An Intervention Program to Promote Primary School Language Teachers' Sense of Self-Efficacy by Working with Current Newspaper Articles to Improve Pupils' Language Skills

Language teachers in grades 4-6 seek diverse ways to work with pupils and various text types to promote reading comprehension skills, written and oral expression, vocabulary and idioms, and understanding of linguistic components. They use textbooks and lesson plans, including different text types, stories, and poems. However, language teachers often struggle to integrate current, relevant, and age-appropriate social issues. Teachers strive to enrich pupils' knowledge and develop their independent critical thinking, engaging in respectful discussions, expressing opinions, listening to others, and formulating social values. This can be done by arousing curiosity and interest and increasing motivation for independent exploratory learning. Developed by the author and implemented in this research, "Promoting language skills and reducing gaps through learning based on current newspaper articles," teacher training program presents a unique way to reach these goals simply, accessibly, and creatively, based on age-appropriate topical newspaper articles to boost learners' language skills and narrow gaps that widened during the Corona period among primary school pupils. The program seeks to equip language teachers with practical work tools, thus allowing them to choose current articles and use them in planning and leading meaningful language lessons. Its uniqueness lies in a teacher's ability to choose a recent newspaper article and build a relevant lesson plan rather than adhere to given texts and activities. Doctoral research will accompany the program, examining its contribution to teachers' ability to plan lessons independently and increase their sense of language teaching self-efficacy.