English Language Originated in Turkey?

Hi again!

I have read an interesting article about the origins of English. According to researchers, English originated in Turkey around 9.000 years ago. I think it is worth reading.

<< Modern Indo-European languages - which include English - originated in Turkey about 9,000 years ago, researchers say.

Their findings differ from conventional theory that these languages originated 5,000 years ago in south-west Russia.

The New Zealand researchers used methods developed to study virus epidemics to create family trees of ancient and modern Indo-European tongues to pinpoint where and when the language family first arose.

Their study is reported in Science.

A language family is a group of languages that arose from a common ancestor, known as the proto-language.

Linguists identify these families by trawling through modern languages for words of similar sound that often describe the same thing, like water and wasser (German). These shared words - or cognates - represent our language inheritance.

According to the Ethnologue database, more than 100 language families exist.

The Indo-European family is one of the largest families - more than 400 languages spoken in at least 60 countries - and its origins are unclear.

The Steppes, or Kurgan, theorists hold that the proto-language originated in the Steppes of Russia, north of the Caspian Sea, about 5,000 years ago.

The Anatolia hypothesis - first proposed in the late 1980s by Prof Colin Renfrew (now Lord Renfrew) - suggests an origin in the Anatolian region of Turkey about 3,000 years earlier.

To determine which competing theory was the most likely, Dr Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland and his team interrogated language evolution using phylogenetic analyses - more usually used to trace virus epidemics.

Fundamentals of life

Phylogenetics reveals relatedness by assessing how much of the information stored in DNA is shared between organisms.

Chimpanzees and humans have a common ancestor and share about 98% of their DNA. Because of this shared ancestry, they cluster together on phylogenetic - or family - trees.

Like DNA, language is passed down, generation to generation.

Although language changes and evolves, some linguists have argued that cognates describing the fundamentals of life - kinship (mother, father), body parts (eye, hand), the natural world (fire, water) and basic verbs (to walk, to run) - resist change.

These conserved cognates are strongly linked to the proto-language of old.

Dr Atkinson and his team built a database containing 207 cognate words present in 103 Indo‐European languages, which included 20 ancient tongues such as Latin and Greek.

Using phylogenetic analysis, they were able to reconstruct the evolutionary relatedness of these modern and ancient languages - the more words that are cognate, the more similar the languages are and the closer they group on the tree.

The trees could also predict when and where the ancestral language originated.

Looking back into the depths of the tree, Dr Atkinson and his colleagues were able to confirm the Anatolian origin.

To test if the alternative hypothesis - of a Russian origin several thousand years later - was possible, the team used competing models of evolution to pitch Steppes and Anatolian theory against each other.

In repeated tests, the Anatolian theory always came out on top.

Commenting on the paper, Prof Mark Pagel, a Fellow of the Royal Society from the University of Reading who was involved in earlier published phylogenetic studies, said: "This is a superb application of methods taken from evolutionary biology to understand a problem in cultural evolution - the origin and expansion of the Indo-European languages.

"This paper conclusively shows that the Indo-European languages are at least 8-9,500 years old, and arose, as has long been speculated, in the Anatolian region of what is modern-day Turkey and spread outwards from there."

Commenting on the inclusion of ancient languages in the analyses, he added: "The use of a number of known calibration points from 'fossil' languages greatly strengthens the conclusions."

However, the findings have not found universal acceptance. Prof Petri Kallio from the University of Helsinki suggests that several cognate words describing technological inventions - such as the wheel - are evident across different languages.

He argues that the Indo-European proto-language diversified after the invention of the wheel, about 5,000 years ago.

On the phylogenetic methods used to date the proto-language, Prof Kallio added: "So why do I still remain sceptical? Unlike archaeological radiocarbon dating based on the fixed rate of decay of the carbon-14 isotope, there is simply no fixed rate of decay of basic vocabulary, which would allow us to date ancestral proto-languages.

"Instead of the quantity of the words, therefore, the trained Indo-Europeanists concentrate on the quality of the words."

Prof Pagel is less convinced by the counter-argument: "Compared to the Kurgan hypothesis, this new analysis shows the Anatolian hypothesis as the clear winner." >>

retrieved from  Click for the article  on 3rd of March, 2013.

Learners’ Perceptions and Attitudes toward Communicative Language Teaching in Turkish EFL Contexts

I have been working on my bachelor paper with two colleagues for five months from September 2011 to January 2012. It is about the implementation of Communicative Language Teaching in Turkish schools. It has been handed in as a thesis paper completing the necessities of graduating from ELT department, in Mersin University in 2012. All rights are reserved by Gamze Cokluk, Ferhat Kurt and Ugur Aslan.

Now, the educational system  in Turkey has changed a lot after the regulations in 2012, but it will be the focus of another entry. Here, i'll post the abstract first! Later, i'll go on publishing my paper! If you are interested in reading the whole paper, please contact me by commenting or sending an e-mail to "aslanugur01@gmail.com"

Learners’ Perceptions and Attitudes toward Communicative Language Teaching

in Turkish EFL Contexts

Abstract

Communicative Language Teaching was introduced to Turkish education system in 1997 and since then it has been highly appreciated by curriculum makers as well as language teachers.  However, there occur constraints in implementation of CLT in Turkish EFL settings even though the new Turkish EFL curriculum adopts a communicative approach to language teaching.  The present study is motivated by the review of previous literature revealing that although there are many studies dealing with teachers’ perceptions and attitudes toward CLT, few studies focused on the learners’ perceptions and attitudes toward communication-based instruction.  Consequently, the purpose of the present study is to find out a group of EFL learners’ perceptions and attitudes toward CLT in terms of instructional focus. 

The present study is conducted in ELT department of Mersin University with 148 preparatory and freshman students.  A Likert-type questionnaire, which was originally developed by Savignon and Wang (2003), was adopted and administered to collect data.  Data gathered by means of questionnaires were analyzed descriptively.  The findings of the study suggest a mismatch between learners’ classroom practices and their preferences in terms of instructional focus.  Most of the learners expressed that their high school EFL practices were mainly grammar-focused and they reported highly negative attitudes toward these practices.  The discrepancy between learners’ experiences and their actual preferences of instructional focus results in difficulties in implementation of CLT.

Semester Ends...

Last  week we  finished our lessons with Peter. Spring semester has ended up and now it is time to work on my exam paper, which is supposed to be handed in very soon. A little bit stressed with the thought in my mind that an exam (in fact two exams - one for English and one for educational studies) is soon, I try to deal with it  but that's how it work's all the time: whenever there is an exam, there comes anxiety and stres. Also since it is almost time to leave Denmark, it feels quite strange  and it is even harder to deal with all these stuff , thinking about leaving the country that you have been for the last nine months which has been a kind of home to you. But at least what I know from the last nine months that I have spent in Denmark is the fact that I have learnt a lot and I feel myself far more closer to being a teacher now thanks to all the possibilities of practicing (both in the classroom and out in Danish schools) I have had and all the things I have learnt from the lessons. For this reason, I am sad for leaving but I am also glad that I have come to Denmark and gone through all these. It might be a little sad but it is not the end of the story; in fact the story begins right after when I go back to Turkey. Only ten months were meant to be spent in Denmark, it is almost done and it is time to make use of what I have experienced in Denmark in my future life.

When it comes to the last lesson with Peter, I got a quite useful reflection. At the beginning of the lesson, Peter  gave us a list of ideas  that we could reflect upon a teacher's beahviors (such as avoiding hesitations, not being boring, smiling at the pupils, entering into the classroom in a confident, purposeful and assertive manner etc). Then, he asked us to prepare a short presentation of our first meeting with our pupils. Then, everybody got a challenge; a behavior that s/he should avoid or strengthen as a teacher. As I entered into the classroom, everything that I had in my mind (about avoiding certain behaviors or performing those I should) slipped away because I was quite anxious. Then, I added this into my own list of behaviors that I should avoid when I became a teacher: BE ANXIOUS? NO, absolutely something that I HAVE TO avoid. I calmed down later on during my presentation but my classmates' being reluctant about my activity and not responding to my utterances in any way  (except for Peter's challenge of pretending as if he did not understand the instructions of the activity to make me give the instructions in another way) discouraged me from doing the presentation. Anyway, maybe they also tried to create a challenge too but I would NOT give up in a REAL classroom environment where there were more than a few students, unlike that day. After my unfinished presentation, I got feedback from Peter and I just crossed out one of my challenges: do not form too long sentences while speaking with your students. As Peter commented on my presentation and as I normally do, I tend to use shorter sentences when I am supposed to teach because it is very important that your students understand you easily. Also, it is an important point for a language teacher not to form too complicated sentences especially when teaching English to young learners. So, maybe I was discouraged a little bit when my classmates did not listen to me but I still learned something in that lesson: be aware of the challenge you will meet when you are out there in front of your pupils. And YES: Challenge Accepted. :)

Bringing school to home in a backpack!

Should school stay at school ? 

In one of our lessons this semester, we discussed the dilemma of homework. As I found it interesting I decided to write my exam paper on this topic; and,  in fact, it is quite controversial with all the opposing beliefs about the impacts of homework on students. Paralel to what I personally believe and what researchers found out, homework has no academic benefit on especially young learners. In this video, an eleven year old American 5th grader claim that students do not need homework and he has really strong arguements. I came across hundreds of homework definitions while researching for this topic but his definiton of homework is really radical : Homework is bringing school to home in a backpack...

A Kestrel For a Knave - A Heartbreaking Story

A Kestrel For A Knave - A Heartbreaking Story

Well, when you start reading a book, you expect it to be interesting for you and to keep you reading. This book, A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines is exactly one of those. At first, it was an obligation (which is something I hate - reading books not because you like them but beacuse you are told to do so) to read the book for my English lessons  but when I started reading it, I couldn't help going deeper and deeper into Billy Casper's heartbreaking story.

The story is set in Barnsley, South Yorkshire and it is about a working class schoolboy named Billy Casper. Billy has a lot of problems both at school and at home. He is delivering newspapers in the mornings and his mother and his brother are mostly in the pub drinking. His brother, Jud, is always bullying him, just like almost every single person in Billy Casper's life. He is only interested in his kestrel, which he names "Kes". The story includes flashbacks in which we could see details about his capturing the kestrel and the details about Caspers' family. 

No caring at home, no love, sometimes no food; yes, basically nothing important in his life; the story of Billy Casper is really heartbreaking. Living with a bullying brother who steals his bike in the morning, Billy Casper is within the unfair arms of his fate because of the fact that he has to be a "survivor" in this unfair world. He is even thought to be an idiotic troublemaker at school. However, as we learn more about him and his story of training a wild kestrel, we see that he could do good at school too. So the story of Billy Casper is a very good example of how becoming passionate about something can change your life in a tough world.

The dialogues in the book are written in dialect but this makes the story even more realistic even though it takes time to get used to the language use in the dialogues. This book was also made into a movie (Kes) in 1969, the year after the book was published. Although the movie is also a great success I don't think that it can catch up with the book's great depictions. As Imogen Carter states in his review of the book  "Although undoubtedly a masterpiece, Loach's film can't match the novel's dazzling natural imagery... A dew drop becomes "the tiny egg of a mythical bird", a young lad rides his tricycle "his legs whirring like bees' wings". Hines's descriptions throughout highlight Billy's love of the natural world and the contrasting harshness of his home life." I haven't really made a list of "my all time favorite books" but if one day I decide to make one A Kestrel For A Knave is definitely going to be somewhere close to the top. 

"RudoLf Steiner" School Experience...

Last week, I was supposed to make presentation of my teaching practice and my video I have made with other friends from my group during my teaching practice about democracy and citizenship in Danish schools. However, Dorthe Palm arranged a school visit for us and that's why we postponed our presentation to this Wednesday and we went to a private school called Rudolf Steiner School. 

At first, I was a bit reluctant to go because I was in mood of doing the presentation which was almost the only focus of my studying for the last two months. Even though "democratic citizenship" is not a topic that I would normally study in Turkey, I had thought that it would be interesting to work on this topic when it was introduced for the first time. Focusing on this theme for the last couple of weeks, I even realized that I haven't paid enough attention to English lessons. Therefore after thinking about it, I decided to go to this private school; so that I could change my focus point a little bit towards my own subject again. After visiting the school, I am glad that I skipped the presentation and paid a visit to this private school.

Rudolf Steiner School is a private school in Vordingborg, Denmark. It is a little bit different from other schools I have been to during my stay in Denmark. The first thing that makes this school different from other Danish schools I have visited is the fact that Rudolf Steiner School has an interesting vision of the relationships between the teachers and the students: During my visit, I have had the chance to observe a music lesson, and an English lesson of 3th graders. At the beginning of the lesson the teacher of the lesson greeted the students in front of the class and they shook hands. The teacher looked at every single student's face, smiled and said "Hi!". As I was explained by one of the teachers of the school, this is kind of the vision of the school. They do it because they think that each student is a human being who deserves to be respected and who is supposed to respect others. As they shake hands (when they see each other for the first time in the morning and when they enter into the classroom) it means that they accept each other's presence and give the message that they care about each other (quite interesting understanding of caring school,caring teachers; right?). Torben Larsen, the French teacher at the school, calls it, Rudolf Steiner School (Rudolf Steiner Skolen in Danish), spiritual school and in this way they could see what is happening in the students' lives; namely they go inside the students. However, this tradition seemed a little bit strange to me. Because teachers in this school were more authoritative compared to the teachers I have seen in other Danish schools. And just before greetings in front of the classroom, the teachers set students in lines and ask them to put their hands on their chests, on hand over the other, creating a cross. This reminded me an army officer's marshaling the troops. Even though the teachers say that it has nothing to do with discipline I think that it is directly a disciplinary issue beacuse the students wait in lines with their hands on their chests until the silence is provided with the teachers' warnings.

The classrooms of the school are also a little bit different than other classrooms that I have observed in other Danish schools. First of all, they are quite big and they look like rooms of the houses more than classrooms. Students sit in rows unlike other Danish classrooms I have observed. Each line forms a kind of group and they have a special categorization for making the groups. They have four different category of students: the group of leaders( students that show leadership features ), the group of melancholic students( students that seem sad most of the time and behave like they have nothing good in their lives all the time) the group of hyper actives ( students that cannot stand still most of the time)  and the group of students that lose their attention very easily. The reason why they put the students with similar features together is that they can be more competitive in that way. 

In addition to this, in this school Danish culture is not the dominant culture. The school has an international view and they teach about other cultures as well. There is no seperate religion lessons in this school but the students learn about different religions and beliefs such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism etc.

Every week, in Rudolf Steiner School,  there is a meeting at the school hall in the morning. The students sing along and every week a different class show ( or say ) something about their work during the week. It may be about math, art, history anything that they have been working on. They share it with the other students, teachers and also some of the parents. On Wednesday, when I was lucky enough to see one of these meetings, a third year class performed some of their play at this meeting, which they have performed again on the stage later on during the day). 

Rudolf Steiner School is 37 seven-year old private school which seems to be quite unique in its path and which has obviously a different understanding of education and teaching. There is a kindergarden within the school's campuss as well as primary and lower secondary school until 10th grade. They start to teach German and/or English as a second language from the first grade. If a teacher, graduated from "normal" schools wants to be a teacher in Rudolf, s/he has to apply for a job at this school and if accepted for the job s/he is sent to Norway for three years to study to become "a Rudolf teacher".  

Red, Sunset...

It is 27th of March already! We are almost in April now, and days are getting longer and longer in Denmark. As we adjusted our clocks one hour forward yesterday, from now on we will have more daylight and late sunsets, which we have been missing for a long time. So, today, just on the day of setting our time one hour forward,  I had one of those perfect late sunsets watch. I enjoyed the sunset and all the beautiful colors of the sky in Vesthavnen (Vesthavnen, Brovejen Bridge; Vordingborg, Denmark), in Vordingborg. 

I have recently had a lot of problems with my computer. Today I decided to work a little on our video presentation in the evening but to my surprise my computer didn't work and I was very sad about it because I have all my data, photos, videos on my computer. I was quite worried about losing all of my data when my computer didn't work. A little bit upset about my computer, I just wanted to go for a walk and when I see the sunset from my window, which is the moment I decided to watch it from the harbour so that I could maybe feel better. Instead of walking, I cycled around 3 kilometers to the harbour to catch the late sunset on the west of Vordingborg. There it was! I had "a spectacularly red sunset" watch from the harbour. The colors on the horizon were so beautiful that I forgot all about my computer and got relieved with this exquisite show. Of course I remembered to take some pictures, too. Now, it is time to enjoy the long days and beautiful weather here in a northern European country, which presents probably the most beautiful natural phenomenons with its Northern lights, beautiful sunsets and long days with a lot of daylight.

Spring in Denmark and St. Patrick's Day 17th of March

Winter is almost over! Well -unluckily- only theoretically! Normally, 21st of March is the beginning of the Spring and when spring begins, it is supposed that trees turn into green, flowers blossom, and it gets warm and warm everyday . However, it is still quite cold in Denmark. Now, it is 0

°C  in Vordingborg but "the felt air temperature" ( also known as the apparent air temperature ) is -6

°C (Weather Forecast in Vordingborg) due to wind chill factor. It hasn't been snowing for a long time, too. So, the sky is gray, the trees are brown and it causes gloomy and boring days especially when it is cloudy - just like today. Even boring to talk about it, right?  Still, since today is St. Patrick's Day, I prefer talking about green, which is one of the most important signs of st. Patrick's Day. It is the day of GREEN! So, let's discover what is special about today?

About St. Patrick's Day!

The person who was to become St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Wales about AD 385. His given name was Maewyn, and he almost didn't get the job of bishop of Ireland because he lacked the required scholarship.

Far from being a saint, until he was 16, he considered himself a pagan. At that age, he was sold into slavery by a group of Irish marauders that raided his village. During his captivity, he became closer to God.

He escaped from slavery after six years and went to Gaul where he studied in the monastery under St. Germain, 

bishop of Auxerre for a period of twelve years. During his training he became aware that his calling was to convert the pagans to Christianity.

His wishes were to return to Ireland, to convert the native pagans to Christianity. But his superiors instead appointed St. Palladius. But two years later, Palladius transferred to Scotland. Patrick, having adopted that Christian name earlier, was then appointed as second bishop to Ireland.

St. Patrick's Day parades in USA - Chicago River 

Patrick was quite successful at winning converts. And this fact upset the Celtic Druids. Patrick was arrested several times, but escaped each time. He traveled throughout Ireland, establishing monasteries across the country. He also set up schools and churches which would aid him in his conversion of the Irish country to Christianity.

His mission in Ireland lasted for thirty years. After that time, Patrick retired to County Down. He died on March 17 in AD 461. That day has been commemorated as St. Patrick's Day ever since.

Much Irish folklore surrounds St. Patrick's Day. Not much of it is actually substantiated.

Some of this lore includes the belief that Patrick raised people from the dead. He also is said to have given a sermon from a hilltop that drove all the snakes from Ireland. Of course, no snakes were ever native to Ireland, and some people think this is a metaphor for the conversion of the pagans. Though originally a Catholic holy day, St. Patrick's Day has evolved into more of a secular holiday.

One traditional icon of the day is the shamrock. And this stems from a more bona fide Irish tale that tells how Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity. He used it in his sermons to represent how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity. His followers adopted the custom of wearing a shamrock on his feast day.

The St. Patrick's Day custom came to America in 1737. That was the first year St. Patrick's Day was publicly celebrated in this country, in Boston.

Today, people celebrate the day with parades, wearing of the green, and drinking beer. One reason St. Patrick's Day might have become so popular is that it takes place just a few days before the first day of spring. One might say it has become the first green of spring. 

( retrieved from wilstar.com on the 17th of March, 2011 )

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY DENMARK!!