GIVE OF YOURSELF (by Turgay Evren, read by Tom English)

I hope you will enjoy listening to this poem written by Turgay Evren, and read by Tom English from London.

Kathban Evren and Turgay Evren’s English Readers are in Arabic Language Now!

Merit Readers, the English stories Kathban Evren and I have written to teach English sold in hundreds of thousands of copies in Turkey, and recently were translated into Arabic to help Arabic learners to learn Arabic through fun.

Turgay Evren’s ESL Songs are being used in the USA schools

The songs Turgay Evren has written for ESL students are being used by American Teachers teaching in the USA. An American teacher teaching in a school in Texas has written the following blogpost titled “Songs and Chants.

Songs and Chants
August 24, 2013
So, the students start Monday! And I’m feeling very excited because during our maaaany student/family orientations this past week, I had quite a few families and staff asking me to enroll their students into my ESL class. So, let me explain a bit for those of you who also follow my counseling posts and might be a tad confused over…Is she a counselor? Is she a teacher? What’s going on here? I am an ESL-teaching bilingual school counselor. Basically, with my passion for and experience in teaching ESL combined with our school population that is about 80% Hispanic (and half of those are immigrants), I work as a counselor all day and then teach English as a Second Language in the afternoons to the students who are struggling most with learning English. It is very, very busy and I work all the time, but I am just so lucky that I get the best of both educational worlds- ESL and counseling!
Anyway, so onto the ESL teaching resources to I’d like share with you today. Btw, to see any of the resources/links mentioned below, just click on the bright blue colored word, and we’ll send you right to that resource! I stumbled upon a doozy last week and I can’t wait to share it with you! If you’ve used any of my ESL for Beginners teaching guides, you know that I like to use songs and chants in teaching English as a second or foreign language. Because songs and chants are so easy to memorize and then call up from memory, they are an invaluable language teaching/learning tool. Plus, they make the learning experience a lot more fun! A funny little anecdote about this, not related to ESL but educational nonetheless, happened to me back in 1991. I was taking a US History class at the University of Maryland and it was a very advanced, detailed, and boring class… and with few assignments to submit, my 19 year old, immature self never did much studying or homework for the class. So, one day I strolled into class and there was the midterm, which I was totally unprepared for! The test was on the Trail of Tears and as I skimmed over the questions, I realized I had no idea about any of the answers. So, I racked my brain and remembered that a few years back my dad wrote a song to the melody from “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” but he changed all the words to tell the story of the Trail of Tears. He had used this song to teach his 5th grade social studies class and he had worked it out by singing it A LOT with me, so I had it memorized. Well, I just sang through this song in my head as I answered the college test questions and… lo and behold, I earned a B on that midterm! So, there you have it, folks: a true story of the power of song in education!
If you’d like to use the power of song in your own ESL classroom, here is the treasure I mentioned above. ESL teachers, Turgay Evren and Jason Levine, created this fun little song/music video called Kids Can Do to help teach and reinforce the can verb.

I can’t wait to use it this year with my own ESL students that I mentioned above. Of course, I’ll tell you how it goes in a few weeks. In addition to trying out the Kids Can Do song, I also plan to use the To Be chant from ESL for Beginners Lessons Guide with Activities Volume One to teach my students.

Tunisian Students sing the song “Street Children” by Turgay Evren

Tunisian Students are preparing a programme for the end of the year in their high school. Mimi Mimetta and her classmates from Shiny Pinkflower’s English class in Sousse, Tunisia perform “Street Children”, by Turgay Evren and Jason R. Levine.

Bulgarian Students sing “The Seasons”, a song by Turgay Evren, in the class!

Slavka Borislavova, an English teacher in Bulgaria is revising “the seasons” with fifth graders through a song, which was performed by Jason R Levine and produced by Turgay Evren.

Maysun comes 1st in Bangladesh performing Turgay Evren’s song, “mother”!

Let’s start the new year with some great news I have received from Bangladesh! Maysun Zahir attending 2nd grade in a school in Bangladesh came first in a poem recitation contest held in her school by reading the lyrics of “mother” song I have written! She received her prize from her school and shared the pictures of this special moment with us! I’d like to extend my thanks to Jason R Levine, who has arranged and performed this meaningful song! Congratulations, dear Maysun for your great achievement!

Maysun had joined a contest of song held in her school, and come 2nd performing “master” a song Turgay Evren has written about teachers, and received a prize for her success before.

On Time – In Time (Vicki Hollett, Zehra and Zeynep Evren, and Jason R Levine)

A new video from Vicki Hollett, the great teacher and famous author of best-selling ELT books published by Oxford University Press and Pearson Education! My daughters Zeynep and Zehra have made a humble contribution to this video through their performances! I am sure you will enjoy watching this video. Pls share it if you like it!

KAPLAN INTERNATIONAL BLOG INTERVIEWS TURGAY AND KEZBAN EVREN

http://kaplaninternational.com/blog/esl-teacher-interviews-turgay-kezban-evren/

For the ones who missed Kaplan İnternational Blog’s interview with my wife and me, I just wanted to update this news! It was a great honour for us to be interviewed by Kaplan International, which has several prestigious schools and colleges in England, the USA and some other countries! Kaplan interviews English teachers who are very successful in their careers and achieve to leave a global impact on teaching English through their works. You can read this interview by clicking on the link above. I hope you will enjoy reading this fun interview.

Mr Nabi Avcı, The Minister of National Education meets with Turgay Evren and Kezban Evren

Mr Nabi Avcı, The Turkish Minister of National Education, invited Turgay Evren and Kezban Evren today to receive their ideas regarding how to improve English education at Turkish schools. After the meeting, Turgay Evren and Kezban Evren gave the minister some of the books they have written as a gift. Turgay and Kezban Evren have submitted their suggestions as a comprehensive report written in Turkish, which involves many projects towards a better English education system in Turkey.

THE SEASONS (Seasons Song for Kids and English Learners)

A song written and performed by Jason R Levine, the famous American Rap Singer, and produced by Turgay Evren, English Teacher, author, and poet.