RAISING ACADEMIC SEFL-AWARENESS THROUGH E-EPOSTL İsmail Hakkı MİRİCİ Sinem DEMİRBAŞ

Reflection; is the perception of relationships and connections between the parts of an experience (…) enables effective poblem solving (…) improves the effectiveness of learning (Dewey,1933) is a response to past experience and involves conscious recall, and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation and decision making, and as a source for planning and action (Bartlett 1990) is an active process of exploration and discovery, the skill of experiantal learning in which people tend to be the most deficient, pusued with intent, (Boud et al 1985) doesn’t have to be a solitary activity it can occur in group settings as well as through individual writing and thinking (Boud et al 1985).

is an important human activity in which people recapture their experiences think about it, mull it over and evalaute it. (Boud et al 1985). is the ability to analyze an action systematically and to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the action in order to improve (Copland et al 2009) is a response to past experience and involves conscious recall and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation and decision-making and as a source for planning and action. (Richard) Reflection;

Reflective Practice is a goal in many teacher preparation programs, but (…) how it might be fostered in student teachers are problematic issues. (Hatton& Smith, 1995) Becoming a reflective teacher involves moving beyond a primary concern with instructional techniques and “how to” questions and asking “what” and “why” questions that regard instructions and managerial techniques not as ends in themselves, but as part of broader educational purposes. (Bartlett, 1990) Teachers making critical reflection may change their attitudes and raise awareness also they can improve support their students in different ways. (Richards, 2004) Experience not alone but coupled with reflection can be a powerful impetus for teacher development. (Richards, 2004)

Language Teacher Education and Assessment Assessment types in FLT-ELTdepartments  Essay type of exams,  Multiple choice tests,  Open-ended tests,  Oral exams,  Reports,  Peer, mentor and trainer observations

Just like the inclination from traditional assessment tools towards more innovative and modern ones in the field of FLT and ELT, the assessment of student teachers of languages at universities also needs to follow the same path. EPOSTL is an example of these innovatiove assessment tools which focuses on reflection and autonomy.

Aims of the EPOSTL ; to encourage reflection on competences to be attained and on the required underlying knowledge to help students develop awareness of their strengths & weaknesses to assist in discussions between student teachers & teacher educators to provide support during school placement & to assist in discussions with mentors (systematic feedback, reflection, self- assessment) increase transparency of education programme encourage a reflective mode in teacher education aid comparison of teacher education programmes (Newby,2007)

European Profile for student teachers of languages EPOSTL Common European Framework of Reference CEFR European Profile for Language Teacher Education PROFILE European Language Portfolio ELP

The EPOSTL; is international to standardise educational achievements while training student teachers of languages. helps to set up educational goals and to self-discover of strength and weaknesses

The EPOSTL has been designed as an E- EPOSTL consisting of three main sections as they are in the EPOSTL such as; A personal statement section consisting of the classification of activity types related to teaching in general and some specific questions that may be important at the beginning of their teacher education.

A self-assessment section which comprises the list of 193 ‘can-do’ statements on didactic competences. A dossier section in which students can keep the documents of their progress and can record examples of work relevant to their teacher education and their future profession.

Self-assesment section of the E-EPOSTL

*Digital natives&immigrants *Internet *Communication International and intercultural communication greatly takes place virtually,in the Internet. That’s why the EPOSTL is suggegsted to be used through the internet for the digital natives (people born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts) or digital immigrants (people born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life) who are volunteer and good at using the technological products quite competently.

In the field of raising teachers of languages, both the policy makers and the universities as practitioners are responsible for acting to make use of and develop alternative assessment tools to enhance the capacity of these student teachers to enable them reflect on their own professional competences to become autonomous, which can bring about the learner profile carrying the same ideal features.

Significance of the study EPOSTL is originally a digital document which student teachers can download and print. Using the technological facilities, a website with the same content of the EPOSTL with its complementary files like glossary, index, a user’s guide and the video prepared by ECML was created.

Aim of the study The aim of this study is to provide an alternative way to make use of the EPOSTL which will contribute to the dissemination of the use of the EPOSTL by raising academic self-awareness of student teachers of languagaes at Teacher Training Departments, specifically in Turkey.

In this study limesurvey, the open source survey application system, written in PhP language and working on the Linux-an operating system, was used to turn the EPOSTL into an online portfolio for student teachers of langages.

LIMESURVEY has several user and manager friendly features such as applying unlimited number of multi-lingual surveys at the same time with unlimited number of questions in 28 different types and quotas management to unlimited number of participants with many others.

LimeSurvey allows users to quickly create intuitive, powerful, online question-and- answer surveys that can work for tens to thousands of participants without much effort. The survey software itself is self-guiding for the respondents who are participating.

The steps of developing an online portfolio:E-EPOSTL 1.A domain name was adopted. 2.A hosting, which has a Php, mysql support was rented. 3.The content of the EPOSTL was imported into the limesurvey. 4.The sub categories (personal statement- self assessment- dossier) were created. 5.The items were created. (different sorts of questions-Short free text/Long free text/File upload/Numerical input/array (5 point choice) 6.The glossary, which isn’t available on the limesurvey was created by the developer.

As a result of the piloting study conducted in Turkey and some European countries, no problem was observed in the accessibility of the E-EPOSTL ( Instead of the NEXT button on each page and the SUBMIT button on the last page, learners can click on the RESUME LATER button to create a nickname and a password for themselves to continue later on. Their assessment is stored so that they can continue self- assessing later on. Also, except for some mandatory questions just to keep the record and to let them continue later, all items canbe assessed whenever and in whatever order the student teachers desire, they can skip oages and go back to the pages they have already completed.

At the end.. There is an online EPOSTL : E-EPOSTL