A Cross-Cultural Teaching Experience Beyond Textbooks : Real-Life Teaching in a Turkish High School

Abstract

This paper is based on my Teaching Internship experience at Abdulkadir Paksoy Anadolu Lisesi School at Adana, Turkey where I have completed my internship, duration of four months as a component of the Bachelor’s degree. During my internship, I learned many teaching techniques, methods, ways of communicating with students from a different culture (Turkey), time management and a practical experience of how to conduct a class. As anEnglish Language teacher (part-time), I have initially observed how my mentor conducts each class and she further taught me where to collect the resources from, how to use the digital tools and monitor screen to engage with the students more. My supervisor from theschool suggested that I use the ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ method and prepare lesson plans according to this method. Other than that, my mentor has guided me with another effective teaching method that she often uses: ‘PPP (presentation, practice, production)’ . This is an approach of language teaching that follows three stages. While observing the classes, I noted these methods practically and prepared lesson plans accordingly. I have conducted the classes as per my lesson plans and used basic to advanced English to be more understandable. I have faced many challenges such as nervousness, confusion about whether they understand me ornot, if I could finish the planned lessons in time, preparing worksheets and maintaining their study curriculum. This experience has helped me greatly to overcome my fear of speaking and made me realise that teaching is fun, especially when the students liked and respected me more as their teacher. This teaching internship experience will help me craft my teaching career in the future.