Objectives

Speaking skill cannot be developed without interaction. It is known that especially immigrants have difficulties in integration due to their social status and financial opportunities, and that the most important reason for this is the language barrier. In the preliminary needs analysis, it was revealed that the immigrants have the fear of being ridiculed while speaking Turkish, and that they have problems arising from embarrassment and lack of self-confidence. Motivation for the target audience has an important place in language learning. In gaining language skills, the learner's belief that s/he can learn triggers the person and affects the learning process.

With the Language Tree, it is aimed to provide learners with the opportunity to develop dialogs in the target language. In the project, it is aimed to develop Turkish speaking skills through dialogues created depending on the themes that will meet the basic needs of the learner at A1 level. Individuals who have increased motivation at the basic level, developed self-confidence, reduced language anxiety, and broken the language barrier will express themselves more easily in the target language and accelerate their language development. In the Language Tree, which will be prepared in 3 different modules, learners will first learn sentence patterns with both visual and written clues, pronounce words and sentences correctly, and thus develop a dialogue. In the second module, only visual clues will be given and the learner will be able to continue the dialogue by creating their own sentences. In the third module, the learner will be asked to answer the questions presented audibly by the system without visual and written clues and to continue the dialogue. The learner who successfully passes all three modules will move on to the next theme and continue their speaking practice. The system will return the unsuccessful learner to the beginning and enable him/her to improve his speaking skills through repetitions.

Thus, learners' fear of making mistakes and being ridiculed by those around them will be minimized by means of the digital material to be prepared. Through this material, the learner will be able to repeat until he/she feels sufficient. In addition, the presence of real people in the videos prepared for each dialogue will allow learners to observe the accent, intonation and mouth movements of the target language, while also providing the opportunity to observe the body language of the target language.

Immigrant learners who improve their speaking skills will adapt to the target society, gain social status by gaining a place in the society they live in. And bilinguals, who are a second target group, will increase their academic success by eliminating their shortcomings in their mother tongue with the Language Tree project. All this will also support CEFR's multilingualism and multiculturalism policies.

The main ultimate output of the project is to help immigrants and bilinguals to improve their speaking skills in Turkish. Another focus group of the project is young language teachers. Particularly the diagram of the project results, will be shared as a guide for young language teachers. They will have the opportunity to learn how to prepare and apply interactive digital materials for their future classes, and thus will be able to produce their own materials. The guide will be shared both in print and electronically, and how the diagram system to be used will also be presented as a video.

Activities

Within the scope of the project, three transnational meetings will be held so that the relevant project results can continue in accordance with the schedule. In addition, all stakeholders at local and national levels will periodically organize seminars and workshops on digital transformation in language teaching. These dissemination activities will include the following topics:

• digital transformation in language teaching,
• the methods of improving speaking skills interactively via digital tools,
• problems in speaking skills of young immigrants in Turkey,
• problems in speaking skills of bilingual Turkish youth in Europe.

Additionally, two international symposiums were planned as multiplier events within the scope of the project. The main theme of these symposiums to be organized in Belgium and Turkey has been determined as "the digital transformation in language teaching." However, papers will be accepted under the headings related to the project results. In addition, interest group sessions on project results will be held at these symposiums. These dissemination and multiplier activities will cover all language skills but will focus particularly on speaking skills. In these activities, the priority will be to bring together language teacher candidates and field experts and to discuss digital transformation opportunities in language teaching. In addition, these activities are also important in delivering the project results to young immigrants and bilingual Turkish youth in Europe. To summarize:

These dissemination and multiplier activities will cover all language skills but will focus particularly on speaking skills. In these activities, the priority will be to bring together language teacher candidates and field experts and to discuss digital transformation opportunities in language teaching. In addition, these activities are also important in delivering the project results to young immigrants and bilingual Turkish youth in Europe. To summarize:

• What are digital materials for language teaching?
• Which ones are effective for the development of speaking skill? How do they affect?
• Are the available tools sufficient for teaching speaking skills?
• What are the shortcomings of these tools?
• How can they be developed?
• Do the speaking skills developed with digital tools support the speaking skills in real life?
• To what extent?
• What are the positive and negative aspects?
• How do the needs of speaking skills differ among young immigrants in Turkey and bilingual Turkish youth in Europe? What should be considered in the digital materials to be prepared for these groups?

These are the questions to be answered, and the answers obtained in the results of the project will be delivered to those concerned with these activities.

LTT activity will be held for young language teachers and language teacher candidates, the third target group of the project. The aim of this activity is to increase the creativity of these tutorials so that they can develop digital speaking materials and to inspire them to use and develop what they have learned at LTT in their professional life.

Education and training activities will be about how to improve the speaking skills of young language teachers and language teacher candidates, especially with digital materials. This LTT activity is to be hosted by “TEB” Germany. Participants of the activity will be a maximum of 7 people (4 students, 3 researchers or 5 students, 2 researchers) from each partner institution.

In this activity, there will be academic courses, social activities and practices in order to increase the knowledge and application skills of participating young language teachers and language teacher candidates in preparing digital materials. Researchers from each partner institution will conduct seminars and workshops. In addition, young language instructors and language teacher candidates will make some practical applications, especially about the diagram system, so that they can use their creativity.

Impact

The targeted results of the project will be as follows according to the project calendar:

• “Speaking Skills Needs Analysis for Bilingual Turkish Youth in Europe and Young Immigrants in Turkey" The speaking skill needs analysis to be prepared will be a detailed analysis on bilingual Turkish youth in Europe and young immigrants in Turkey, unlike the needs analysis conducted before the project writing phase. A curriculum will be created for the preparation of interactive speaking activities by the researchers according to the identified needs.
• The Curriculum of Interactive Speaking Activities: The curriculum that will be developed as a result (output) of this project will determine thematic structures based on needs analysis. The sub-headings required for the two target groups that the project focuses on will also be determined as a result of this project. Many variables such as vocabulary, grammatical structures, speaking environments will also be determined in this output. The result of this project will form the basis for the "diagrams" together with the result of the 1st project.
• The Diagram: Diagram is the most important part of the project that will enable the development of students' speaking skills. Thanks to the probable chain of speech presented with diagrams, learners will have the opportunity to speak interactively according to various possibilities, unlike the existing applications. Thus, the dialogue will continue with different scenarios according to each answer given by the learner.
• The Pre-Dialogue Videos, Dialogue Videos and Activities: After the tutorial videos that will be prepared according to the topics in the themes, the learner will switch to the video chat application with dialogues. Thousands of videos will be shot in this context in order to provide a dialogue opportunity that can respond to as many different possibilities as possible. Thanks to these dialogue videos, the learner will gradually improve his speech by practicing on the subject. These videos, which are planned as modular, are discussed in 3 titles "written, visual, and audio". Those that have completed a module will be able to move on to another.