Here I am posting a revised format of one of my scholarship application cover letters. I had applied for FLTA program provided by Fulbright, and I had been accepted. However, the program was cancelled and I was suggested to be given the scholarship the following year. Yet, I have been out of country since then and didn't have chance to apply for it again.
Please have a look at the essay below, and tell me if it is a good essay to be used in different applications when revised or if it still reflects the idea of the first scholarship I had applied.
Your comments are welcomed, and if you think it can to be used 'partially' for your essays or for creating ideas, you are welcome to use.
Thank you!
Elvan Katmer
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WHY DO I APPLY AND WHAT’S MY PLAN?
Teaching experience is one of the important criteria while choosing a teacher for an institute as well as the professional setting of the candidate. Although the professional attitude of a candidate affects the decision of the committee, experience is another important point. Generally, those who have both of those features equally become more successful. In this essay I will explain my experience with teaching together with my professional knowledge.
First of all I want to mention that I am not an inexperienced with working. I have been working on several fields related or unrelated to my professional career since my teens. Yet, I will explain only those which I can use during my teaching experience.
During my university education, I have taken part in different organizations either voluntarily or getting paid to gain experience. Besides these, I had some tutors for my young learner students. First, I started working as a freelance translator both written and oral form in my second year when I was in second class in the university. These translations helped me improve my verbal knowledge of English language as I was working on various texts from history to medicals. The oral consecutive translations helped me improve my spoken communication skills. I started oral translations voluntarily with LÖSEV in the “6th International Week for the Children with Leukemia” which is held in Ankara every year as well as I continued to be a volunteer in various activities for special days and weeks since then as long as I had access there. In this organization, my duties included consecutive translations for the international kids in various activities, helping native kids interact with their friends from other countries. I also used to have mini classroom activities with these kids.
I started volunteering for TGEV teaching in the project “Ateşböceği”. This project aimed to have extra classes for the students in government schools. I was working in a truck trailer with another volunteer and our classes consisted of teaching computer skills or English in accordance with students’ needs. This truck trailer consisted of two parts; one of which is used as computer class, while the other was named as drama class where we have so many devices such as video-player, art-craft activity materials, games etc. to teach English. I was the volunteer leader in this truck for activity planning and coordination; teaching English.
I had tutors for the last two years of my university education. I had lessons one-to-one for teaching English, lesson revisions, project preparations and exam preparing. My students were 8 or 9 year-old primary school students whose families requested me to help them revise the lessons they had in school. Most of the time, these lessons included vocabulary teaching, oral communication skills, and reading activities as well as lesson revisions. I used to prepare the lessons plans and activities in accordance with their course books.
I should also mention that throughout our education we had many microteaching activities, demos and presentations about each single technique for young-learners, adolescents in accordance with the needs of learners.
Lastly, I worked as an exchange programs coordinator for Uygar Tours Inc. for “Summer Work and Travel” program in the United States. My duties included interviewing recruited students to evaluate their English level and their eligibility for the program after required evaluation tests as well as reporting to both employers and the program organizations. I also coordinated the whole visa processing, flights, orientations and welcoming of students in the United States together with their housing. I am still in the United States for coordination of upcoming season program participants.
When it comes to language teaching methodology and what method I use, it is very challenging issue to select one specific method since there are a variety of methods and approaches for language teaching. Therefore the methodology has kept changing with the aim of creating better and more comprehensive techniques for language teaching. Methodology started with Grammar Translation Method and many other approaches came out such as Total Physical Response, Natural Approach, Suggestopedia, Audio-Lingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching, while Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory also became a part of language teaching. Thus, it is a great challenge to select one method for teaching language as all of the approaches have a lot of positive sides as well as their negative sides. As a result, it is inevitable to create our own method considering the learners’ needs, which is called eclectic method.
I will use eclectic method; however, I need to explain what eclectic method is. First of all in order to use eclectic method, a teacher should be aware of all of the methods and up to date with innovations in this field, so that he can make use of the beneficial sides of each method according to the needs of learners. For example, I personally believe that language classes have to be a communicative atmosphere; learners should use the language they are learning; students should be creative so they might make mistakes. In addition, we should use our body language and gestures to in teaching words or patterns. We don’t have to teach all about grammar; it is important to teach use of language. We have to take into consideration how the students are learning – are they kinesthetic, visual, musical, interpersonal etc. – and prepare our lesson plan according to their learning styles as well. I also support content and language integrated learning or project based methods, and I believe that teaching a curricular subject through a medium of a language will improve students’ intercultural skills, while it is creating chance to use the L2 for the students.
All those above are ideas from different approaches. Although, one method is always seems to be innovative and more sophisticated, we can adapt other methods to support our teaching activities. In this way, we use a comprehensive style regarding all needs of our students. This is the method, I prefer to use in teaching language, eclectic method.
To sum up, teaching experience is a fruitful item for a teacher to use for his career, and promoting students’ learning. The professional knowledge of the teacher is another important aspect that will always support the experience he has while it is the only basis for a teacher who does not have teaching experience. A foreign language teacher has a great deal of opportunity to use either current methods or techniques or invent his own eclectic method if he is knowledgeable enough and imaginative enough in lesson designing to support his educational experience.
