The present research aimed at conducting an analysis of metaphors Turkish pre-service language teachers generated about English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. This study also examined whether and how the metaphors created by teacher candidates at different phases of their education demonstrated variation. The data gathered from 94 participants were analyzed using the taxonomy of metaphors developed by Oxford and her colleagues (1998). The analysis revealed a gradual decline in participants" views of teacher as a professional responsible for social order and cultural transmission as they became more acculturated into the profession. The few occurrences of learner-centered metaphors and the predominance of teacher-centered metaphors in the initial years were replaced with more learner-centered metaphors. The results supported the initial assumption about the impact of class level differences on prospective teachers" thinking about teaching and learning. The transformation in participants" perception is indicative of how their professional identity is perpetually constructed and reconstructed during teacher preparation.
Metadiscourse is essential in establishing pragmatically effective academic written communication. However, little is known about how metadiscourse is used in written texts produced by tertiary level second language learners. This corpus-based linguistic research study aims to explore the frequencies and usages of metadiscourse markers in student essays written by Turkish learners of English and investigate the divergences from native speaker norms. As reference corpora, British Academic Written English (BAWE) and British National Corpus (BNC) were used. We found that in academic discourse, regardless of experience in writing (novice or expert) and L1 language background, interpersonal metadiscourse markers are used more frequently than textual metadiscourse markers. The commonalities between novice non-native and expert native writers together with differences between two native speaker groups suggest that pragmatic competence, particularly metadiscourse use, develops by experience regardless of L1 background.
The increasing importance of computers in today's world forces teachers and educators to become technology-proficient teachers, and to make use of technology in the classroom practices. All over the world most countries acknowledging the need for technologically proficient teachers, have started to infuse some degree of technological competency into pre-service teacher training programmes. Turkey was not an exception. The
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