ONGOING 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-Betil Eröz, Gökçe Erkan, Bilal Kırkıcı, Merve Bozbıyık; (ii)Bosphorus Univ.-Yasemin Bayyurt, Şebnem Yalçın, Yavuz Kurt; (iii) Bilkent Univ. and (iv) Kadir Has Universities -Feza Kerestecioğlu)

For our Project assistants and more: emi.metu.edu.tr/en

This project aims to investigate the teaching and learning procedures at English Medium Instruction (EMI) universities in Turkey in an attempt to explore the effective and ineffective practices via corpus-assisted discourse analysis. 300 hours of video recordings will be obtained from 65 different disciplines/ undergraduate programs of 10 different faculties in five different higher education institutions that use English as the medium of instruction in Turkey and will be transcribed to reach collections of practices. Surveys with students and stimulated recall protocols with instructors will be used as supplementary data to the English Medium Instruction Corpus  (EMIC) that will be built. Based on the effective and ineffective practices to be obtained from evidence-based authentic data, an EMI classroom interaction framework and a series of in-service training modules will be developed. The outputs will include practical suggestions for institutions that ongoingly implement or wish to implement EMI as their institutional language policy in Turkey and abroad.

PAST PROJECTS

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/

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.

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.

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.

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/

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)

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.

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.)