Foreign language

Teacher Identity.While explaining their teaching experiences, the participants engaged in a reflective process that focused on their identity as language teachers. Two codes were compiled under teacher identity: participants‟ teaching processes and their professional development with the help of the online discussions.
Participants’ teaching processes.Participants‟ teaching processes were presented under this code along with positive and negative teaching stories, teaching experiences that participants had as novice teachers, and their past teaching techniques.
P # 9, who worked in a public university in afar east part of Turkey shared her experiences by stating that:
Encountering students who had different characteristics, who even spoke a different language, was a very difficult process for me. Moreover, applying practical knowledge in teaching was more different for me from learning pedagogical knowledge as I did during my undergraduate degree. In order to improve my teaching practice, I had asked one of my colleagues to record me in a video. I can frankly say that video recording technique was really effective in evaluating my teaching in the classroom and I also asked for feedback from an experienced colleague by watching the recorded video.
However, I had some other problemsrelated to the attitudes of students towards English and English language teachers. The students really had resisted me when we first met because they thought that my job was to assimilate them. They were not aware of the importance of speaking a second

language, neither in social life nor in academic life. In order to overcome that difficulty, my a few colleagues and I decided to translate students‟ Kurdish fairy tales first into Turkish, and then into English. We could finally compile those stories in a book and worked on English via those materials. That way,

I could reach the students and gain their attention. At the end, we were successful in teaching English language. I believe thatthose difficulties helped me profoundly to strengthen my teaching and my teacher identity. I remember leaving the classes crying, but I believe that those were the times that helped my teaching profession a lot; I wouldn‟t be as I am right now without experiencing those situations.
The other participants also reflected on P # 9‟s reflection paper and they found reading P#9‟s teaching experiences really effective and they said that they also learned so many techniques to improve their teaching by reading from what P # 9 did.
P # 7 also reflected on her change as a teacher by comparing her novice years and today. She wrote in her reflection paper that:
When I first started teaching, l wanted to be like the teacher in the movie "Dead Poets Society" and touch the lives of my students by helping them become more self-confident, responsible and conscious learners as well as teaching English. As a more experienced teacher now, I have the same enthusiasm but more realistic goals.
She stated in the discussion session that when she first started, she was like a mother in the classroom. However, she realized with the help of reflection paper that now she had a more professional attitude towards her students. Still, she wanted to help her students when they had problems, but she was aware of that if students were not intrinsically motivated, it was difficult to reach them, change them and teach them.

In her reflection paper and the discussion sessions, P # 6 preferred reflecting on her teachers that she had during her secondary school and high school years. She also owed her evolution in teaching profession to the professors of her undergraduate degree and the various student profiles that she has taught. She reported that:

I have been teaching since I was at the 3rd year of my B.A. degree in ELT. I started as a part-timer at a language school with the help of what I was learning from my professors at university and my past EFL teachers' methodology. Therefore, my identity as a teacher has evolved thanks to the variety of those role models in my life and wide range of student profiles from adults to young learners.
She also stated the effects of her previous teachers on her teaching in the discussion sessions as below:
when I thought about those years, I could see that I applied techniques I have seen from my previous teachers, and found effective. For instance, while teaching vocabulary, my secondary school teacher was using vocabulary boxes. The students used to choose words from those boxes and try to guess their meanings in a game. I utilized that activity, as well,especially when I first started teaching.
To sum up, it can be concluded that participants engaged in reflection-on-action by considering their past teaching experiences, themselves as novice teachers and their teachers‟ effects in shaping their teaching practice.