The use of Power Point Presentations at in the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University

Power point Presentations are utilized by almost the whole faculty in the department of Foreign Language Education. This study was an attempt to examine the issue of the Power point presentation usage in the Department of Foreign Language Education (FLE) at Middle East Technical University (METU). It aims to investigate the attitudes of prospective teachers’ towards the power point presentation usage from the perspective of teachers and students, as well as, the degree of correspondence between students’ expectations and the motives underlying instructors’ use. For that purpose, interviews were held with 3 instructors who deliver lectures at the Department of Foreign Language Education, respectively, in literature, linguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT) methodology courses. The interview consists of three main topics which are as follows general ideas about the power point presentation usage, expectations as to the use of power point in FLE courses and problems related to using power point. To obtain quantitative data, questionnaires were administered to randomly-selected 35 students from the FLE department. The questionnaire has three sections: students’ general views about the power point usage, their attitudes related to the faculty members’ using power point presentations and their ideas about the instructors’ encouragement for them to do power point presentation by themselves. In the first section, a bipolar scale, in the second and third section a five-point Likert scale was used. The fourth section included open ended questions and the last part included questions on student’ profile. The findings pointed out that both teachers and students have positive attitudes towards using power point presentations. Moreover, teachers reported that they use PowerPoint presentations in their courses because they regarded them as effective tools in terms of providing visual aids, which is helpful to draw students’ attention. Even though the instructors indicated some problems with the power point use, they were observed to be competent in finding solutions to them. On the other hand, students pointed out that it was necessary for them to be encouraged to do power point presentations for their future profession life. The research findings can provide some guidelines for the teacher trainers in the process of training prospective teachers for the integration of power point into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses.