Commercial books are written for general usage, and aim to cater for the needs of as many people and institution as possible. They are written and edited by professional teams, and provide access to a variety of resources for both the teachers and the students. However, finding a course book that perfectly matches and covers all major course objectives and prepares students for the requirements of faculty is very hard. Besides curriculum objectives, there are other areas that may cause a strain for institutions. For instance, text sizes, genres, task types or themes may not quite reflect the needs of a particular group of students. To overcome these problems, schools have two options; either supplementing the coursebook with their own materials, or write their own course book.
In School of Languages, we use our own course books, Beyond the Boundaries (http://sl.sabanciuniv.edu/projects/beyond-the-boundaries), but we also use commercial course books in certain levels. However, the current Beyond the Boundaries is getting outdated as we have been using them for over 10 years. We have also found over the years that commercial books mostly do not match our specific needs to prepare students for faculty. For this reason, we decided to allocate resources and write a new course book series in order to prepare our students for their faculties.
This website is designed in order to share our experience, the procedures we followed, the obstacles we faced and how we have overcome them.
Our team
The team of writers currently consists of 4 writers:
Mutlu Bosson has been teaching at Sabancı University, School of Languages since 2014. She graduated from Istanbul University ELT department. She received her MA degree in Digital Technologies, Communication and Education from The University of Manchester. Over the years, she has taught English and Turkish in Turkey and the UK. Her interests include the use of technology in education, material development and academic writing.
B.Sonat Demirdirek has been an instructor at Sabancı University since 2013. He graduated from Dokuz Eylül University, ELT department. He has an MA in ELT from Yıldız Teknik University. He attended the ‘Material Development’ course in Texas. He is the co-author of a book called “Excelling Reading Skills and Vocabulary”.
Neslihan Demirdirek has been an instructor at Sabancı University, School of Languages since 2006. She graduated from Istanbul University ELT department. She has an MA in ELT from The University of Nottingham. She taught Turkish in Sweet Briar College, USA for a year as part of Fulbright FLTA programme. She is interested in teaching English in academic contexts, tutorial support and assessment.
Pinar Gunduz is an English instructor at Sabanci University. She is also the Curriculum and Assessment Coordinator of Sabanci University School of Languages. She holds a B.A in ELT from Middle East Technical University and an M.A in Management in Education from Bilkent University. She has also successfully completed the COTE (Certificate for Overseas Teachers of English) and the DELTA (Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). She is interested in learner autonomy, teaching vocabulary, extensive reading, using technology in ELT, and the backwash effect of exams on teaching and learning.