"Integrating 21st Century Skills Training With Project Based Learning to Cultivate EFL Pre-service Teachers' Professional Skills

Hello!

Yesterday was the first day of  "Integrating 21st Century Skills Training With Project Based Learning to Cultivate EFL Pre-service Teachers' Professional Skills."( It is so long so from now on we will call this teacher training) After filling lots of forms and self reflection questions I was so excited to finally getting started to the lesson but before I that I need to tell you about the readings that I did and how they change my opinion. So this week's subjects were Critical Thinking Skills and English as a Global language. First reading was "Critical Thinking Skills for Education, Students Critical Thinking: Why is it Important and what is it Anyway?'' It was very short and very useful paper. It contains all the terminology you need to know and it gives small explanations about these terminology. It really did not change my opinion on anything what did change my opinion is this reading that I did "Why a global Language" by Crystal. There is a certain fact that English is a global language but have you ever thought why ?  Crystal argues that  contrary to popular beliefs what made English a global language were not reasons like ease of learning, its size of vocabulary, or its association with a great culture or religion but simply the power of the people who use this language to establish the global language and the economical power to maintain and expand it. He also says "with the technological developments English became the number one language that fuelled new mass entertainment industries which had a worldwide impact." So  I learned that it was not about how many people do speak the language, but rather its influence on world with its military power, economical power, technological power and cultural power, all combined makes a language the global language in our case this language is English. Now, let's talk about the lecture. It was more interactive than I thought. In the first part of the lesson we created a presentation collaboratively, we did group work together and shared our findings , we had a competition about the critical thinking skills( I came out 6th :( ), it was a lot of fun. In the second part of the lesson we talk about our understanding of English, we did a lot of speaking and our teachers contribute us with some facts. So to the end of the lesson it was very interactive. I'm so excited for the next lesson !

P.S : I'm sharing the link of the video we watched for the lesson by David Crystal. I advise you to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kvs8SxN8mc