition Process." Journal of Analysis of Experimental Behavior 54: 113–127. Lantolf, J. P. & S. L. Thorne. 2006. Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. 1997. "Chaos/Complexity Science and Second Language Acquisition." Applied Linguistics 18: 141–65. Larsen-Freeman, D. & L. Cameron.2008.Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenneberg, E. H. 1967. Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley. Lightbown, P. M. & N. Spada. 2006. How Languages are Learned (3rd Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, R. & F. Myles. 2004. Second Language Learning Theories (2nd Ed). London: Arnold. Palermo, D. S. 1978. Psychology of Language. Dallas: Scott, Foresman and Co.

152

Language Acquisition, Imitation Theory, Foreign Language Learning

Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper Collins. Richards, J. C., J. Platt & H. Platt. 1992. Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Essex: Group UK Limited. Rivers, M. W. 1968. Teaching Foreign Language Skills. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Skinner, F. B. 1953. Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Free Press. Stern, H. H. 1983. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swain, M., P. Kinnear & L. Steinman. 2011. Sociocultural Theory in Second Language Education: An Introduction through Narratives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Trask, R. L. 1998. Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. London: Routledge —. 1999b. Language: The Basics (2nd ed.).London: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. 1986. Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

FROM STUDENT TEACHER TO NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHER: A FOLLOW-UP STUDY ON EFL TEACHER DILEMMAS NESE CABAROGLU

Introduction As a teacher, educator and researcher of teacher education, I have been grappling with a variety of challenging questions: How does one learn to teach? Why do student teachers revert to conventional forms of teaching? Why do they fail to put into practice what they have been taught? How can university-based coursework be made relevant to practice? What happens in their first year of teaching? Do they completely give up on what they learned when they become teachers? What do they think about their university-based learning? Among these questions, the most central one is concerned with the so-called theory-practice gap: Do they feel that there are gaps between what they learned at university and what they experience as student teachers/teachers? If so, where are these gaps? In line with this concern, the present study is a follow-up study on learning and developing into a teacher of English teachers. The concept of dilemma has been used as a framework to disclose teacher learning and thinking, and to identify the areas where participants of the study felt there were gaps.

Conceptions of Learning to Teach Perhaps one subject over which researchers studying the learning to teach phenomena unanimously agree is that teacher training is complicated. The complexity of teaching is often attributed to a variety of internal (e.g. attitudes, beliefs, professional identity) and external (e.g. school context, cultural context) factors. On the long-standing question of how one learns to teach, Feiman-Nemser (2008, 698) states that “learning to teach extends beyond the boundaries of formal teacher education” and

154

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

suggests that learning to teach can be conceptualised around four broad themes: “learning to think like a teacher, learning to know like a teacher, learning to feel like a teacher, and learning to act like a teacher.” Learning to think like a teacher concerns the intellectual work of teaching and the influence of cognitivist views on studies of teacher learning. The second theme, learning to know like a teacher, is related to different kinds of knowledge that teachers rely on: knowledge about subject matter, the context in which they teach (i.e. curriculum, classroom, school), how children develop and learn, and knowledge of teaching. Thirdly, learning to feel like a teacher points to the fact that both learning and teaching are deeply personal, involving emotions and identity. Finally, acting like a teacher involves having a repertoire of skills, strategies and the ability to judge what to do, and when and how. As a result of different conceptions of how one learns to teach, researchers have approached the question in focus with a variety of measures and research designs. For example, researchers who conceptualised learning to teach as “learning to think like a teacher” focused on (pre-service) teacher’s beliefs (Peacock 2001; Tillema & Knol 2006; Phipps & Borg 2009); those who viewed learning to teach as learning to feel like a teacher investigated how teachers constructed a professional identity (Smith 2007; Cohen 2008; Trent 2011; Sinner 2012; Schultz & Ravitch 2013)

The Concept of Dilemma as a Research Tool Loughran (2010) portrays teaching as comprising many competing demands, and as inherently problematic. Furthermore, he asserts that teaching is dilemma-based, in which teachers make decisions continuously. As each learner and situation is unique, teachers need to analyze the situation carefully, identify the problem, and find a possible solution by scrutinizing the knowledge they have. However, some situations may pose highly complex ill-defined problems resulting in uncertainties (Jonassen 2000) and dilemmas. Some researchers suggest that those problems or conflicts are not always perceived negatively in a teacher’s work. On the contrary, as Dudley-Marling (1997) suggests, uncertainty is inherent in teaching and is a driving force for teachers to inquire into, reflect upon and use to eventually improve their practice. In a similar vein, dilemmas may represent excellent opportunities to link the theory and practice that result with meaningful understanding (and learning) (McDonald 1992; Korthagen et al. 2001). In addition to potential benefits for the teachers themselves, the concept of dilemma has been proven a useful tool in revealing a teacher’s thinking (Roblin & Margalef 2012) as well as the

Nese Cabaroglu

155

(dis)connections between thinking and the actual teaching practice (Tillema 2004). In this study, teaching dilemmas are conceptualized as “problem spaces created in the minds of teachers as they engage in the practice of teaching” (Talanquer et al. 2007, 401). Teaching dilemmas arise when there is dissatisfaction with consequences of past teaching decisions or anxiety about a decision that is yet to be put into practice in real classroom time. It has been reported that dilemmas are common elements of teachers’ practices, and teaching is sometimes described as dilemma management (Lampert 1985; Lortie 1975, cited in Talanquer et al. 2007).

The Study Through the use of journals and stimulated recall procedures, the present study investigates the dilemmas that English language teacher education (ELT) student teachers faced during their field experiences, and after their graduation (at the end of the first year of teaching). Of particular concern is gaining insight into what happens when student teachers perceive gaps between what they learned on university-based courses and what they observed and experienced during field experiences and actual teaching experiences when working as assigned teachers in schools. In line with these concerns, the present study seeks answers to the following questions: (1) What are the dilemmas (if any) experienced by the student teachers during their transition from university-based learner to schoolbased learner? (2) What are the dilemmas (if any) experienced during their first year as a teacher? (3) Do they perceive any gaps between what they learned at universitybased courses and what they experience as: (a) student teachers during teaching practice? (b) teachers in their first year of teaching? (4) What do the participants of the study perceive as the strengths and weaknesses of the English teacher education programme they graduated from?

Research Design An exploratory and (cross-sectional) qualitative research methodology was adopted in the search for answers to the research questions. The study

156

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

was conducted in two phases. Table 1 below displays the overall research design. Table 1. Overview of research design First phase Second phase

Timing 4th year of the BA programme First year of teaching

Data collection Tool Journals (Throughout teaching practice period) Journal entries from previous year (Stimulated recall) Open-ended questionnaire

Duration 10 weeks 4 weeks

First Phase In the first phase, data from 11 volunteering participants were collected through journals (Appendix A). The journal was developed by the researcher and had an open format with two main guiding questions and four related (sub) questions. In order to get feedback on its content, the journal was given to three lecturers working in the same department as the researcher. Based on the suggestions, some slight changes were made. Then, the journal was piloted with a cohort of ten student teachers for five weeks during their teaching practice, a procedure carried out one year before the actual study was conducted. The journals provided valuable insights into the dilemmas and thinking of student teachers. However, it was observed that participants of the pilot study sometimes confused "dilemmas" with "problems." For this reason, it was decided to discuss the meaning of the concepts of dilemma and problem and their differences in the main study. In the following year before school placements, all fourth-year students were informed of the purpose of the study and what was expected of them. Forty-four student teachers volunteered to participate. However, for the purpose of the present study, data and findings from 11 student teachers out of 44 are provided as only those 11 participants were followed through the first year of their teaching. A meeting was organized with the volunteers. Followed by an explanation of dilemmas, some examples were given to provide further clarification. Then, participants were given blank journal forms (Appendix A) and were asked to note dilemmas related to the incongruence between

Nese Cabaroglu

157

what they learned at university and what they observed and experienced in practice schools. Moreover, they were encouraged to write what they thought about the situation and how they coped with those dilemmas. This phase of the study lasted ten weeks.

Second Phase The second phase of the study was conducted after the participants graduated. After their fifth month of being teachers in the following year, participants were contacted via e-mail and asked if they would be interested in taking part in the second phase of the study, to which they agreed. By this time they were already assigned to teach and had almost completed the first year of their teaching in a variety of contexts (i.e. public, private, primary to high school, city to village). Upon their consent to participate, 11 participants were sent two documents via e-mail; the first included some questions to obtain detailed information about the context in which they were working, while the second included a summary of the journals each participant kept the previous year in the first phase of the study when they were practice teaching. Additionally, they were invited to answer some questions after they read the journal entries/summaries (Appendix B). Within four weeks, participants sent back their replies to the researcher.

Participants As explained, the study was conducted in two phases. During the first, participants were attending a four-year undergraduate programme leading to a BA degree in English Language Teaching (ELT). The first phase of the study lasted ten weeks. By the time the second phase of the study was conducted participants had already been working as teachers in various parts of the country in a variety of school settings for almost a year.

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

158

Table 2. Participants of the second phase of the study Participant

Gender

Age

ST1 ST2 ST3 ST4 ST5 ST6

F F F F M F

23 24 23 23 26 23

ST7 ST8 ST9

F F F

25 26 24

ST10 ST11

M F

26 25

S= State School

Type of School & Level Taught S-P S-P S-P S-P S-P S-P JH&H S-P Private S-P Junior H &H

Teaching Load (Hour per week)

S-H S-J H/ H

P=Primary School

24 33 18 19 28 21

No of Sts in Classes 20 50–55 18–20 30–35 20–45 25–45

27 27 25

45–55 11 56–58

29 24

30 18

J H=Junior High

H=High School

Context The first phase of the study is completed within the context of an English Language Teacher education programme, a four-year undergraduate programme leading to a BA degree and including one year of intensive language proficiency work and such ELT-specific courses as Teaching of Language Skills, ELT methodology, Teaching English to Young Learners, Literature and Language Teaching and Translation. The first three years consist of campus-based courses. The final year includes two school-based practicum courses; student teachers are placed in schools to observe classes (for ten weeks) in the first term, and practice teaching in the second term (for ten weeks). Graduates are employed in Ministry of National Education primary and secondary schools, high schools, universities or private schools. Providing teacher candidates with an understanding of major principles and theories of ELT methodology and helping future teachers improve

Nese Cabaroglu

159

their knowledge and use of materials and techniques are among the overall aims of the programme. In the courses, humanistic and learner-centred approaches to teaching are favoured. Additionally, student teachers are encouraged to make use of those language teaching methods in which the teacher is seen as a facilitator rather than a disseminator of knowledge. Caring for the affective needs of learners as well as their academic needs is emphasized. Participatory and discovery methods are favoured over traditional didacticism. Also, student teachers are encouraged and expected to use the target language (i.e. English) extensively as the medium of instruction.

Data Analysis Data analysis was ordered by the research questions and was conducted in a three-step technique as described by Miles & Huberman (1994). The first step was taking a descriptive stance by being open to code statements and recurring patterns without making any presuppositions (Patton 2002). After multiple readings of the journals and creating codes, statements with similar content from student teachers’ accounts of their experiences were collected. This step included the processes of selecting, focusing, abstracting and transforming the statements in the journals. The second step involved clustering of coded data under the appropriate categories. Next, categories and subcategories were created. In the last step, conclusions were drawn.

Findings Findings from The First Phase: Dilemmas Encountered as a Student Teacher The data from the journals revealed a variety of dilemmas. The dilemmas fell into three main categories: dilemmas about teaching, dilemmas about professional identity, and dilemmas about future career plans. Teaching related Dilemmas: Teaching dilemmas included concerns over medium of instruction, teaching methods and techniques, material choice and use, classroom and behaviour management, lesson planning, and error correction and feedback. Among these, medium of instruction refers to the language of instruction used by the teacher. Out of 11 participants, nine of them expressed their dilemmas over the use of

160

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

English as the medium of instruction. For example, one of the participants said: I was shocked to witness that the teacher I observed did not use the target language [English] at all throughout the lesson; not even a single word was uttered in English, can you believe?! Maybe it is a must to use L1 in class sometimes, but for such a young group of kids [six year-olds] the teacher must use L2 [English]. I don’t know which one is right, whether I should use L2 only, or a combination of L1 and L2. (ST5, Week One)

In a similar manner, ST3 faced the same dilemma as late as the tenth (i.e. last) week of her teaching practice experience: During my education at university, I learnt that I should avoid using the mother tongue [L1] when teaching even if I have to. But this week when I was teaching, I used the target language [L2] mostly. From time to time, I also had to use the mother tongue. Initially, I was really confused whether I was doing the right thing or not. But now I think that it was not wrong to switch between the two languages when necessary. It was useful. My students understood me better. (ST3, Week Ten).

It was evident from the data that the participants coped with this dilemma in two ways. While some preferred to switch between the two languages when they felt it necessary, others favoured the use of the target language (i.e. English) only. Those who used English only used mime and gestures to convey meaning to avoided usage of the mother tongue. Those who opted for a combination of mother tongue and target language justified their decision on the basis that the students in the class “didn’t understand” or “started misbehaving” when the target language was used as the medium of instruction only. Out of 11, 6 of the participants expressed a dilemma over the choice and use of teaching methods and techniques throughout their field experiences (see Table 3 below). Their dilemmas were related to one particular language teaching method: the Grammar Translation Method (GTM). GTM is a teaching method in which reading and writing skills are emphasized over speaking and listening skills. Students’ mother tongue is used often as the medium of instruction, and grammar rules are taught explicitly. In this method, although learners know a great deal about the language, they are unable to use the knowledge to communicate. Participants complained that some of the classroom teachers they observed were not only making use of GTM but also they expected student teachers to use the GTM when teaching. From the first week of field experiences into the sixth week, for example, ST4 was still complaining:

Nese Cabaroglu

161

We are not allowed to teach in the way we want to. They expect us to use GTM, to conduct our lessons without any colourful materials, just to teach grammar. What I don’t understand is, why did we learn all those methods and techniques if we are supposed to use just GTM!

Participants expressed a unanimous disappointment with their observations of the “old, dated” teaching methods, techniques and materials used by the teachers they observed in practice schools. Student teachers reported that they had complete faith in more “modern” teaching methods and techniques which emphasised fluency over accuracy, and teaching of listening and speaking skills as they were taught in universitybased courses, and that they were determined to use them when they became “real” teachers. Another teaching-related dilemma category concerned the choice and use of materials. Three of the participants voiced their disappointments with the teachers whose lessons were entirely based on course books. Due to this observation, participants were caught in the dilemma of whether to use some supporting (e.g. exercise books) or supplementary (e.g. DVDs, pictures) materials when teaching. Additionally, the question of whether to follow the course book strictly or skip and/or adapt some parts of it was a highly controversial topic for three of the participants. Classroom management was another teaching-related dilemma confronted. Two main themes in relation to this category emerged from the data: dilemmas about how to deal with misbehaviours, and how to motivate learners. To exemplify the range of dilemmas that fell into this category, participant ST1, for example, reported having experienced dilemmas about how to maintain control in the classroom (week 2), how to react to those students who say something irrelevant and disturb the peace in class (week 4), how to maintain silence (week 5) and how to involve indifferent students in the lesson (week 9). Additionally, many instances of misbehaviour were reported. The participants did not approve of the strategies used (e.g. shouting, scolding, humiliating, treating students rudely) by the classroom teachers they observed. Very often, student teachers attributed the occurrence of student misbehaviour to such factors as the teachers’ inability to teach, their impatience, aggressiveness or intolerance. Dilemmas revolving around lesson planning were of two types: whether or not to follow the lesson plan prepared and, secondly, whether or not to make lessons plans at all. Although they were greatly encouraged to always prepare lesson plans in the university-based courses, participants expressed their surprise at the observation that teachers in practice schools did not prepare lesson plans and followed the course books closely. This

162

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

contradictory observation presented a new dilemma: “should I prepare a lesson plan or not?” To exemplify: Do I have to prepare a lesson plan as I learned at university (in theory)? Can I do like the teachers I observed (in practice) did? This is my dilemma at the moment. Once my mentor teacher asked me to teach the next lesson. I was not prepared at all. Within 10 minutes during the break, I got prepared. And then I taught. However, I am doubtful as to how efficient my teaching was … On the other hand, I saw that one could teach without a lesson plan as well. (ST6, Week Three)

Another participant faced the dilemma of whether to follow the lesson plan she prepared or abandon it completely due to timing problems in her teaching: We learned [at university] that variety is important. For this reason, I included a variety of activities in my lesson plan but when teaching, I realized that time would not be enough to do them all in the lesson. Because of the time problem, I was caught up in the dilemma of whether to follow my lesson plan regardless of the time left or to skip some activities. I realised that I should be careful when planning my lesson next time. (ST10, Week Eight)

Dilemmas about Professional Identity: This category refers to the dilemmas that arose during the transition from student role to that of a teacher. Feeling like teacher versus being treated as a student, and developing/using one’s own teaching style or adopting a teaching style “to please” the mentor teacher (or teacher from university), were two examples of dilemmas in this category. To exemplify: In one of the classes I teach, there is a boy who is very clever but incredibly naughty. So today, when I was teaching he misbehaved and disrupted others. Before I did or said anything, my mentor called this boy and said something I didn’t hear. The boy got very upset. I felt very bad. I was the teacher, I was in charge but he interfered. I feel so distressed. (ST9, Week Five)

It was evident that both ST4 and ST9 had been trying to strike a happy medium to please teachers from both schools and university. Dilemmas about Future Career Plans: Due to the difficulties and problems encountered, two of the participants were caught in the following dilemma: “Do I really want to be a teacher?” ST4 explained:

Nese Cabaroglu

163

With every passing day in the practice school, I am gradually withdrawing from the idea of becoming a teacher. We are not doing anything useful here. If only they let us teach in the way we wanted to … We are trapped between the expectations of teachers and sanctions by the Ministry of Education. The recommended textbooks, teaching English only to help students pass some exams, the teaching methods used by teachers, and books selected and advocated by the ministry … all of these we witnessed here are incongruent with the espoused theories and ideas we learned at university. (ST4, Week Six)

The data show that two of the participants (ST4 and ST9) in particular were extremely disillusioned with their field experiences due to the challenges they faced, so much so that they had started questioning whether they were on the right career path. Participants reported that they shared their dilemmas with their fellow student teachers, mentors or university teachers.

Findings from the second phase: dilemmas encountered in the first year of teaching In the second phase of the study, data were collected from the participants who were by then in the first year of their teaching career. In addition to a form which included some questions about participants’ current work context, copies of the journals they kept in the previous year when attending the last year of the teacher education programme, along with a summary of the dilemmas they reported, had been sent out. At this stage of the study, it was also of interest to find out whether the dilemmas they experienced the previous year still continued, and whether they were experiencing new or different dilemmas. Finally, they were invited to evaluate the programme they graduated from in terms of its weaknesses and strengths, and how it contributed to their learning to teach process. Table 3 below displays the range of dilemmas encountered by the participants.

Type of Dilemma Medium of instruction Teaching Method & Techniques Materials: Choice & Use Behaviour Management Lesson Plans Professional Identity Future Career Plans

ST1

+

+

ST2 +

+

+

ST3 +

ST4 +

+

+

+

+ +

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

ST5

Table 3. Overview of dilemmas encountered in two phases of the study

ST6

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

+

ST7

164

1st phase (Student Teacher)

ST8 +

+

ST9 +

+

+

ST10 +

+

+

ST11



2nd Phase (Newly Assigned Teacher)

Medium of instruction Teaching Method & Techniques Materials: Choice & Use Behaviour Management Lesson Plans Professional Identity Future Career Plans

+

+

+

+

+

+ +

+

+

+

+

+

+

Nese Cabaroglu

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+ +

+

+

+

+

165

166

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

Teaching related dilemmas: As seen in Table 3, the decision of choosing which language (i.e. mother tongue [L1] or English [L2]) to use as the medium of instruction was the greatest central dilemma that participants faced when in their last year of education during their field experiences. Data from stimulated recall procedures revealed that the same dilemma of medium of instruction continued to be the greatest problem for the participants in their first year of teaching. The decision of whether to use L2 only or a combination of both did not seem to preoccupy the three of them (ST1, ST4 and ST5) anymore. ST4 explained: Last year in our teaching practice school, the biggest problem for me was to observe teachers who were speaking Turkish most of the time. We were taught that English must be taught for communication and that we should not teach grammar deductively. As a teacher who has been working for almost two academic years, I regret to say that what I learned at university-based courses and what I am experiencing now do not overlap at all. Reality is so much different. More and more I resemble the teachers I’ve criticized last year. I know that I should speak English in the classroom. However, when I do my students don’t understand me, they don’t take me seriously. This is so demotivating.

For ST9, on the other hand, medium of instruction was a new dilemma: When I read my journals from last year, I realize that I had made unfair criticisms of the teachers I observed in the practice school—I was so naïve then. I now think that what is taught at university does not intersect with realities in the classrooms. Whenever I attempt to speak English, students do not understand and make fun of me. What’s more, the school principal told me that the students were not successful in the last SBS (general proficiency test for primary schools). I am expected to teach the present perfect continuous tense to the 56 students who cannot even express themselves by forming simple sentences with am-is-are. On top of it, I have to achieve this by using a terrible course book. I feel the pricks of conscience but I cannot speak English when teaching English. This is my greatest dilemma.

As the excerpt shows, this particular participant was quite disillusioned by the realities of the classroom. When referring to her university-based education, she used such terms as “utopic,” “ideal,” “too theoretical,” “unrealistic” and “too academic” throughout the stimulate recall form. The number of participants who experienced dilemmas over teaching methods and techniques declined to five in the first year of teaching. For only one of them (ST3), this was a new type of dilemma:

Nese Cabaroglu

167

Last year, I was mostly concerned with the use of English as the medium of instruction whereas this year, on top of this, I’m facing the dilemma of the language teaching method to use. I’d like to use mostly communicative teaching techniques and activities but they don’t work. I end up using the GTM.

The dilemma about material choice and use was a new type of dilemma that ST1 encountered in her first year of teaching. She said: At university, we were always encouraged to integrate technology into our teaching. In microteaching sessions we benefited from technological equipment assuming that we would find them in the schools where we would teach when we became teachers. Alas, we were wrong! I was never taught how to teach in a bare classroom, how to ask students—who cannot afford them—to bring in extra materials for activities.

ST1 further explained that she coped with this dilemma by trying to compensate for the lack of technological equipment. ST5, who worked in a state school in a remote part of the country, reported that he faced dilemmas when dealing with student misbehaviour. He said they knew how to cope with student misbehaviour “in theory.” Unfortunately, he had to employ some strategies that he did not approve of. He said: Some students misbehave continuously no matter what I do. I end up sending them outside the classroom—ironically, this is exactly the same strategy that my mentor teacher had used and I had strongly criticized her last year.

Dilemmas over lesson planning continued to preoccupy some participants. ST6, for example, indicated that she did not write down a lesson plan on paper. Although she felt guilty, she thought that it was not necessary to put it on paper; the important thing was to be prepared to teach and to know what to do in the lesson. Dilemmas about Professional Identity: ST9, who had faced a dilemma about whether to adopt a teaching style to please her mentor or to develop a teaching style of her own during field experiences at university, continued to face the same dilemma (i.e. about professional identity), only the nature of the dilemma was different: I strongly favour the humanistic approach; I can never ever use corporal punishment or insult a student. On the other hand, none of the coping strategies I used to deal with student misbehaviour worked. There is no strategy that I haven’t tried out. When I talk about this with the other

168

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher teachers, they say that I need to be tougher. I don’t want to teach in a style that doesn’t suit me but the style I adopted doesn’t work.

Dilemmas about Future Career Plans: Although the participants at this stage of the study had already chosen their career paths, one participant explained that she did not want to work as an ELT teacher in a state school, and was planning to teach Turkish as a foreign language abroad. Apart from this participant, others seemed to be determined to continue what they were doing. When asked whether they shared their dilemmas with someone, participants explained that they did not. Interestingly, when they were student teachers the previous year, all of these participants had indicated that they had shared their dilemmas with a variety of people such as their fellow student teachers, university teachers or mentors. One of the participants explained why she did not talk with anyone about her dilemmas: There are two reasons why I do not share my dilemmas with anyone. Firstly because there is not someone who is qualified enough to give me solid advice as to how to approach or resolve my dilemmas. Secondly, when one becomes a teacher she loses the traits of receiving opinions or talking about one’s problems in class. This is the result of social pressure: if you are a qualified teacher you are knowledgeable about everything and you should be able to solve your own problems.

Findings from Participants’ Evaluation of Programme Experiences An additional focus of this study was to obtain participants’ opinions about the teacher education programme they graduated from. In relation to this focus, three questions were asked: “To what extent do you think the programme prepared you to teach?”, “In what area(s) do you feel inadequately prepared?” and “Do you feel that there is a gap (or incongruence) between what you are taught at university and what you are experiencing now?” Feedback from 11 participants revealed that only five of them felt positive about the programme and its contribution to their experiences of learning to teach. To exemplify, ST2 said: What I now know about teaching and how I teach have been shaped by what I learned at university. In this sense, I am satisfied with the education given.

Nese Cabaroglu

169

The other four echoed similar views. On the other hand, the remaining six participants thought that the learning experiences provided by the programme were “too theoretical”, “prepared to teach under ideal conditions”, “useful for teaching in private schools because of better facilities,” “based on imaginary teaching conditions” and therefore were not “realistic.” Despite negative criticisms levelled against the programme, however, participants all agreed that the programme was most useful in providing theoretical understanding and knowledge but that the programme failed in equipping them with the necessary skills to cope with difficulties and challenges of real classrooms: What I learned at university was how to teach in normal conditions— where there are no problems, where there are students who are willing to learn in fully equipped classrooms … They [teachers at the university] need to offer problem solving scenarios and encourage teacher candidates to think about possible solutions. Additionally, we need longer periods of school practice in a variety of school settings every year spread throughout the programme. (ST4)

In opposition to the rest of the group, one particular participant thought: Our department was very successful in preparing us to teach. When I look back, we were really well prepared both in terms of theory and practice in those years at university … The most important thing is that we are taught how to adapt our teaching to accommodate problems. It would be a big mistake to expect that university education should provide us with all the necessary practical information and education. (ST11)

A unanimously verbalized suggestion was to lengthen the duration of field experiences and to expose teacher candidates to the realities of classrooms earlier in their education.

Discussion When they were student teachers (in the first phase of the study), participants encountered a variety of dilemmas which fell into three main categories: teaching, professional identity and future career plans. Dilemmas over teaching were pervasive, and dilemma over medium of instruction within this category, in particular, was experienced by 9 participants out of 11. Data from the journals and stimulated recall procedures revealed that even if the teaching contexts and roles changed (i.e. from that of student

170

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

teacher to teacher), some of the dilemmas continued to haunt some of the participants through their first year. For some, new types of dilemmas emerged while the old ones evolved or lost their importance in these new teaching contexts. At this stage of their careers, participants coped with their teaching related dilemmas in a variety of ways. While trying to adhere to what they were taught and/or advised at the university, they accommodated their teaching preferences to the teaching contexts. One participant in particular expressed that he had “changed temporarily” and was teaching in a way completely opposite to what he believed was right and what the teacher education programme advocated. It emerged that when the daily demands of students, curriculum and the social context they worked in clashed with their fresh idealism, participants felt overwhelmed. It was evident from the data that although participants valued the learning experiences provided in the university-based courses, at times they felt that there was a mismatch between those learning experiences and what they experienced as teachers. Participants felt that they were not adequately prepared to deal with unexpected problems and expressed a wish to be taught strategies for dealing with unexpected problems rather than being taught about how to teach in “ideal conditions,” as well as having prolonged and varied field experiences spread throughout the programme.

Conclusion Teaching involves uncertainty (Lortie 1975; Schoen 1983) which causes anxiety and worry for student and novice teachers in particular (Floden & Clark 1988), the types of feelings participants of the present study experienced both when they were student teachers in their last year at university and after their graduation in their first year of teaching. This uncertainty in teaching may arise because a teacher lacks either the necessary knowledge or skills to deal with a particular problem. The first type of uncertainty (i.e. lack of knowledge) concerns being able to answer the question “What is true?” (Floden & Clark 1988). The second type, uncertainty about how to act, is related to the question “What should I do?” Each source of uncertainty requires a different course of action. In relation to this, participants of the study felt that they were adequately prepared in dealing with this aspect of uncertainty in their teaching (i.e. “What is true?”) and that the education they received provided the necessary theoretical background. Data suggest that they felt inadequately prepared to deal with uncertainty about how to act.

Nese Cabaroglu

171

Floden & Clark (1988) suggest that one responsibility of the teacher education programmes may be to help teacher candidates become aware of the sources of their uncertainties. Early encounters with and reflecting on the ill-defined dilemmas of practice are essential (Schoen 2005). Le Maistre & Pare (2010) also emphasise the importance of problem-based learning. Interestingly, participants in the study explained that future teachers should be prepared by offering them problem cases to work on. The study has several implications for research, teaching and learning. First of all, in relation to the implications for research, the concept of dilemma made it possible to uncover the potential areas of conflict, to understand why and where participants felt there was a poor fit between what they learned about teaching at university and what they experienced in the actual practice of teaching within school contexts. Dilemmas are, in a way, as Rubdy (2000, 417) puts it, “lenses” that help to “uncover potential areas of conflict, or the tension between social, political, cultural, or ideological factors of the context and the educational goals and philosophy that guide and shape professional action.” Furthermore, dilemma analysis sheds light on “why there may be a poor fit between different positions, views, perspectives, etc., and a particular context of language teaching.” The study also has several implications for my own practice as a teacher educator. First, it is encouraging to see that our graduates do appreciate and benefit from the learning experiences provided by the university-based courses. Over the years, the feedback from our graduates shows that they feel unprepared to deal with unexpected problems in teaching. They see the programme as preparing for teaching in “ideal conditions,” as the findings of the present study also revealed. For this reason, they characterise it as being “too theoretical,” “unrealistic” or “incongruent with practice.” These criticisms often lead me to question the learning experiences I design as well as pondering “How can the learning experiences in the course become better linked to practice?”, or in more fashionable terms, “How can I provide learning experiences that help bridge the everlasting theory and practice gap?” Additionally, I find the terms “theory,” “practice” and “gap” rather confusing. The data from the participants shed some light on these questions and concepts; the “gap” participants of the present study talk about concerns over the “uncertainty” in teaching. This finding signifies the importance of providing learning opportunities that require the use of problem solving skills to cope with uncertainties in one’s teaching. One immediate implication of this finding is the restructuring of one of the courses taught in the last year during field experiences in the programme. The Evaluation of Teaching Practice

172

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

course is now designed so as to accommodate the dilemmas teacher candidates face during their field experiences. Each student teacher is encouraged to identify his/her own dilemma and work on it throughout the school practice. The course requires completion of a series of weekly tasks which leads teacher candidates to conduct action research to resolve their dilemmas. The candidates share their reflections, in written form, with the course tutor and other fellow students and they exchange opinions through an online collaborative tool (i.e. Google Docs).

References Cohen, J. L. 2008. “‘That’s not Treating you as a Professional’: Teachers Constructing Complex Professional Identities through Talk.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 14 (2): 79–93. Dudley-Marling, C. 1997. Living with Uncertainty: the Messy Reality of Classroom Practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman. Feiman-Nemser, F. 2008. “How do Teachers Learn to Teach?” In Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (3rd Ed.), eds M. Cochran-Smith, S. FeimanNemser, D. J. McIntryre & K. E. Demers, 697–705. London: Routledge. Floden, R. E., & C. M. Clark. 1988. “Preparing Teachers for Uncertainty.” Teachers College Record 89 (4): 504–524. Jonassen, D. H. 2000. “Toward a Design Theory of Problem Solving.” Educational Technology: Research and Development 45 (1): 656–694. Korthagen, F. A. J., J. P. A. M. Kessels, B. Koster, B. Lagerwerf & T. Wubbles. 2001. Linking Practice and Theory: the Pedagogy of Realistic Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Le Maistre, C., & A. Pare. 2010. “Whatever it Takes: how Beginning Teachers Learn to Survive.” Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (3): 559–564. Lortie, D. 1975. Schoolteacher: a Sociological Study. Chicago, IL: UCP. Loughran, J. 2010. What do Expert Teachers do? London: Routledge. McDonald, J. P. 1992. Teaching: Making Sense of an Uncertain Craft. NY: Teachers College. Miles, M. B., & A. M. Huberman. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis (2nd Ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Peacock, M. 2001. “Pre-Service ESL Teachers’ Beliefs about Second Language Learning: a Longitudinal Study.” System 29 (2): 177–195.

Nese Cabaroglu

173

Phipps, S. & S. Borg. 2009. “Exploring Tensions between Teachers’ Grammar Teaching Beliefs and Practices.” System 37 (3): 380–390. Roblin, N. P. & L. Margalef. 2013. “Learning from Dilemmas: Teacher Professional Development through Collaborative Action and Reflection.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 19 (1): 18– 32. Rubdy, R. 2000. “Dilemmas in ELT: Seeds of Discontent or Sources of Transformation?” System 28 (3): 403–418. Schoen, D. A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: how Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Schoen, L. 2005. “Learning to Make Sense of the Dilemmas of Teaching Practice: an Exploration of Pre-Service Teachers’ Development of Reflective Judgment.” Unpublished Phd Thesis. Boston College, Lync Graduate School of Education, USA. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED506804.pdf (accessed August 6, 2013). Schultz, K., & S. M. Ravitch. 2013. “Narratives of Learning to Teach: taking on professional identities.” Journal of Teacher Education 64 (1): 35–46. Sinner, A. 2012. “Transitioning to Teacher: Uncertainty as a Game of Dramatic Hats.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 18 (5): 601–613. Smith, R. G. 2007. “Developing Professional Identities and Knowledge: Becoming Primary Teachers.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 13 (4): 377–397. Tillema, H. H. 2004. “The Dilemma of Teacher Educators: Building Actual Teaching on Conceptions of Learning to Teach.” Teaching Education 15 (3): 277–291. Tillema, H. H. & W. E. Knol. 2006. “Collaborative Planning by Teacher Educators to Promote Belief Change in their Students.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 3 (1): 29–45. Trent, J. 2011. “‘Four Years on, I’m Ready to Teach’: Teacher Education and the Construction of Teacher Identities.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 17 (5): 529–543.

174

From Student Teacher to Newly Qualified Teacher

Appendix A. Student Teacher Journal STUDENT TEACHER JOURNAL (Week ….. )

1. When you were observing the teacher (or) when you were teaching today, did you observe/do anything that contradicted what you were taught in the courses at the university? What was it? 2. Did you face any dilemma today during your observations OR teaching? a) (If yes) What was the dilemma? Please explain: b) What did you think about this dilemma? c) What did you do? Did you try to resolve the dilemma? How? (OR: how are you planning to resolve this dilemma?): d) Did you share this dilemma with anyone? (If yes, with whom?)

Nese Cabaroglu

175

Appendix B. Follow up Questions ‡ƒ”ǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤǤ  Ž‡ƒ•‡”‡ƒ†–Š‡Œ‘—”ƒŽ‡–”‹‡•›‘—•Šƒ”‡†™‹–Š‡†—”‹‰–Š‡ʹͲͲͻȂ ʹͲͳͲ ƒ…ƒ†‡‹… ›‡ƒ”•Ǥ ‡Ž‘™ ƒ”‡ –™‘ †‘…—‡–• ˆ‘” ›‘—ǣ ͳǤ ‘—” Œ‘—”ƒŽ‡–”‹‡•ˆ‘”ƒͳͲǦ™‡‡–‡ƒ…Š‹‰’”ƒ…–‹…‡’‡”‹‘†ʹǤ•—ƒ”› ‘ˆ–Š‡†‹Ž‡ƒ•›‘—‡š’‡”‹‡…‡†Ǥ ˆ›‘—†‘‘–Šƒ˜‡‡‘—‰Š–‹‡–‘‰‘ –Š”‘—‰Š ƒŽŽ –Š‡ Œ‘—”ƒŽ ‡–”‹‡•ǡ ›‘— …ƒ ”‡ƒ† –Š‡ •—ƒ”› ’”‘˜‹†‡†Ǥ ˆ–‡”–Šƒ–ǡ’Ž‡ƒ•‡–”›–‘ƒ•™‡”–Š‡ˆ‘ŽŽ‘™‹‰“—‡•–‹‘•ǣ ͳǤ Šƒ– †‘ ›‘— –Š‹ ƒ„‘—– –Š‡ †‹Ž‡ƒȋ•Ȍ ›‘— ‡š’‡”‹‡…‡† Žƒ•– ›‡ƒ”ǫ ʹǤ ‘ ›‘— •–‹ŽŽ ‡š’‡”‹‡…‡ –Š‡ •ƒ‡ †‹Ž‡ƒȋ•Ȍǫ ˆ ›‡•ǡ ’Ž‡ƒ•‡ ‡š’Žƒ‹Ǥ ͵Ǥ‘›‘—‡š’‡”‹‡…‡†‹ˆˆ‡”‡–‹†•‘ˆ†‹Ž‡ƒ•ǫŠƒ–ƒ”‡–Š‡›ǫ Ž‡ƒ•‡‡š’Žƒ‹ǫ ͶǤ ˆ›‘—”ƒ•™‡”‹•Dz›‡•dz–‘–Š‡“—‡•–‹‘ƒ„‘˜‡ǡ’Ž‡ƒ•‡‡š’Žƒ‹Š‘™ ›‘—…‘’‡™‹–Š–Š‡ǫ ͷǤŠƒ–†‘›‘—–Š‹ƒ„‘—––Š‡’”‘‰”ƒ‡›‘—ƒ––‡†‡†ǫ‘ ›‘— ˆ‡‡Ž –Šƒ– ›‘— ƒ”‡ ƒ†‡“—ƒ–‡Ž› ’”‡’ƒ”‡† –‘ –‡ƒ…Šǫ Š›ǫ Ž‡ƒ•‡ ‡š’Žƒ‹Ǥ ͸Ǥ‘›‘—ˆ‡‡Ž–Šƒ––Š‡”‡‹•ƒ‰ƒ’ȋ‘”‹…‘‰”—‡…‡Ȍ„‡–™‡‡™Šƒ– ›‘—ƒ”‡–ƒ—‰Š–ƒ–—‹˜‡”•‹–›ƒ†™Šƒ–›‘—ƒ”‡‡š’‡”‹‡…‹‰‘™ǫ ͹Ǥ ‘ ›‘— –Š‹ –Šƒ– …Šƒ‰‡• •Š‘—Ž† „‡ ƒ†‡ ‹ –Š‡  ’”‘‰”ƒ‡‹–‡”•‘ˆ…‘—”•‡•ǡ–Š‡‹”…‘–‡–ǡŽ‡‰–Šǡ‡–…Ǥǫ ͺǤ ˆ ›‘—” ƒ•™‡” ‹• Dz›‡•dz –‘ –Š‡ “—‡•–‹‘ ƒ„‘˜‡ǡ ’Ž‡ƒ•‡ ‡š’Žƒ‹ ™Šƒ– ‹† ‘ˆ …Šƒ‰‡• •Š‘—Ž† „‡ ƒ†‡ ‹ ‘”†‡” –‘ „”‹†‰‡ –Š‹• ‰ƒ’ ȋ‘”–‘’”‡’ƒ”‡‘—”•–—†‡–•–‘–‡ƒ…ŠȌǫ

 Šƒ›‘—˜‡”›—…Šˆ‘”›‘—”’ƒ”–‹…‹’ƒ–‹‘‹–Š‡”‡•‡ƒ”…ŠǤ  

CULTURAL SPECIFITIES IN SLOVENIAN AND ITALIAN BUSINESS LETTERS NINA LOVEC

Introduction To successfully teach professionals there must be an interplay of at least two elements. The first must be an explicit knowledge of linguistic and rhetoric aspects of our mother language (in this case Slovenian) and of the foreign language (Italian). The second element is the knowledge of cultural elements. In teaching language for specific purposes the guidelines must be as clear as possible, as today’s students (and tomorrow's professionals) will need to practice all these skills. The present chapter describes Slovenian and Italian business letters, more precisely sales promotion letters, from the point of view of rhetorical strategies and analysis on the pragmatic use of references, mood and modality. The corpora consists of twenty business letters, ten for each language, collected by students and the author. As professional prose is based on clear expression, accurate drafting and composition, it is believed that such an analysis could possibly be helpful in classroom work.

Intercultural Approach Since the 1950s a cross-cultural approach has been used to analyse communication in multicultural settings, developed in response to diplomats' and businessmen's needs of understanding the distinctive features of foreign cultures. Hall (1976) explains in Beyond Culture the concept of “high” and “low” context cultures in the late 1950s. The communication in high context cultures is very ritualised and requires a deep understanding of behavioural patterns as the messages carry little explicit information. Thus, the writer or the speaker alludes and it is the reader or the listener who has to guess the meaning of the information in a given context. On the contrary, low context cultures form explicit messages and contextualize their affirmations to make them immediately clear. Hall

Nina Lovec

177

concludes that English is a low context culture, while Japanese is an example of high context. In a narrower sense, Hinds (1987) categorizes the rhetoric of different cultures and distinguishes between cultures in which the reader has to deduce the meaning of the text and those in which the writer makes an explicit text to the reader. In his terms, English uses a “writer-responsible rhetoric” and Japanese a “reader-responsible rhetoric.” Wierzbicka (2003) researches cross-cultural pragmatics and analyzes speech acts in many languages, proving cultural and linguistic conditioning on cross-cultural interactions. Her work is based on a contrastive analysis of different languages on semantic and pragmatic levels, and therefore she analyzes verbal, lexical and pragmatic meanings. The intercultural approach focuses on understanding one's own culture and on understanding points of view of different cultures and empathising with people from other cultural environments. Contrasting, for example, two linguistic systems (in this case Slovenian and Italian), intercultural awareness helps us to ease the communication flow, realize the differences and overcome mishaps (ýebron 2011). Byram (1997) proposes an integrated framework composed of language, culture and citizenship education to achieve intercultural communicative competence. His concept is based on five orientations: cognitive, evaluative, communicative, action, and comparative orientation. The last includes the knowledge to interpret documents from another culture and relate them to the documents from one's own. The intercultural approach needs to be integrated into classroom practices, especially when teaching languages for specific purposes. In our case, this approach is oriented to students of tourism sciences and applied to teaching how to write and understand business letters in Italian. It is a comparative advantage in business if we know and understand the cultural specificities of our business partners. It is clearly not enough just to translate business letters from one language to another. In tourism, the linguistic confrontation with different cultures is everyday practice and successful communication is the key to a high quality of service.

Genre Theory Genre theory developed in the 1980s (Bhatia 2012) and in the beginning was concerned with its application for pedagogical solutions in teaching LSP. Later, it developed and moved away from classroom application. Researchers like A. Mauranen (1993), C. Vergaro (2004) and V. K. Bhatia (2012) have shown that cultural differences affect discourse genres or, in other words, that cultures structure discourse in different ways.

178

Cultural Specifities in Slovenian and Italian Business Letters

Discourse analysis of different genres is a fertile field in research as many genres like academic and scientific writing, business letters, everyday conversations, mobile phone conversations and many more have already been studied. As Vergaro (2004) points out, genres are a response to social needs and are not made up of formal textual features. Therefore, genres are social activities that take their form from dynamic communicative actions. Bhatia (2012) claims the most important question should be why professionals write the way they do when regarding a certain matter; or, in other words, the main goal of genre analysis is not to find out how genres are written but why they are written the way they are. In the present chapter I will analyse a corpus of Slovenian and Italian business letters to find out if it is possible to see the influence of the specific culture on this kind of writing. It is presumed that the differences will be in the use of rhetoric strategy and on the level of pragmatics (use of mood, modality, reference, expression of politeness). Business communication is one of the most standardized types of communication and differs from other types mostly because it is more specific and has concrete goals. The main goal of business letters, especially of offers, is to persuade the reader to buy the offer presented in the letter. Therefore, the writer tries to adapt the letter to the reader who is the centre of attention. According to Kavþiþ (2002), the business letter must be written in such a way that it is easy to understand and accept for the reader. According to Mauranen (in Vergaro 2004, 184), rhetoric is realized in language through choices and because of this the selections that writers make indicate the rhetorical strategy. In business correspondence, rhetoric determines every linguistic choice. With the analysis of mood, we can distinguish declarative, imperative or interrogative sentences. Modality is concerned with the speaker's assessment or attitude towards the potentiality of a state of affairs. The choice of mood and modality in a text is the base for structuring the interpersonal relationship between the writer and the reader. An important language factor in business letters is politeness, and politeness strategies were analysed by Brown & Levinson in the 1980s (Songcuan 2012). They researched strategies employed to save the hearers’ face (positively or negatively) when face threatening acts are inevitable or desired. They list three variables that determine the weight of these acts: social distance between participants, power relations between participants and weight of the imposition they are negotiating. The interrelation of these three parameters determines the positive (creating closeness) or negative (mitigate possible inconveniency) politeness strategy (Ibid.).

Nina Lovec

179

Analysis The present chapter analyses a small corpora of Slovenian and Italian business letters of sales promotion. The corpora is formed by authentic letters sent from various companies to their potential customers. As already pointed out, a sales promotion letter is a type of business letter, and part of business communication between the seller and the potential buyer. As Vergaro (2004, 188) argues: "Its social role is that of finding a buyer for a commodity or service the seller wants to sell. Of course the buyer is just a potential buyer and the seller has to praise the commodity or service to whet the buyers' appetite and persuade him to respond favourably to the letter." Slovenian and Italian business letters will be analysed according to the following structure originally used by Bhatia (Vergaro 2004, 189): Subject/ opening salutation/ establish credentials/ introduction of the product/ detail the offer/ enhance the offer/ solicit further communication/ end politely/ closing salutation.

Slovenian Sales Promotion letters The majority of Slovenian letters begin with a subject like Predmet (Subject)/ Zadeva (matter)/ Ponudba (offer): Zadeva: Odliþna ponudba za poslovna darila vašega podjetja (Matter: A great choice of business gifts for your company)

As Raso (2011) explains, the subject must carry the main information in the letter combining conciseness and precision. It has two important functions: to define the subject of the letter and to attract the receiver. After the subject there is an opening salutation. In the majority of letters in Slovenian the opening salutation is generated by the word "Spoštovani" (distinguished), in a form depending on the gender and number. Thus, it is possible to find: Spoštovani! (distinguished!) Spoštovani poslovni partner! (distinguished business partner) Spoštovana gospa xy! (distinguished Mrs. XY).

In business letters, opening salutations are used to create solidarity and can be seen as signs of hierarchical difference between the sender and the receiver. As we will see, Italian has a much bigger variety of salutations

180

Cultural Specifities in Slovenian and Italian Business Letters

and a particularity in the use of the title "dottore" if contrastively compared with the use of the word "doktor" in Slovenian. The next step is the establishing of credentials: V zahvalo za zaupanje, ki ste nam ga izkazali z nakupi v iztekajoþem se letu, vam podarjamo praktiþno in uporabno darilo … (In gratitude for the trust you have given us with the purchases over the past year, we donate to you a practical and useful gift …)

According to Vergaro (2004), in English and Italian business letters there are cases in which the product is presented before the credentials are established. Such cases could not be found in the present Slovenian corpora. Moreover, I found many cases in which the step of establishing credentials is omitted. A significant enlargement of corpora would give us the exact picture about this issue. In the present corpora the credentials can be found before the solicitation of further communication in only one case: Že vrsto let se specializiramo za prodajo naših elektronskih merilnih instrumentov, ki zaradi svoje preciznosti in zanesljivosti uživajo ugled doma in po svetu. (Since many years we specialize to sell our electronic measurement instruments, due to their precision and reliable reputation at home and abroad.)

Following the credentials or the opening salutation, the product is presented: Vsi se že veselimo prihajajoþega veselega decembra, za vam pevci XY zbora v sodelovanju z najbolj atraktivno tolkalno skupino XYZ s ponosom predstavljamo novo božiþno zgošþenko … (We are all looking forward to the upcoming happy December and because of this singers of XY Choir, in collaboration with the most attractive percussion group XYZ, are proud to offer you a new Christmas CD …).

When the letter details the offer and enhances the offer the use of lexical boost is very common. There is an example of exclamation in the Slovenian corpora, while Italian, being more expressive, has a bigger variety of possibilities (for example the use of absolute superlative, or repetition of an adjective). Brez sesalnika preprosto ne gre. In þe imate pri hiši dva, še toliko bolje! (You simply cannot be without a vacuum cleaner. And if you have two in the house, it is even better!)

Nina Lovec

181

The next step is to solicit further communication after the offer has been fully presented. Thus, we can find two types of solicitation. One type invites action from the reader, the other only introduces the action of the writer towards the reader: Pokliþite še danes in si zagotovite to ugodno ponudbo (Call today and get this special offer). V zvezi s priloženo ponudbo vas pokliþemo v naslednjih dneh (In regard of the attached offer we will call you in the next few days).

Letters conclude with a polite ending that usually also looks forward to cooperation from the reader: V upanju na naklonjen premislek, vas lepo pozdravljamo in vam želimo obilo uspeha (Hoping for a favourable consideration, we greet and wish you success).

All the letters end with a formal salutation. In Slovenian letters the use of the positive politeness strategy is common.

Italian Sales Promotion Letters In Italian, all letters also have an opening salutation after the subject. In Italian corpora we thus find the following examples, though Italian language has a wide variety of salutations: Gentile Signora XY (Dear/kind Mrs. XY) Egregio Signore (Distinguished Mr.) Egregio dottore (Distinguished Doctor). As mentioned before, the Italian language uses the title “dottore” in a different way than Slovenian. The Italian “doctor” (not only a medical title) is used as a sign of respect for all university graduates, while in Slovenia it can be used only to address people with a PhD (besides the medical sense). In Italian business letters, the title “dottore” is used to entitle business executives, while in Slovenia this is not the case. The next step is establishing credentials: La nostra Casa Editrice, da sempre all’avanguardia nella pubblicazione delle novità, Le offre la possibilità di …

182

Cultural Specifities in Slovenian and Italian Business Letters (Our publishing house, always at the forefront in the publication of news, offers you the opportunity to …).

The presentation of the product is followed by the detail of the offer and enhancing. Again, lexical boost and negative politeness strategies are used: I nostri prodotti per la pulizia XY le offrono la gamma completa per la manutenzione della casa (Our products for cleaning XY offer the complete range for home maintenance). Tutti questi prodotti, studiati per la sua comodità e la sua soddisfazione, sono riuniti sotto il nostro marchio … (All these products are designed for your comfort and satisfaction, gathered under our brand …).

Generally speaking the Italian corpora, especially in detailing and enhancing the offer, confirms that the Italian strategy to convince the reader uses expressiveness and hyperbole. In contrast, Slovenian language is more “litotic” without such expressiveness (Mikoliþ 2010). At least one example can be found in the end of the letters in the language pair: (slo) Lepo vas pozdravljamo (Best Regards) vs. (ita) Gradite i nostri migliori saluti (Appreciate our best regards). Soliciting further communication in Italian tends to seek cooperation from the potential buyer: Osservi le caratteristiche, i modelli e i prezzi nel catalogo allegato (Observe the features, models and prices in the attached brochure).

All letters end politely, showing availability of the sender: Nell’attesa di ricevere un suo ordine che evaderemo con cura, vogliate gradire i nostri più cordiali saluti (While waiting to receive your order that we will process carefully, please accept our best regards).

The examined sales promotion letters of the language pair SlovenianItalian have the same schematic structure. Differences may be seen in the more schematic organization of Italian letters and in a greater expressiveness. In Italian letters, a slightly more frequent use of negative politeness strategy, especially in the first part of the letters to establish credentials, can also be noticed.

Nina Lovec

183

Micro-textual Level As Vergaro (2004) and Bhatia (2002) claim, the rhetoric choices interact with those regarding the micro-textual level, in this case the use of reference, and the use of mood and modality. In both Slovenian and Italian letters in the selected corpus, references to the sender and the addressee are pronominal or lexical. One difference can be found in the grammar between the two languages. For formal reference and expression of politeness, Slovenian provides the use of pronouns and lexical forms for the 2nd person plural “vi.” Italian uses the form for 3rd person singular “Lei.” In sales promotion letters, communication is usually oriented towards the possible buyer, thus the sender is usually shadowed. The product and the buyer are most important. In Slovenian letters, the sender is usually shadowed with the use of the forms for the 1st person plural as the use of the passive form is not so frequent in Slovenian texts: Podarjamo vam namreþ novega pomoþnika pri gospodinjskih opravilih, gospa XY (We are giving you the new assistant for household tasks, Mrs. XY).

Italian uses nominalization and also passive forms for the purpose of shadowing: La registrazione di base gratuita e la sua realizzazione possono essere effettuati nel nostro sito (The free basic registration and its implementation can be made on our website).

In both Slovenian and Italian examples, the letters are reader-oriented and the perspective revolves around the reader as possible buyer. The mood in Slovenian letters is indicative present tense, while in Italian they frequently also use subjunctive (for possibility and desire) and gerund (mostly at the end): Nel caso foste interessati ad altri periodi … (In case you're interested in other periods …). Augurandoci una proficua collaborazione anche in futuro, inviamo distinti saluti (In hope for a fruitful collaboration in the future, we send best regards).

184

Cultural Specifities in Slovenian and Italian Business Letters

Conclusion The present chapter is an attempt to analyze genre regarding business sales promotion letters in Slovenian and Italian. The contrastive analysis focused on rhetorical and micro-textual elements to highlight what procedures must be followed for a successful text production that also takes into account cultural awareness. One of the limitations of the present study is its small sample size. The results, therefore, cannot be generalized.

References Bhatia, V. K. 2002. "Applied Genre Analysis: a Multi-Perspective Model." Ibérica 4: 3–19. —. 2012. "Critical Reflections on Genre Analysis." Ibérica 24: 17–28. Byram, M. 1997. Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. ýebron, N. 2011. "Teaching English as a "Lingua Franca" to Achieve Intercultural Communicative Competence." In Foreign Language Teaching: Beyond Language Proficiency, ed. A. Akbarov, 411–420. Sarajevo: International Burch University. Hall, E. T. 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Anchor Books. Hinds, J. 1987. "Reader Versus Writer Responsibility: a New Typology." In Writing across cultures: analysis of L2 texts, eds. U. Connor & R. Kaplan, 141–152. London: Addison-Wesley. Kavþiþ, B. 2002. Poslovno komuniciranje. Ljubljana: Ekonomska fakulteta. Mauranen, A. 1993. "Cultural Differences in Academic Discourse— Problems of a Linguistic and Cultural Minority." In The Competent Intercultural Communicator. AfinLA Yearbook, eds. L. Löfman, L. Kurki-Suonio, S. Pellinen & J. Lehtonen, 157–174. AfinLA. Mikoliþ, V. 2010. "Turistiþni diskurz kot izraz medkulturnosti v turizmu." In Turizem kot medkulturni dialog, A. eds. Brezovec & Mikoliþ, 123– 130. Portorož: Fakulteta za turistiþne študije. Raso, T. 2011. La scrittura burocratica: la lingua e l'organizzazione del testo. Roma: Carocci. Songcuan, E. J. 2012. "Psycholinguistic Extracts and Socio-Cultural Imprints in Job Application Discourses: A Genre Analysis." JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research 9: 54–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.7719/jpair.v9i1.15 (accessed July 15, 2013).

Nina Lovec

185

Vergaro, C. 2004. Discourse Strategies of Italian and English Sales Promotion Letters." English for Specific Purposes 23: 181–207. Wierzbicka, A. 2003. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

PEDAGOGICAL BENEFITS OF E-MAIL SENKA MAJETIû

Introduction As many researchers have noted, e-mail extends what one can do in the classroom since it provides a venue for meeting and communicating in the foreign language (FL) outside of class. Because of the nature of e-mail, FL learners do not have to be in a specific classroom at a particular time of day in order to communicate with others in the foreign language. They can log in and write e-mail from the comfort of their own rooms, public libraries or cyber-cafés, and these spatial possibilities increase the amount of time they can spend both composing and reading in the foreign language. FL learners receive more input than they would expect from class time, which typically amounts to not more than 5 hours per week in most high school or college settings. By connecting FL speakers outside of the classroom, e-mail also provides a context for communicating with other speakers in authentic communicative efforts that may seem artificial in a classroom setting. They communicate much like they do in spoken language because of its informal and interactive nature. Yet, unlike faceto-face communication, e-mail is in written form and this can serve the language learner. As Schwienkorst (1998) stressed, "The major advantage of written communication … [is that learners have] an enormous sample of his or her own efforts in the target language." The current chapter provides results of a study that investigated the usage of pragmatics by non-native speakers (NNSs) of English when making e-mail requests. Initial data from the study shows that NNSs differ from native speakers (NSs) in the politeness and perlocution (i.e. the effect that an utterance has on its recipient) of their English e-mail requests. The data also show that NNSs and NSs differ in the specific pragmatic strategies related to structure and content used in their e-mail requests. Additional data from this study indicates that explicit instruction can positively affect the perlocution of NNS e-mail requests and the long-term usage of pragmatics features found in the e-mail messages of NNSs, although the greatest effect is observed in the appropriate usage of structural

Senka Majetiü

187

features. The results of this study support the need for instruction of e-mail pragmatics for second language learners and reveal the possible benefits of such instruction. This finding suggests the need for more instruction on pragmatic strategies to increase the perlocution of e-mail requests and to maintain it over time. One suggestion for doing this is to include CMC pragmatics as a competency in the academic writing curriculum and to provide a more comprehensive pragmatic analysis to include several different types of speech acts, such as apology and information exchange, in addition to requests. By doing so, instructional time for e-mail pragmatics would be extended throughout the semester, giving students many opportunities to practice writing strategies that are becoming more useful, and even necessary, in academic settings.

Pragmatic development and ESL Over the past decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in examining the usage of e-mail by second language learners. Early studies looked at the effective use of e-mail in instructional settings (Warschauer 1995; St. John & Cash 1995). Additional studies addressed the use of e-mail in institutional settings, such as business (Inglis 1998; Gaines 1999) and academia (Gaines 1999; Lan 2000). More recently, researchers have directed their attention to the pragmatics of e-mail messages (Hartford & Bardovi-Harling 1996; Weasnforth & BiesenbachLucas 2000; Chen 2001), although no attention to date has been paid to the instruction of e-mail pragmatics. This study hopes to contribute to the body of research by reporting the results of a study examining the pragmatics of e-mail requests made by non-native speakers (NNSs) of English in an instructional setting. In the ensuing chapter, I begin by providing a review of the literature most relevant to the current study. Next, I describe the research methodology used during the project, including the participants, study design and data coding. Finally, I present and discuss some of the data gathered over the course of the research period, focusing on pragmatic differences between NNSs and native speakers (NSs) of English, and the effects of instructing NNSs on the correct usage pragmatics in English. Numerous language researchers have looked into the development of pragmatics in a second language, particularly in English. A consistent theme across the various studies related to pragmatic development and ESL is that pragmatics can and should be taught—should because it does not appear to be easily transferable from first language (L1) to second language (L2) (Kasper 1992), and because this will raise awareness of

188

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

appropriate language use, which has been shown to aid in language development (Schmidt 1993); and it can as evidenced by a number of studies of classroom language learning and instruction. Bardovi-Harling (2001) reached the same conclusions in her extensive review of the empirical evidence from research of L2 pragmatic production, judgment, perception, competence and proficiency. This theme is essential to the overall conceptualization of my study and constitutes the theoretical foundation of this line of research. Motivated by the initial research that examined interlanguage development, many in the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) have applied the theories proposed by the previous SLA research to the instruction of pragmatics in the classroom setting. Several studies have focused on developing awareness of pragmatics through explicit instruction. Their results generally support the notion that pragmatic development can be enhanced through explicit awareness-raising technique. Many other studies have compared the implicit and explicit instruction of pragmatics in the ESL setting. Takahashi (2001), Tateyame (2001) and Yoshimi (2001) each found explicit instruction of pragmatic features to have a greater effect on pragmatic competence than implicit instruction. In consideration of such positive findings from previous research, it appears that explicit instruction does in fact assist pragmatic development in second language learners. This conclusion provides further motivation and rationale for this study.

Requests and ESL One of the most frequently occurring speech acts across cultures, and one of the most researched as well, is the request. Blum Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) devoted a large portion of their edited volume to studying the pragmatics of the request speech act. Through their research they developed a process for designing appropriate data elicitation tests and created a detailed coding manual to assist in analyzing discourse data. A number of researchers have investigated the performance of English requests by specific cultural groups. Kitao (1990) looked at Japanese learners of EFL, Trosborg (1995) studied Danish learners of EFL, and Kim (1995) examined Korean learners of ESL. Each of these researchers found evidence of negative transfer of L1 pragmatics and concluded with the need for explicit instruction in making English requests. Kasange (1998) had the same findings in a study of ESL learners at an American university and found no evidence of negative L1 transfer of pragmatics with regards to the request speech act.

Senka Majetiü

189

In quite a different approach to researching the pragmatics development of requesting in English, Li (2000) conducted an ethnographic case study of a female ESL learner in a workplace environment in Canada and found that her pragmatic development came about mainly through language socialization with her co-workers. An interesting investigation by Schmidt (1994) compared actual request data gathered at service counters to request lessons found in four popular ESL textbooks. Schmidt’s results showed that textbooks were deficient in the range of real-world request types and the explanations of request types given. Additional work in this area of pragmatics research has focused on the instruction of requests. Rose (1999) provided a report of the successful instruction of requests to students in Hong Kong using pragmatic consciousness-raising (PCR) techniques. Rose defines PCR as “… an inductive approach to developing awareness of how language forms are used appropriately in context. The aim is not to teach explicitly the various means of … performing a given speech act … but, rather, to expose learners to the pragmatic aspects of language … and provide them with the analytical tools they need to arrive at their own generalizations concerning contextually appropriate language use” (Rose 1999, 171). With such a definition, Rose further explains that PCR is a process in which pragmatic awareness is raised first by introducing students to a particular pragmatic feature, then by activating students' L1 knowledge of the pragmatic feature, and finally by analyzing English data for the same pragmatic feature. Through such a process, students will become aware of "both the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of English" as they develop "analytic abilities that they can apply to future language learning" (Rose 1999, 180). This approach to raising pragmatic awareness will influence the treatment design of my study.

E-mail pragmatics With the development of the internet, increased attention has been given to the use of pragmatics in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Since Shea (1994) first presented her principles of business "netiquette" (a blend of the words “network” and “etiquette”), which are basic rules and guidelines for behaving and interacting via CMC, several others (Hambridge 1995; Rinaldi 1998) have further developed and applied netiquette principles to the full range of possible CMC purposes, from formal (e.g. business e-mail, academic discussion boards) to informal (e.g. internet "fun-club" chat rooms). At this point in time, netiquette guidelines have become conventionalized and are publicized wherever

190

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

CMC may take place, from office settings to internet cafés; they have even found their way into ESL textbooks (e.g. Swales & Feak 1994; Hacker 2003) and onto university writing websites (e.g. Hughes 2002; Essid 2003). The line of research most directly relevant to my study is the handful of reports that investigate the pragmatics of e-mail requests in the ESL environment. Of particular interest is the report by Hartford & BardoviHarling (1996), who analyzed for perlocutionary effect e-mail requests sent by NS and NNS graduate students to professors. They concluded that, in general, NNS e-mails did not adequately address imposition, which negatively affected perlocution (i.e. the effect that an utterance has on its recipient). In addition, NNS messages contained fewer downgraders and other mitigating supportive moves such as grounders and apologies, which negatively affected the impact of the requests. Weasenforth & BiesenbachLucas (2000) analyzed variation between pragmatic strategies employed by graduate NSs and NNSs that negatively affected the perlocution of their English e-mail requests. Chen (2001) analyzed and compared e-mail requests sent by Taiwanese and U.S. graduate students to their professors. She concluded that the Taiwanese and U.S. students used different request strategies to the U.S. students due to culturally different perceptions of power relations, familiarity and imposition. This study illuminates the possibility of divergent culture-specific pragmatic strategies employed by even advanced-level ESL students when making e-mail requests in an academic setting.

Instruction on E-mail Pragmatics At this point in time, e-mail pragmatics in the ESL setting remain largely under-researched. While important groundwork has been done to investigate evident cross-cultural differences, the effects of instruction in e-mail pragmatics remains virtually untouched upon. Consistent with the absence of research into the effect of instruction in e-mail pragmatics, there is also a shortage of pedagogical materials devoted to their systematic instruction in the ESL context. Various academic writing textbooks for ESL students provide very brief sections on e-mail usage that focus primarily on formal and functional rules for the university setting. Probably the most comprehensive internet site devoted to English writing, OWL at Purdue University (owl.english.purdue.edu), devotes minimal attention to e-mail pragmatics, and even then it is targeted to NSs of English and provides no mention of miscommunications or violations that may arise due to cross-cultural differences in pragmatics (Hughes

Senka Majetiü

191

2002). However, on the bright side, Frod (2003), Mach & Ridder (2003) and Weasenforth (2003) each developed lessons and materials devoted to issues of e-mail pragmatics in the ESL environment, particularly in academia.

Research Questions Drawing from the preceding literature review, the following research questions guided the current study: (1) Is there a difference between the perlocution of NS and NNS English e-mail requests? (2) What are the differences between the pragmatic features of NS and NNS English e-mail requests? (3) What are the effects of instruction to NNSs in the usage of appropriate pragmatic features when making e-mail requests?

Material and Method Participants Over the course of the 2011–2012 academic year I investigated the usage of e-mail pragmatics in my own two sections of the advanced-level writing course for undergraduate ESL students at the University of Bihaü. My particular section met three days per week in 45-minute class sessions. Qualitatively, there seemed to be no differences between the two sections—they both met during the morning, they both contained approximately the same numbers of students, and they both utilized the same textbook and instructional materials. Over the two semesters, I gathered complete data sets from a total of 15 NNS. Data from an additional 10 students were incomplete, missing at least one message each, and were therefore excluded from this study. However, in the following analysis and discussion section, I do not consider cultural differences in pragmatic usage, for cultural differences do not seem relevant at this stage in my analysis of effects of instruction. At the beginning of each semester these students indicated on a general course questionnaire that they frequently used computers and e-mail, and that they had never received any formal instruction in either computer or e-mail usage. Each of the students also supplied a valid e-mail address for the purposes of communication outside of classroom instruction time.

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

192

Research design Pre-test The study relied on a quasi-experimented design that included a pretest, treatment, and immediate post-test design. The pre-test was administered during the third week of each semester and consisted of the following task: Write me an e-mail message asking me to extend the due date for a paper that's due soon. Provide me an adequate reason, and convince me that I should grant your request. Give me any other information why I should grant your request. Give me any other information that you think would help me accept your excuse. Send your message to me the day before our next class.

My students were given this assignment in class and were told to complete the task before the next class meeting. They were provided with no additional instructions about the assignment. When designing the prompt I decided to have the students address the professor of a course under the assumption this may help them become more personally connected to the prompt, which may result in a serious, well-thought-out message. Furthermore, I specified that the students should provide adequate reason and additional information and use proper form and language, because I wanted the students to understand that this was a real, serious assignment. The specificity of the prompt was an attempt to ensure that the students would not submit a minimal message written a few minutes before class, but instead submit a message written after careful thought and planning, as would be the case in real life if writing a request to a real professor. Treatment The very next class session was held in a campus computer lab. The students were presented with a lecture based on rules of netiquette through a website with the goal of understanding how netiquette guidelines will help to make e-mail messages more acceptable and effective. After a brief introduction to netiquette principles, we talked about how these principles could be applied to different CMC situations, particularly ones that the students could encounter in their academic careers. Next, the students examined examples of poorly constructed e-mail messages and ways to improve them while reflecting on the netiquette guidelines. In doing so, aspects of perlocution and politeness were discussed rather cursorily.

Senka Majetiü

193

Lastly, students viewed additional websites devoted to netiquette, specifically Shea's (1994) "Netiquette" page and Rindali's (1998) "The Net: User Guidelines and Netiqette" page. This was done to raise further awareness of e-mail pragmatics as an issue that extends far beyond the classroom and computer lab and is applied to the entire internet community. This lesson filled the full 45 minute class period and constituted the entire treatment. Post-test As their homework assignment was due before the next class session, students were required to resubmit their previous e-mail requests based on what they had learned from the netiquette lesson. This comprised the immediate post-test portion of the study. During the remainder of each semester, no classroom time was spent on issues related to e-mail pragmatics. The delayed post-test was administered during finals week, a full 15 weeks after treatment. The task of the delayed post-test was a very similar assignment used for the pre- and immediate post-test, and also administered as a homework assignment. The assignment differed from the previous prompt only in that it asked students to request an extension of the due date of the final course paper. This change was made in an attempt to make the assignment more realistic, since the delayed post-test was administered during finals week when the students were actually thinking about these matters in their lives. Data Coding After data was gathered I coded each e-mail message onto a separate coding form I developed, based on Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989) and Shea (1994). Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper (1989) provide an elaborate coding scheme developed for the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) for analyzing requests. Following the CCSARP coding manual, analysis of requests includes three distinct stages: (1) identification of the “head act,” which is the minimum segment that constitutes the actual requests; (2) identification of non-essential elements that modify the head act internally; and (3) identification of nonessential elements relevant yet external to the head act. Together, these parts contribute to a thorough analysis of a given request. For the purpose of my study I combined the coding scheme of the CCSARP with required aspects of formal e-mail requests.

194

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

Additionally, the scope of the coding scheme was adjusted for the lengthier stream of discourse of the e-mail messages that were gathered by the task-based performance assessment in the current study, instead of the single utterances gathered by the discourse completion task (DCTs), for which the CCSARP was originally designed. Therefore, the coding form has separate sections for recording the tracking number of the e-mail message, the length of the message, the formal features of netiquette found in the message and the request(s) found in the message, and overall ratings for perlocutionary effect and politeness level of the message. The rating for the perlocutionary effect is based on a 5-point scale ranging from least acceptable to most acceptable, and concerns the likelihood that the receiver would accept the request: Rating Perlocutionary Effect (1) Least Acceptable (2) Less Acceptable (3) Acceptable (4) More Acceptable (5) Most Acceptable This 5-point scale was decided on due to its ability to allow for comparisons and slight differences in ratings across messages, while at the same time allowing for manageable analysis. The scale requires making a holistic judgment about the acceptability of a message based on experience and pragmatic intuition. Factors affecting judgment include an adequately formed request, an appropriate level of politeness, and an adequate use of downgrades and positive supportive moves. At one end of the scale, a rating of Least Acceptable would indicate a high likelihood that the recipient of the message would not accept the request. At the centre of the scale, a rating of Acceptable would indicate that the request in the message would probably be accepted by the recipient. At the other end of the scale, a rating of Most Acceptable would indicate a high likelihood that the recipient of the message would accept the request. As with the politeness rating scale, points 2 and 4 allow for slight differences in the perlocutionary effect, depending on specific strategies employed in individual messages. The rating for politeness is based on a 5-point scale ranging from impolite to overly polite, and concerns the level of overall formality perceived by the receiver:

Senka Majetiü

195

Rating Politeness Level (1) Very Impolite (2) Slightly Impolite (3) Polite (4) Too Polite (5) Overly Polite This 5-point scale was decided on for the same reason as the perlocutionary effect rating scale discussed previously. At one end of the scale, Very Impolite messages would be very brief and terse, demanding, insulting or otherwise perceived as rude. At the other end of the scale, Overly Polite messages would contain inappropriate uses of politeness markers, compliments or expressions of gratitude. At the centre of the scale, Polite messages were those that follow netiquette guidelines by briefly stating a purpose, asking a request, providing only necessary details, and thanking the recipient, without discussing personal issues or qualities (Shea 1994; Rinaldi 1998). Points 2 and 4 allow for slight differences in politeness, depending on specific strategies employed in individual messages. After collecting all of the study data I coded and tarred each message, using the data coding discussed previously. In the following data analysis, I focus on my coding and ratings of the data only.

Results and Discussion Throughout the course of the research project I gathered a total of 74 email requests for data analysis: 45 from the 15 NNSs in the form of pre-, immediate post-, and delayed post-tests, and 29 from the NSs as baseline data. Due to limited space, I will focus on my research questions. Is there a difference between the perlocution of NS and NNS English e-mail requests? Across the data set, NSs were rated on average just slightly above “acceptable” for perlocution, while NNSs were rated a full point below NSs in the “unacceptable” range, on their pre-test e-mail messages. Table 1 below shows descriptive statistics of the e-mail perlocution ratings.

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

196

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics for Perlocution

NS NNS

N

M

SD

29 15

3.14 2.20

0.74 0.68

MIN MAX 2.00 4.00 1.00 3.00

This initial analysis shows that the NNSs tend to produce less acceptable English e-mail requests and also confirms previous work by Hartford & Bardovi-Harling (1996) and Chen (2001), who had the same findings. Examples 1 and 2 below are provided as representative of NS and NNS e-mail requests gathered for this study. Example 1: NS e-mail request From Native Speaker [email protected] To [email protected] Subject From a student in your class Hi, This is from Native Speaker, a student in your class. I am writing to you in regard to the paper due next Monday. I would like to be given an extension until Wednesday if possible. On Sunday, I had to take my younger brother to the emergency room after he was injured playing football. We were at the hospital all day, and I wasn't able to finish my paper. I know your policy is not to grant extensions, but I was hoping you'd understand my circumstances. I couldn't foresee this emergency. I'd gladly supply you with supporting documentation. I understand you might not be able to do this, but if you could, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Native Speaker Example 2: NNS e-mail request From Non Native Speaker [email protected] To [email protected] Subject Dear Ms., I have a request on the homework assignment that you assigned to us which must due on Monday. One of my close relative has gotten into a car accident yesterday night and she's in a critical condition. I was the only close relative that she has in Bihaü. Since I have to take care of her until she gets better, I have not enough time to do the assignment. Thus, could you extend the due date of that assignment, please? I have to apologize that I have such request; however, she really needs my help at this time. Please give me time to finish up.

Senka Majetiü

197

Thank you very much! Sincerely, Your Student

Each of these examples was judged by the same by two raters. Example 1 was rated “4—More Acceptable” for perlocution and “3—Polite” for politeness. Example 2 was rated “3—Acceptable” for perlocution and “4—Too Polite” for politeness. Although their ratings were similar, it is obvious that the pragmatic strategies employed in forming these two messages are quite different. To begin with, whereas the NS includes a subject in the subject field of the message, the NNS does not, which is a violation of netiquette guidelines. Secondly, whereas the NS proves identification, the NNS does not, which is also a violation of netiquette guidelines. Additionally, whereas the NS forms the request in a “preparatory—request statement—grounder” fashion, the NNS forms the request in a “preparatory—request statement—grounder—request question” fashion. This NS request pattern is the prototypical NS pattern found in the data set. Lastly, the NSS message contains politeness and upgrader features discussed in the following section, whereas the NS message does not. Altogether, these differences in pragmatic strategies contribute to the differences in ratings between the NS and NNS messages. What are the differences between the pragmatic features of NS and NNS e-mail requests? One of the most noticeable differences between the pragmatic features of NS and NNS e-mail requests has to do with level of politeness. Table 2 below shows descriptive statistics of the e-mail politeness ratings. Table 2: Descriptive statistic for politeness

NS NNS

N 29 45

M 3.07 3.42

SD MIN 0.65 2.00 0.78 2.00

MAX 4.00 5.00

NSs were rated just average overall for politeness—not impolite and not too polite. However, across all of the NNS messages (pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test), they were rated above average for politeness by nearly half a point. This may not seem like much of a difference, but it does show that NNSs tend to produce e-mail requests that may be interpreted as too polite, a feature which may affect the perlocution of the

198

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

message. Specific pragmatic features employed by the NNSs and not the NSs, which may affect politeness, include compliments, expressions of gratitude, and repeated uses of politeness markers (e.g. “please”). This finding is consistent with the research by Chen (2001) discussed previously, who concluded that NNS over-politeness in e-mail requests is due to cultural transfer. This point should be considered for future instructional designs of e-mail pragmatics materials and lessons. Another interesting finding regarding the differences between the pragmatic features of NS and NNS e-mail requests had to do with the use of upgraders in the e-mail messages. Upgraders are negative pragmatic devices that serve to increase the impact of the request and, therefore, may reduce the perlocution of the message. Following Netiquette guidelines (Shea 1994; Hambridge 1995; Rinaldi 1998; Hughes 2002), use of expletives, repetitions, exclamations points, time intensifiers and allcapital letters are considered inappropriate features of formal e-mail messages and should be avoided. Within the entire NS data set, not one upgrader is used. On the other hand, NNSs make use of orthographic upgraders (exclamation points and all-capital letters) 11 times, three of them in one message alone. Examples of orthographic upgraders used by NNSs are “EMERGENCY!” found in the subject heading of one message, “Hi!” found in the introductions of several messages, as well as “Thank you!” found in the closing of several more messages. Additionally, several NNSs use time intensifiers such as “ASAP,” and the repetition-of-request strategy, which also serve as message upgraders. What are the effects of instruction in the usage of appropriate pragmatic features when making e-mail requests? By analyzing the NNS pre-, immediate-post and delayed-post-test messages, it is evident that there were positive effects on instruction maintained over time. Regarding perlocution of the e-mail requests, results of this analysis indicate that NNS messages increase in perlocution on the immediate-post-test, approaching “acceptable” on average. On the delayed-post-test, NNS messages maintain an increase in perlocution, although down from the immediate-post-test level and with no significance to the pre-test level.

Senka Majetiü

199

Conclusion The study investigated the usage of pragmatics by NNSs of English when making e-mail requests. The study contributes to the body of research in e-mail pragmatics by showing first that NSs and NNSs of English differ greatly in the pragmatic strategies that they use when making e-mail requests, and second that e-mail pragmatic features are teachable to NNSs. The findings from the study indicate that NNSs tend to produce messages that are rated as too polite, and at the same time are judged to have low perlocutionary effect. Additional findings suggest that explicit instruction in e-mail pragmatics has a positive effect on the perlocution of e-mail messages, including the use of certain structure features and content pragmatic features. This study is very limited in scope, containing a small number of participants, and examining only a few of the e-mail pragmatic features possible. However, it confirms that educators can and should consider ways to include the instruction of e-mail pragmatics in their curricula.

References Bardovi-Harling, K. 2001. "Evaluating the Empirical Evidence: Grounds for Instruction in Pragmatics?" In Pragmatics in language teaching, eds. K. Rose & G. Kasper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blum-Kulka, S., J. House & G. Kasper. 1989. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing. Brown, P. & S. C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chen, C. F. E. 2001. Making E-mail Requests to Professors. St. Louis: Taiwanese vs. American Association for Applied Linguistics. Hacker, D. 2003. A Writer’s Reference (5th ed.). New York: St. Martin’s. Hall, J. K. 1999. "The Prosaic of Interaction: The Development of Interactional Competence in Another Language." In Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning, ed. E. Hinkel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rinaldi, A. H. 1998. The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette. http://www.fau.edu7netiquette/net/ Schmidt, T. Y. 1994. Netiquette. Albion Books. http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html Takahasi, S. 2001. "The Role of Input Enhancement in Developing Pragmatic Competence." In Pragmatics in Language Teaching, eds. K. Rose & G. Kasper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pedagogical Benefits of E-Mail

200

Tateyama, Y. 2001. "Explicit and Implicit Teaching of Pragmatic Routines: Japanese Sumimasen.” In Pragmatics in Language Teaching, eds. K. Rose & G. Kasper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trosborg, A. 1995. Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints, and Apologies. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Warschauer, M. 1995. E-mail for English teaching. Alexandria: TESOL. .

COGNITIVE, AFECTIVE AND SOCIAL STRATEGIES USED BY L2 TEACHERS IN BOSNIAN EFL CONTEXT SENKA MAJETIû

Introduction This study investigates the strategies used by Bosnian EFL teachers to motivate their students. To achieve this purpose, a questionnaire including cognitive, affective and social strategies based on Chastain’s (1988) model was developed, piloted and validated. Two research questions were proposed: the first to investigate whether our EFL teachers use motivational strategies in their classrooms and the second to explore how the use of motivational strategies by teachers can motivate or demotivate students in approaching English as a foreign language. The questionnaire was administered to fifty different students selected randomly. Taking the frequency of options and applying the statistics, the results revealed that teachers did not use motivational strategies to promote English language learning in their students. Then, using descriptive and qualitative analyses, it was discussed how the lack of motivational strategies by teachers can bear negative consequences on students’ learning achievements. The findings of the present study bear significant implications and applications for second language instructors, specifically those who teach at the University of Bihaü. Language learners learn a language because they want to acquire, use and communicate with native speakers of that language. To learn a language, a learner should be motivated. Brown said "motivation is probably the most frequently catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task" (2000, 160). Any experienced teacher knows that without the proper motivation for students to engage in a learning experience, the otherwise best-designed experiences will be unsuccessful. Crooks & Schmidt (1991) stated that many instructors consider the motivation level of learners the most important factor in successful instruction. In the field of foreign/second language learning,

202

Cognitive, Afective and Social Strategies Used by L2 Teachers

motivation has long been recognized as one of the key factors that determine L2 achievement and attainment. Motivation serves as the initial engine to generate learning and later functions as an ongoing driving force that helps to sustain the long and usually laborious journey of acquiring a foreign language (Dornyei 1994). Indeed, it is fair to say that without sufficient motivation even the brightest learners are unlikely to persist long enough to attain any really useful language proficiency, whereas most learners with strong motivation can achieve a working knowledge of the L2, regardless of their language aptitude or any undesirable learning conditions (Gardner 1968). Due to its great importance, L2 motivation has been the subject of a considerable amount of research in recent decades, exploring the nature of this complex construct and how it affects the L2 learning process. Until the early 1990s, this line of research had been strongly influenced by the seminal work of two Canadian scholars, Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert (1959, 1972), who conceptualized motivation from a social psychological perspective. They perceived the L2 as a mediator between different ethnolinguistic communities, and therefore the motivation to acquire the language of the other L2 community was seen to play a powerful role in prompting or hindering intercultural communication. It needs to be noted here that Gardner's social psychological approach has never explicitly addressed the classroom implications of motivation theory and did not aim to provide language teachers with direct help in prompting their teaching practices (Dornyei 2005). The 1990s marked a shift in the way many L2 researchers started to conceptualize motivation and this was reflected in the number of papers calling for an education-oriented approach more in congruence with mainstream educational psychological research (e.g. Crookes & Schmidt 1991; Dornyei 1990; 1994; Oxford & Shearin 1994; Tremblay & Gardner 1995; Williams & Burden 1997). The new approach successfully expanded the L2 motivation paradigm by: (1) prompting cognitive aspects of motivation, especially those related to the learner's self (e.g. need for achievement, self-confidence/efficiency, selfdetermination); (2) integrating various influential theories that were already prevalent in mainstream psychology (e.g. goal theories and attribution theory); and (3) focusing on situational factors relevant to classroom application (e.g. characteristics of the language course and language teacher). Accordingly, due to this shift in focus to emphasizing the classroom applications of motivation, the current study has tried to check quantitatively if motivational strategies are used by Bosnian teachers to promote learners’ language acquisition and also to investigate qualitatively how the use of motivational strategies can motivate or demotivate students in their language learning practices.

Senka Majetiü

203

Literature Review It is universally accepted that motivation plays a vital role in academic learning in general, and in mastering a second language in particular: "Motivation is like food for [the] brain" (Davis, cited in Shaaban 2006). Crookes & Schmidt (1991) define it as "interest in and enthusiasm for the materials used in class; persistence with the learning task, as indicated by levels of attention or action for an extended duration; and levels of concentration and engagement." Gardner (1985, cited in Brown 2000) defines motivation as "a combination of effort plus a desire to achieve the goal of language learning plus favourable attitudes towards learning the language." Teachers believe when the students are motivated to perform competently in academic tasks, they will learn in accordance with their academic abilities. For this reason, working to enhance students' motivation is worthwhile. With motivation being one of the key factors that determine success in L2 learning, strategies in motivating language learners should be seen as an important aspect of the theoretical analysis of L2 motivation. However, looking at the literature we find that far more research has been conducted on identifying and analyzing various motives and validating motivational theories than on developing techniques to increase motivation. Interestingly, the past decade has witnessed an increasing number of L2 scholars designing and summarizing motivational techniques for classroom application (e.g. Alison & Halliwell 2002; Brown 2001; Chambers 1999; Williams & Burden 1997). In reflecting on the potential usefulness of motivational strategies, Gardner & Tremblay (1994) argued that although many of the practical recommendations and implications might be of value, from a scientific point of view intuitive appeal without empirical evidence is not enough to justify strong claims in favour of such strategies. Chastain (1988) stated that "motivation in the classroom is called achievement motivation." To improve achievement motivation, the teachers should follow some strategies. Although not fixed and necessarily practical for all cases, these strategies are so helpful in motivating the students. Improving achievement motivation has been the concern of many scholars. Keller (1987), Spaulding (1992), Williams & Burden (1997), Chastain (1988) and Dornyei (1994) are among those scholars who widely discussed motivation, its dichotomies and strategies to promote motivation. Based on what Chastain (1988) has said, in order to improve motivation, teachers should be sensitive to individual differences in motivational influence and in the ways in which each student demonstrates motivation. Teachers should recognize that there are different variables for

204

Cognitive, Afective and Social Strategies Used by L2 Teachers

motivation strategies, such as cognitive, affective and social. Some students are motivated by a “desire to know” (cognitive drive). For these students, learning is a goal in and of itself. No additional incentives are needed. They seek to understand and to acquire new information simply because it is there. Other students are motivated as a means of “enhancing their selfconcepts” (ego enhancement). Thus, they strive to do well. Alternatively, ego-deflating failure is avoided just as vigorously. Other students are motivated by “social factors” (social affiliation). They are trying to please their parents, responding to peer group standards important to their social standing in the class, or working to attain a certain power status in the group. Students with different types of academic motivation respond in predictable ways to classes and teachers with different orientations (Chastain 1988). The present study, based on the above model proposed by Chastain (1988), has been developed with two aims. First, applying quantitative analyses, it attempts to determine whether Bosnian EFL teachers use motivational strategies to promote motivation among their students and, as a result, affect their language learning in a positive way. Second, the current chapter, choosing a descriptive qualitative approach, aims to shed light on understanding how the use of motivational strategies by teachers can motivate or demotivate students in approaching English as a foreign language. Consequently, for the purpose of the current study, the following research questions and hypotheses are proposed.

Research Questions In the present study, the two following research questions were proposed: (1) Do Bosnian EFL teachers use strategies to motivate students learning English as a foreign language? (2) How can the use of motivational strategies by teachers motivate or demotivate Bosnian students in approaching English as a foreign language?

Research Hypotheses To find answers for the above-mentioned questions, the following null hypotheses were considered: (1) Bosnian EFL teachers do not use strategies to motivate high school students learning English as a foreign language. (2) The use of motivational strategies by teachers doesn’t motivate or demotivate Bosnian students in approaching English as a foreign language.

Senka Majetiü

205

Methodology Participants For the purpose of this study, 50 different students (23 males and 27 females) ranging between 18–20 years old were chosen randomly. They were given the questionnaire to investigate the strategies used by their English teachers, and chose the option most appropriate to what they believed.

Instrumentation To collect data for this study, a fifteen-item Likert scale questionnaire was utilized. This questionnaire, developed based on Chastain's model (1988), consisted of three types of motivational strategies (Cognitive, Affective and Social) called "achievement motivation strategies" necessary for motivating students in the classroom. For the ease of administration, the strategies were translated into Bosnian. After that, the questionnaire was piloted and validated and its reliability was computed to be 0.81. The questionnaire involved fifteen motivational strategies of which the first five strategies were cognitive, the second five consisted of affective strategies and the last set was devoted to social strategies. The aim of presenting the strategies in the above-mentioned order was to make the necessary frequency comparisons easier and more manageable. The questionnaire is displayed in Appendix A.

Procedure As stated earlier, we used a random sampling strategy to choose the participants for the present study. The students were given essential information about the purpose of the work. Also, a set of instructions were given in Bosnian and piloted to minimize the risk of misunderstanding or confusion. No time limit was set and the students were given enough time to complete the questionnaire accurately.

Data analysis As previously mentioned, the main concern of this study was to determine whether Bosnian EFL teachers use motivational strategies in their classrooms. To achieve this purpose, a motivation questionnaire based on Chastain’s model (1988) was administered to 50 students. After

206

Cognitive, Afective and Social Strategies Used by L2 Teachers

administering the questionnaire, the obtained data was submitted to a number of initial statistical analyses to make the dataset more manageable. After obtaining the observed frequencies of all the options, a frequency test was applied to examine the frequency of the use of three types of motivational strategies. Then, descriptive statistics and qualitative interpretations were presented based on recorded oral interviews with some of the randomly selected participants in order to answer the second research question. Therefore, the present study has chosen a mixed method in its analysis of the data; as a result, there will be both quantitative analysis and qualitative interpretations.

Results and Discussions Answering the first research question In order to use the one-way statistics, scores were assigned to the alternatives for all fifteen items of the questionnaire and then treated as interval scores using the SPSS program. To make using the test easier and more understandable, responses of "much" and "very much" were combined into a category labelled high strategy use, responses of "never" and "very little" on the 5-point likert scale were termed low strategy use, and responses for option number 3, "little," were named medium strategy use. Applying the statistical method of one-way ANOVA to the obtained frequencies, the following results were achieved. Based on Table 2 below, the obtained value is 4.36. Because this value, with 2 degrees of freedom, is lower than the critical value at P< 0.05, we cannot reject the first nullhypothesis. Therefore, it can be claimed that language teachers do not use motivational strategies in their classrooms. Table 1. Frequency

Observed N

Expected N

Residual

1

2

6.7

- 4.7

2 3 Total

14 34 50

6.7 6.7 6.7

- 2.7 7.3

Senka Majetiü

207

Table 2. Test Statistics

Df Asymp. Sig

Motivational Strategy 0.360 2 0.80

*P