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This study examines the decision-making behaviors of raters with varying levels of experience while assessing EFL essays of distinct qualities. The data were collected from 28 raters with varying levels of rating experience and working at the English language departments of different universities in Turkey. Using a 10-point analytic rubric, each rater voice-recorded their thoughts through think-aloud protocols (TAPs) while scoring 16 essays of distinct text qualities and provided brief score explanations. Data collected from TAPs were analyzed by using a coding scheme adapted from Cumming, Kantor, and Powers (2002). The results revealed that text quality has a larger effect than rating experience on raters’ decision-making behaviors. In addition, raters prioritized aspects of style, grammar, and mechanics when rating low-quality essays, but emphasized rhetoric and their general impressions of the text for high-quality essays. Furthermore, low-experienced raters differed more in their behaviors while assessing scripts of distinct qualities than did the medium- and high-experienced groups. The findings suggest that raters’ scoring behaviors might evolve with practice, resulting in less variation in their decisions. As such, this research provides implications for developing strategy-based rater training programs, which might help to increase consistency across raters of different experience levels.

A clear understanding of terminology is crucial in any academic field. When it is clear that complex interdisciplinary concepts are interpreted differently depending on the academic field, geographical setting or cultural values, it is time to take action. Given this, the Glossary for Academic Integrity, newly developed by the European Network for Academic Integrity project, served as the basis for compiling a comprehensive taxonomy of terms related to academic integrity. Following a rigorous coding exercise, the taxonomy was partitioned into three constituent components – Integrity, Misconduct and Neutral terms. A review of relevant literature sources is included, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing taxonomies are discussed in relation to this new offering. During the creation of these artefacts the authors identified and resolved many differences between their individual interpretative understandings of concepts/terms and the viewpoints of others. It is anticipated that the freely-available glossary and taxonomy will be explored and valued by researchers, teachers, students and the general public alike.

Çelik, Özgür (Balikesir Author), There is a general belief that software must be able to easily do things that humans find difficult. Since finding sources for plagiarism in a text is not an easy task, there is a wide-spread expectation that it must be simple for software to determine if a text is plagiarized or not. Software cannot determine plagiarism, but it can work as a support tool for identifying some text similarity that may constitute plagiarism. But how well do the various systems work? This paper reports on a collaborative test of 15 web-based text-matching systems that can be used when plagiarism is suspected. It was conducted by researchers from seven countries using test material in eight different languages, evaluating the effectiveness of the systems on single-source and multi-source documents. A usability examination was also performed. The sobering results show that although some systems can indeed help identify some plagiarized content, they clearly do not find all plagiarism and at times also identify non-plagiarized material as problematic., HTW Berlin

The lingua franca role of English has made a significant contribution toward developing foreign language teaching curriculums from an intercultural perspective. The present study aimed to investigate how pre-service and in-service foreign language teachers consider the integration of culture into language teaching. The participants⿿ understanding of cultural elements they think should be integrated more in the curriculum was in the focus of the study, in addition to possible differences between perceptions of pre-service and in-service teachers. The study was carried out with 4th grade ELT students at the Faculty of Education, Pamukkale University⿿a state university in Turkey⿿and English instructors at the School of Foreign Languages at the same university in the fall term of 2015/16 academic year. Data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively via an inventory of cultural components and interviews. In total, 43 instructors and 75 students responded to the inventory. Five students and four instructors were also interviewed. The inventory included 45 elements of culture under nine categories: ⿿intellectual values⿿, ⿿lifestyles⿿, ⿿behaviours⿿, ⿿media⿿, ⿿artistic values⿿, ⿿family⿿, ⿿minor values⿿, ⿿major values⿿, and ⿿formal values⿿. The results indicate that both pre-service and in-service teachers consider a wide range of cultural elements should be integrated into language teaching to enable the development of intercultural skills. Interview sessions revealed reasons why teachers think that culture should be integrated. Findings are expected to contribute to development of foreign language teaching curriculums that give importance to intercultural competence.

14th Language, Literature and Stylistics Symposium -- OCT 15-17, 2014 -- Selcuk, TURKEY WOS:000353900600047 Intercultural competence is needed for effective and appropriate intercultural interactions. However, differences between individuals and specific factors, such as directness/indirectness and collectivism/individualism, should be considered when examining cultural adaptation. This paper aims to reveal the possible effects that language proficiency has on cultural adaptation. Although the 31 American teachers surveyed in this study had different levels of Turkish language proficiency, the results indicated no significant differences between their language proficiency and sociocultural adaptation. However, a significant negative correlation was found between previous experience abroad and successful sociocultural adaptation in Turkey. The main conclusion of this study questions the relationship between traditional conceptions of language proficiency and successful sociocultural adaptation. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Dokuz Eylul Univ, Fac Educ, English Language Educ Dept

This study investigated the impact of a metacognitive reading strategy training programme (METARESTRAP) on metacognitive reading strategies and reading comprehension. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 93 freshmen in the English Language Teaching Department of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. After pre and post reading tests and a metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire were administered, the six-week METARESTRAP was implemented. The results demonstrated that METARESTRAP significantly fostered reading comprehension skills by providing awareness of metacognition along with declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge about metacognitive reading strategies. It can be concluded that METARESTRAP worked well specifically for matching-type cohesion, coherence, text structure, and global meaning questions along with multiple-choice-type main idea, opinion, detail, and reference questions. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This true-experimental design research study investigated the effect of prelistening relaxation and self-affirmation exercises on the listening comprehension test scores of 70 learners of English in the English Language Teaching department of a state university in Turkey. Participants in the experimental group completed relaxation and self-affirmation exercises before six listening comprehension practice tests while those in the control group took the same tests without exposure to such exercises. The t-test results did not reveal any significant difference, indicating that pre-listening exercises had no significant effect on listening comprehension test performance. Anxiety levels were tested through the Test Influence Inventory (TII). Pre TII results did not show any relationship between participants’ self-perceived test anxiety levels and listening comprehension test scores and groups did not differ significantly in terms of anxiety levels, although there was a significant gender difference. However, post TII results using an independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference, indicating that the pre-listening relaxation and self-affirmation exercises had a positive effect on the reported test anxiety levels of learners in the experimental group. ANOVA analysis revealed a significant main effect on the anxiety levels of the time that TII was administered, that is when it was given before versus after the experiment, as well as significant effects between time and gender, time and group, and time, gender and group. Tests of between-subject effects also revealed a significant main effect of group on TII scores.

This study aims at investigating the effect of WhatsApp on teaching English idioms to EFL students. The data were collected from 33 B1 level students. The researchers provided the students with three idioms per week for five weeks via WhatsApp. The participants found sample sentences, shared them in their WhatsApp groups, and had discussions in English regarding the use and meaning of the idioms. Students were given an achievement test and a sub-sample group of students were interviewed to see the effectiveness of this application. The results revealed how students benefited from WhatsApp as a learning tool and their reactions to mobile learning outside the classroom context. The findings highlight the place of mobile learning in foreign language education. Bu çalışmada, WhatsApp mobil uygulamasının öğrencilere İngilizce deyimlerin öğretimi üzerindeki etkisini araştırmak hedeflenmiştir. Araştırmanın verisi, orta (B1) düzeyde İngilizce yeterliliğe sahip 33 öğrenciden toplanmıştır. Haftada 3 kez olmak üzere 5 hafta boyunca araştırmacılar, WhatsApp grupları üzerinden öğrencilere İngilizce deyim göndermişlerdir. Öğrenciler, deyimlerle ilgili örnek cümleler bulmuş, buldukları cümleleri WhatsApp gruplarında paylaşmış ve deyimlerin anlamları ve kullanımları ile ilgili İngilizce tartışmalar yürütmüşlerdir. Bu uygulamanın etkinliğini ölçmek adına, öğrencilere başarı testi uygulanmış ve altörneklem öğrencilerle mülakat yapılmıştır. Bu araştırmanın sonuçları, öğrencilerin öğrenme aracı olarak WhasApp uygulamasından ne ölçüde yararlandıklarını ve sınıf dışında mobil öğrenmeye olan tutumlarını ortaya koymuştur. Araştırmanın bulguları, mobil teknolojinin yabancı dil öğretimindeki yerini ön plana çıkarmaktadır.

Similarity reports of plagiarism detectors should be approached with caution as they may not be sufficient to support allegations of plagiarism. This study developed a 50-item rubric to simplify and standardize evaluation of academic papers. In the spring semester of 2011-2012 academic year, 161 freshmen’s papers at the English Language Teaching Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey, were assessed using the rubric. Validity and reliability were established. The results indicated citation as a particularly problematic aspect, and indicated that fairer assessment could be achieved by using the rubric along with plagiarism detectors’ similarity results.