Academic Honours - CONGRATULATIONS!

As promised, I am posting the names of the students who achieved academic honours in the English section of this course.

First of all, let me say I was quite impressed with the overall grades. The assessed discussions in particular were very well done. And Essay 2 showed you learned a lot about academic writing and critical thinking.

The "winners" are as follows:

Highest overall grade: Ezgi Sarıbaloğlu (96% A)

I would also like to congratulate the following students for receiving A- : Ezgi Alıç, Hakan Gürsan, Ayşegül Kurtulmuş, Melike Nur Çoğalmış, Burcu Güvey, Koray Ercihan, Elvan Cengiz, Pınar Özgen, Deniz Dalgıç and Merve Çelik.

Best Essay 1: Merve Eraydın (99%)

Best Essay 2: Pınar Özgen (99%)

Most improved Essay 1: Ezgi Sarıbaloğlu

Most improved Essay 2: Deniz Dursun

Best learning journal: Doruk Can Yamaç

Best participation: Melike Nur Çoğalmış and Ayşegül Kurtulmuş (100%)

Best assessed class discussion: Melike Nur Çoğalmış, Ayşegül Kurtulmuş, Funda Karaca and Ezgi Alıç

Blogger of the year: Merve Çelik

Most surprising passes: Burak Dai (71% C) and Yusuf Elik (73% C)

I wish you all the best in your future academic careers and your lives.
Sonja

Blog discussion #5: Advice to incoming students

We have almost reached the end of a long academic year. I am proud of all the progress you have made and I hope you are too. I guess for many of you, this programme offered a completely different approach to teaching and assessment. At times I am sure you did not feel entirely confident, yet you persisted and pushed yourselves to the end. This is most certainly an achievement (surviving one of my classes is always an achievement!) So here is our last blog discussion this year:

Imagine you are talking to a student who will enter this programme next year. The student asks you: "How can I pass this course?" What advice would you give?

Future students could really benefit from knowing what to expect before they come to university. Please share whatever you think will be helpful from your personal experience of this programme. You should consider both the Economics lectures and our critical thinking/academic skills component. Please note: You should give honest feedback: there will be no penalty for negative comments, nor any reward for positive ones.

This assignment will count towards your PARTICIPATION mark. The discussion is open until the end of the semester.

Blog discussion #4: Global warming

This is a FEEDBACK discussion and will count towards your PARTICIPATION mark. It will also help you prepare for your ASSESSED CLASS DISCUSSION at the end of the semester.

Our next classroom topic is Global warming. We will be watching two films which present different viewpoints on manmade global warming. There will be a lot of new vocabulary and critical discussion questions. We will hold practice discussions with feedback in Week 12; in Week 13 we will hold small group discussions in my office and you will be graded (10% of final mark).

I would like students to take charge of this discussion: ask questions, post links to interesting articles and web sites about global warming, share new vocabulary and so on.

This discussion is open until the end of the semester.

Happy discussing!

NEW: Homework Q&A forum

Missed class? Got a question about an assignment? You can ask your questions here, and your classmates will answer...NOTE: You may use Turkish in this forum.

Just click on the link Homework Question and Answer (Q&A) forum from the list on the right side of the blog to access this posting.

Can Turks be trusted with their own future?

Today , People should become conscious carrying out social responsibility such as to be interested on how is going to built future of Turkey. If we want to answer the question we had to check up our recent history of policy. ın 2001, Turkey dealt with economical crises which is rate of inflation increase highest steps ,social structure and political stabilization was effected due to economical chaos .Result for that hopeless a lot of people lost their job. Even if IMF had suggested to proper pack of economical policy ,avalaible goverment couldn't cope with huge problems.And another side, politicians the blame on themselves for all wrong decisions.As time passed people couldn't give politicians the impression of being trustworthy.Thus huge political and economical uncertainly has appeared
until term of 2002.

In 2002, when AKP made several promise to people, everybody begin to get their expecation with them.The emergency development plan, had wrapped injury of economical condition in short periot and also goverment had aimed that allowed minister of foreign affairs begin integration to UN. Global Media and nations had been watched that Turkey to give right of minority ,right of woman and they had to take measure rate of Torture crime .But after second selection goverment has been quiet maybe that couldn't have power whıch create common decision for nation due to discussions of regime.In spıte of Turkey have serious problem goverment was obliged to do to solving head scarfe again and then closing down of AKP has been become current issue.when there are global economical crises probability, AKP shouldn't interested be specisific issues.People became the opposite of each other with issues.After that social support and common decision destroyed by wrong policy.

Most important issues are process of agreemement to UN, culturel right of minority ,development of economics, Kurdish matter, increase of unemployment rate. İf goverments provide solutions to these problems people will become hopeful and they will live in afflenced environment safety.Furthermore, absoultly goverment shouldn’t adict a elite class which caused mijority is without effect in policy of national.ıf people think that goverments have been succed to provide common policy to social structer everybody will satisfied to them.

Can Turks be trusted with their own future?

Turks can be trusted with their own future but there are some problems which have to be solved.

1.The domestic and foreign debt are very high, approximately totally 450 billion $. It is frightening us and sometime makes pessimistic.

2.Current account deficit of Turkey is very big and a sollution must be found to this
problem.

3.Turkey has given a big amount of Money to interest to the foreigners.This is an another important problem.

4. Unemployment rate is very high. When we add ‘population inreasing’ to this problem it is getting bigger.

5. Democrasy has stopped many times for the last fifty years. Some pople are very pessimistic about the future of democracy.They have anxiety about the democracy and don’t clearly know how will they be ruled in the future.A part of the population inclined
Islamic Goverment . Naturally it’s threatining the secular population.

Turkey is very rich with its underground and aboveground resourses.
Also Turkey is a Tourism and agricalture country. In my opinion with a well planned economic applications the debt of Turkey can be reduced in an important amount in next fifteen years.
If The Goverments rule the country well Turkey will be able to solve the problems in 15-20 years. There are everything in our country to solve these problems.; material and a young hardworking population.We have more advantage than the other countries.

As aresult Turks can be trusted with their own future.

Blog discussion #3: Roger and Me

This is a FEEDBACK discussion and will count towards your PARTICIPATION mark.

This blog discussion is devoted to the film "Roger and Me" by Michael Moore.

Please read and respond to my first comment. I will add more questions as the discussion progresses. Please interact as much as possible with your classmates.

To participate, add a comment to this post.

The discussion is open from Friday, 14th March to Friday, 18th April. You may use it to help you prepare to write your Essay 2 draft.

Happy discussing!