21st Century Skills Traning

Reflection on the First Week of the Training

We were invited to participate in a research study titled “Integrating 21st Century Skills Training With Project-Based Learning to Cultivate EFL Pre-service Teachers’ Professional Skills”, carried out by Melda Yılmaz as part of Bahçeşehir University English Language Education Ph.D Programme in Istanbul, Turkey. And now, we are a part of this study that will bring great opportunities and benefits to us, the English teachers of the future. Here is my reflection from the first week of our training. 

In our first session, we talked about ' Critical Thinking'. What is critical thinking? Who are the weak critical thinkers and who are the strong ones? 

Critical thinking is a skill that includes thinking, analyzing everything in a clear, rational, and deep way. Strong critical thinkers have some characteristics like inquisitiveness, investigation, observation, analyzing, creativity, evaluation, open-mindedness, objectivity... Those people find and trust reliable sources, and they do not allow any illusions to cloud their truths. Weak critical thinkers are not like strong ones. They are not decisive and self-asserting. 

Critical thinking  should be developed because with critical thinking, someone can see everything more clearly and from other perspectives that will be more beneficial for a matter.

We were divided into groups and discussed Critical Thinking. In that group work, we saw how collaboration works. Everyone in the group had a duty and we worked and interact together. 

In the second session of our training, we discussed English as a Global Language. Before the session, we were supposed to read an article and watch a conversation by David Crystal who is a famous linguist. With the light of our pre-knowledge, we talked about ' Why do we need a global language?', ' Why English is a global language?', and ' what will happen to English as a global language in the future?'

Global language is a language that is accepted and used by a lot of people around the world.If a language is used for a big population around the world, economical to learn and communicate, and if it is used by countries and politicians that have power in lots of areas like military, economy, geographical location, trade, media, etc. that language can be a global language. The world has changed and developed so much, and people do not want to have obstacles at communication while they do not have obstacles at reaching information, marketing, trading, transportation, and reaching all the people across the world. So with the aim of, getting information, marketing our products, know different people and places we need a language that collects us in a common denominator. This is why I have chosen this illustration, language collects us in a common denominator.

The inference that I elicited from David Crystal and our session is; if a nation is recognized as a powerful nation by other nations, its language can be a global language and it is valid for English. Because as David Crystal said other nations want to be like this nation, they want to interact, communicate, sell, and learn things from this nation.  He claims that countries want to communicate with each other, so we need a global language in today’s world. English supply this interaction with people. And English will continue to be a global language as far as its speakers have power and continue to use this language. And we as users of the English language own that language, we can not categorize its speakers by putting it certain form, a language far beyond the forms, limits. It is us.

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