ONGOING PROJECTS
2025-… TDK Ulusal Türkiye Derlemi Projesi// Turkish Language Association, National Turkish Corpus Project
Personal role: Academic Coordinator/Consultant for the Spoken sub-Corpora; Project Team: DISCORE members
A TDK post about the collaboration: https://www.instagram.com/p/DF8BxtmCwwd/
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2025-…. English Medium Instruction Corpus (EMIC) Project
The English-Medium Instruction Corpus (EMIC) is a multimodal and interdisciplinary spoken academic corpus being developed at Middle East Technical University (METU) by the METU EMI Research Network.
Personal Role: Project Manager
EMIC offers an extensive and principled collection of naturally occurring EMI classroom interactions across a wide range of disciplines, instructional formats. Spanning data collected between 2021 and 2025, EMIC currently includes transcriptions of over 90 hours of video-recorded EMI classroom interactions. The speech event types represented in EMIC include lectures, seminars, and active learning environments such as labs and studios, capturing the diversity of instructional discourse and pedagogical practices in real-time. The corpus currently includes data from more than 30 departments across six major academic disciplines: (Arts and Humanities, Design and Architecture, Educational and Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Natural and Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Management. These disciplinary categories were defined through a cross-referencing of course codes, instructional practices, and disciplinary discourse norms, acknowledging the complexity and intersectionality of disciplinary classifications. (see Işık-Güler, Turan, Şimşek-Tontuş & Köse, 2024)
With its comprehensive scope, EMIC is comparable to other available academic corpora (e.g., BASE, MICASE, ELFA, EmiBO) and differs in its recency and unique understanding of representativeness, interactivity, and multimodality. EMIC data in its entirety is transcribed using Jeffersonian Transcription Conventions. A selected portion is currently being annotated to include gestures, spatial movement, and other non-verbal modes (see EMIGeCo). Our approach to the transcription and annotation of the data enables not only corpus linguistic analyses but also multimodal conversation analysis (CA) of academic communication. The EMIC corpus offers researchers and educators insights into: (a) real-time EMI instructional language and pedagogical discourse, (b) disciplinary variations in EMI classroom interaction, (c) patterns of student participation and lecturer questioning, (d) turn-taking, word count, and interactional density, (e) Integration of multimodal teaching resources. Through its robust data architecture and interdisciplinary design, EMIC aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of EMI discourse and provides an empirical foundation for pedagogy, policy, and further corpus-based research in multilingual higher education.
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PAST PROJECTS
2022- …. TUBITAK 1001 // Project code 121K227: Developing an in-service training framework for faculty members in English Medium Universities (Grant awarded: 1.826.158,06 TL) built on a classroom discourse corpus (EMIC).
Personal Role: Project Manager
Research team: (i) METU, (ii) Boğaziçi (iii) Bilkent Univ. and (iv) Kadir Has Universities:
Project website: https://emi.metu.edu.tr/en
This study aimed to identify the key factors influencing teaching and learning processes in English-medium instruction (EMI) universities through a multi-layered approach and to develop a comprehensive in-service training framework that is responsive to the contextual needs of different disciplines. Conducted at four leading EMI institutions in Türkiye (Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Kadir Has University, and Bilkent University), the research examined in detail the linguistic, interactional, body language and gesture-based strategies employed by faculty members teaching disciplinary program courses. To this end, multi-source data were collected through both qualitative (classroom video recordings and stimulated-recall interviews) and quantitative (surveys) methods. Effective and ineffective practices were compiled via corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The dataset used comprises 150 hours of classroom video recordings along with the outputs of surveys and stimulated-recall interviews; these were analyzed at both micro and macro levels using the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, descriptive statistics, and thematic analysis. The findings demonstrate in detail how linguistic and multimodal interaction strategies (such as translanguaging, etc) in EMI classrooms play a critical role in enhancing students’ comprehension and participation. Furthermore, our findings reveal that providing discipline-specific, context-based support and guidance tailored to the diverse needs of students and instructors is more effective than one-size-fits-all approaches. Based on these results, an evidence-based, interaction-focused in-service training framework was developed for EMI faculty. The developed online training modules are intended to support faculty professional development and enhance the quality and effectiveness of EMI programs.
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2018-2022 Turkish Corpus of Student Written Language Project/Türkçe Söz Varlığı Projesi (TSVP)
Aim: Building a ‘Turkish Nation-wide Corpus for Student Written Language’ for Grades 2 thru 12 in Turkey. (Project Lead by: The Ministry of National Education/Turkey, (TTKB) Talim Terbiye Kurulu Başkanlığı)
A news article about the project: https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/egitim/meb-1-milyon-ogrenciden-turkce-soz-varligi-icin-veri-toplayacak/1886575)
Personal Role: Scientific Advisor; Academic Coordinator for the province of Ankara (w/Esranur Efeoğlu-Özcan)
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2019-2022 Call Center Interaction Project
Aim: Conversation Analysis (CA) informed investigation of Call Center operator-client interactions in Turkey.
Personal Role: Project Leader
Project Researchers: Merve Bozbıyık (METU & Hacettepe University), Esranur Efeoğlu-Özcan (Gazi University & METU
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2019 METU Project Coordinator for “Enhancing Academic Leadership and Governance of Chinese and European Universities in the Context of Innovation and Internationalization (LEAD2). (Erasmus+ KA2 Capacity Building Project, Project Manager VUB, Prof. Chang Zhu.)
Website: http://www.lead2-project.eu/
Role: I lead the research team that focused on “Gender and Leadership”. The sub-project we were running aimed to understand how gender and power as dynamic and interrelated concepts operate throughout the leadership experiences of women in the academia and sought to provide insight into women’s experiences as academic leaders in EU and China by employing a comparative perspective.
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2016 – 2018 METU Project Coordinator for “Governance and Academic Leadership of Chinese and European Universities in the Context of Innovation and Internationalization (LEAD). (Erasmus+ KA2 Capacity Building Project, Project Manager VUB, Prof. Chang Zhu.)
Description: The LEAD project is an Erasmus+ KA2 Capacity Building Project in the field of Higher Education supported by the European Commission.The LEAD project brings together experts and stakeholders in university governance and academic leadership from EU and China. The European expertise and experiences will help the Chinese HEIs to strengthen their governance and leadership for innovation and internationalisation.The project is coordinated by Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and aims to enhance the capacity of higher education institutions related to governance and academic leadership in the context of innovation and internationalisation of higher education. In the framework of the project, six series of workshops in the EU and China have been organised from October 2015 to October 2018. LEAD 5th series of workshops on University Governance and Academic Leadership in the context of innovation and internationalization, took place at METU in Ankara from 1-5 May 2018. The LEAD project has provided unique training, workshops and role-model learning opportunities for university management teams, and an exchange platform between European and Chinese partners.
Project website: http://lead-project.org/
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2015- …… Building a Corpus of Institutional Academic Meeting Talk in The Higher Education English Language School Setting (Kurumsal Akademik Toplantı Konusmaları Derlemi Olusturma Projesi) (Project Manager: Hale Işık-Güler; Researcher: Alyona Iriskulova) METU funded Research Project No: BAP-05-03-2016-001
Description: The study aimed to build a Corpus of Institutional Academic Meeting talk in the Turkish higher education EFL context with the preliminary aim of looking into the interactive organization structure of meetings, which to date has been a scarcely researched area. Working within the paradigm of conversational analysis, the researchers were interested in revealing how the transition from pre-meeting multiparty interaction to meeting interaction and back happens, how the meeting unfolds in terms of its participants’ taking turns, and how the interactional relationships between the participants develop, or in other words how the organizational structure of meetings operate within the institutional culture. Therefore, three main areas/parts to meeting talk have been chosen for detailed analysis: openings and closings, turn-taking patterns, and enactment of in-group/out-groupness. For the purpose, 60 hours of institutional meeting talk (between instructors, heads of teaching units and other admin personnel) at a private university preparatory English school were recorded and transcribed paying special attention to multimodality features by the use of Transana software to construct a corpus of meeting talk.
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2015- …… The Enacment and Co-Construction of European Identity: Multiparty Conversations of Incoming and Outgoing Erasmus Students (Avrupa Kimliği’nin Gelen Ve Giden Erasmus Ögrenci Gruplarının Söylemlerinde Gözlenme Sekilleri ve Kimlğin Birlikte İnşası) (Project Manager: Hale Işık-Güler; Researcher: Seda Okur) METU funded Research Project No: BAP-07-03-2016-014
Description (T): Bu projenin amacı Erasmus deneyiminin Avrupa Kimliği oluşması üzerindeki etkilerini incelemektir. Proje, Avrupa Kimliği’ nin Erasmus öğrencilerinin söylemlerinde nasıl yansıtıldığını ve bu söylemlerin Avrupa Kimliği inşasına nasıl katkıda bulunduğunu araştırmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın katılımcıları, 2015-2016 yılında ODTÜ ile Avrupa’daki bir üniversite arasındaki işbirliği sonucu Erasmus hibesi ile giden ya da gelen öğrencilerdir. Bu öğrencilere ek olarak Erasmus programından hiç yararlanmamış olan öğrenciler de çalışmaya dahil edilmiştir. Bu öğrenciler kullanılarak a) Erasmus giden öğrenciler b) Erasmus gelen öğrenciler c) Erasmus hem gelen hem giden öğrenciler d) Erasmus programından yararlanmamış olan öğrenciler olmak üzere dört veya beş kişilik 4 grup oluşturmuş ve öğrencilere tartışma başlatıcı sorular verilerek, Avrupa kimliği ve Erasmus deneyimleri üzerine tartışmaları istenmiştir. Bu görüşmeler tüm çokkipli (Eng. multimodal) kaynakların kayıt altına alınabilmesi için farklı açılardan iki video kamera ile kaydedilmiş ve kayıtların tamamının Konuşma Analizi (Eng. Conversation Analysis-CA) metodu ile transkripsiyonu ve analizi Transana 3.0 programı kullanılarak yapılmıştır. Bu proje sonucunda, en önemli öğrenci değişim programlarından biri olan Erasmus programının Avrupa Kimliği inşası üzerindeki üzerindeki etkileri sosyo-dilbilimsel olarak ortaya çıkarılmıştır.
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BAP Project: İletişimde İncelik Ve Duygu : İngilizce ve Türkçe Geribildirim Öğelerinin İşlevleri Üzerine Derlem Tabanlı Ve Derleme Dayalı Bir Araştırma. (Project Manager: Hale Işık-Güler) METU funded Research Project No: BAP-05-03-2011-001
Description (T): Arastirmada Turkçe ve Ingilizcedeki geribildirim ogelerinin konuşmalardaki kullanimlarini ve duygusal anlamlarini derlem tabanlı ve derleme dayali bir yontemle ele alip islemleyici ogeler olarak karsilastirilmistir. Veritabani olarak British National Corpus’un sozlu bolumu, Turkce icin ise Sozlu Turkce Derlemi kullanilmis ve her iki dil icin konusma turu ve ortami ozellikleri bakimindan kosutluk gosteren iki alt derlem hazırlanmistir. Inceleme ve kodlama yontemi olarak derlem dilbilimin isaretleme yontem ve araclarından yararlanilmistir. Geribildirim ogelerinin tumce yapisi icindeki konumları ile edimbilimsel ve duygusal anlamlarinin isaretlenmesi rica ve emir sozeylemleri baglaminda yapilmistir. Ogelerin incelik stratejisi olarak kullanim ozellikleri konusmanin amacina göre irdelenmistir ve betimlemede, bir sonraki asamada Appraisal Teorisi’nden yararlanilacaktır. Projenin bulgulari Turkce ile Ingilizcede duygusal anlamin üretimi ve yorumu ile ilgili edimbilimsel ozelliklerin aciga cikarilmasinda onemli bir bilgi kaynagidir.
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2008-2011 TUBİTAK EVRENA Research Project: Development of “METU Spoken Turkish Corpus”; Position: Researcher
Funded by the The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Sukriye Ruhi.
Decription: The project aimed to construct a large-scale computer-based, searchable, transcribed and tagged corpus of naturally occurring samples of Turkish spoken in Turkey –underscoring the ‘discursive features’ of the language. The linguistic annotation on the visual and auditory recordings incorporated in the corpus will be managed with EXMARaLDA (Extensible Markup Language for Discourse Annotation). The spoken corpus is expected to function as a first, significant step toward the development of future spoken and written Turkish corpora, comparable in size to the British National Corpus and the American National Corpus.
Project Website: http://std.metu.edu.tr/
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2006-2007 YÖK (The Council of Higher Education of the Republic of Turkey) BA in ELT Curriculum/Course Content/Descriptions Renewal Project
Personal Duties: Writing the course definitions for (for the linguistics and methodology modules/courses) in the revised English Language Teacher Education Departments curriculum . (with Prof.Dr. Aysegul Daloglu)
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2002-2005 “Dil-Kültür iliskisi Baglamında Turkce ile Yabancı Dil Olarak İngilizce’nin Kullaniminda Etkilesim ilkeleri” (Eng. Interplay of Language and Culture in the use of communicative principles in Turkish and English as a Foreign Language) METU funded Research Project No: BAP -2002.05.03.01; Project Manager: Prof. Dr. Sukriye Ruhi; Personal duties: (Researcher) Tool development, data collection and analysis.
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2001-2004 “Culture and Communication: Cross-Cultural Explorations of the Sociocultural Interactional Principles (SIPs) underlying Language Use: A Collaborative International Research Project”
Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Helen Spencer-Oatey, UK eUniversities Worldwide and the Centre for Intercultural Training & Research. Personal duties: (Researcher) Data collection for the Turkish sample (translations of the tools, developing and maintaining and internet based data collection web site, etc.)