The other day I read a poem on the Henry Brothers’ blog by Richard Gresswell and it goes by the name of ‘My Teacher Identity‘. Such a great poem. While reading it, I could hear the song ‘Killing me softly‘ in the background 🙂
Remember the lines.. ‘He is singing my life with his words..’ That’s how I felt. The poem is about being in progress all the time, trying to be the best you can be, the sense of ‘becoming’ and such things that is how all good teachers feel, I believe..
Anyway..I’ll come straight to my point.. Long story in short, Richard told me ‘I’ve noticed from blogging and Twitter that there is a thriving community of English language teacher bloggers living in Turkey and that you even run blogging courses – amazing.’ And then he asked me to share my favorite blogs from the Turkish ELT community..
Educational Blogging keeps becoming more and more popular around the world. And as Richard recognised, Turkish educators are also getting very familiar with this powerful and effective technology tool everyday. They blog individually and blog with their students.
And below -of course there are many others- is a list of my favorite Turkish ELT Bloggers. Enjoy reading!
- Burcu Akyol’s Blog Reflections and insights about teaching, technology, and life & practical tips and resources..
- Esra’s Englishous Blog All about a kindergarten teacher interested in technology and everything new and useful for teaching
- Burcu’s Teaching and Learning Zone As the best teachers are learners themselves …
- Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog About teaching, learning, reflecting and being a 21st century learner & teacher..
- Işıl Boy’s Blog Educational technology..
- A Journey In TEFL by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan
- Canan Elicin’s Blog How to Make the Process of Teaching and Learning a Language Enjoyable..
- Nesrin Eren’s Blog Matters in ELT/ESL/EFL..
- Sultan Zeydan’s Blog Sultan’s ELT Topia..
- English Messages In A Bottle by Yesim Cakır – An ELT Blog for teachers and students.
- Merve Oflaz To teach is to touch lives forever..
- ELT Teacher Development by Evridiki Dakos
- Busem Doğan’s Blog Tips, tricks and strategies on English Language Teaching..
- Neslihan Durmusoglu Reflections on the world of EFL and being a 21st century learner & teacher ..
Nihal YILDIRIM`s BLoG 
And all women!!! where are the Turkish men bloggers! thanks for the plug!
Yeh henrybrothers what’s going on 🙂
I hope you guys don’t think that I am a man-hater!
I really don’t know where they are! 🙂
Hey Nihal what a fantastic post 🙂
I’m so happy and grateful you’ve posted this. You point out that all the bloggers are women (and Turkish of course). I’m not surprised by this really, but why?
Firstly we tend to see more women teachers than men – why is this? I don’t know.
In language learning and teaching we tend to see more women than men – why is this? I don’t know.
In blogging we tend to see more women than men – why is this? I don’t know.
Turkey has a special thriving community of bloggers and tweeters – why is this? I don’t know.
So I’m not surprised, but have no answers to these questions. I hope you and your readers can help me find some because now I’m hooked.
What I do know is that all of you are creating such wonderful blogs and I’m so happy Nihal that you have shared them with us, so thank you.
Ok got my homework cut out for the weekend now and I’m going to read all these blogs 🙂 – The weather forecast here in the UK is that the big freeze is coming, so I’m going to wrap up warm and read, not that I need any excuses 🙂
Thank you Nihal and have a great weekend.
Regards
Richard
Great post Nihal and comments Richard. We launched shortly after this post was written and we are both male teachers and non-native Turkish speaking English teachers (trying saying that five times). Check us out at http://www.turkslearnenglish.com/blog for some of our learning content. We write most of our content focused on our students, but we also include some ESL/EFL industry content.
Cheers,
Kris
Umm maybe women are better than men? kidding! 🙂 I don’t have the answers as well..
I’m glad you liked it and sure you’ll enjoy reading them!
You too have a great and warm weekend!
Dear Nihal,
Thank you for this great post. It’s great to see the increasing number of the English teachers blogging in Turkey. I think more are on the way. The British Council is now running a race called TeachingEnglish Blogathon (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blog)
and I am sure more teachers will take a step into the magic world of blogging after the race.
And for the discussion: That must be the power of women I guess:))) (kidding:)
I think it cannot be a coincidence and maybe this should take place in new blog post:)
Keep up the good work and stay in touch:)
Cheers
Merve Oflaz
Dear Merve,
I also don’t think that this is a coincidence.. We, women, do good work and it will surely keep becoming better! 🙂
Thank you for your comment and thank you for the new post idea! 🙂
I’m a man but you are right. Women are more patient and hardworking. You, women,good work and it will surely keep becoming better!
Hi again,
Your post inspired me on today’s post. Thank you Nihal:) I think the discussion on the power of the women will go on:)))
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/merveoflaz/power-women
Dear Merve, I just read your post on BritishCouncil and I can’t wait to read the responses to your questions.. 🙂
Thanks for the plug and..
Run Merve run!
Hi Nihal, Merve, babakartal
Of course we see plenty of men blogging but I was just impressed by the number of really great teacher blogs coming out of Turkey, and it just so happened all the bloggers are women in Nihal’s post.
I’m studying this subject for my PhD in the UK – thesis ‘Teacher identity and blogging’ – I’m not looking at gender specifically but of course it might be something important to think about.
What would be really great if any of you wanted to take part in my study? 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thanks again Nihal for the post and well done Merve for kicking off the discussion over at Teaching English
Love the comments about female booggers/bloggers – hopefully, I’ve made up for the lack of males on the listing (but we need more of both genders) 😉
T..