A Deep Approach to Turkish Teaching and Learning

The integration of the Turkish Republic into the European Union and the expanding Turkish population in Europe underscore the importance of teaching modern Turkish as a foreign language. This project will create instructional materials that take a “deep approach” to Turkish teaching, learning, and language acquisition.

Ours will be an immersive, learner-centered, technology-rich, and project-based approach designed for institutions of higher education in the U.S., Turkey, and elsewhere that offer programs in Turkish language and culture, Middle Eastern area studies, and international or global studies. The materials will go beyond instruction in grammar and vocabulary to support the acquisition of sociocultural pragmatics, intercultural learning and understanding of situated discourse.

Intermediate and advanced curricula will contain 12 thematic units each, designed for two 3-credit, 15-week college courses. The backbone of the units will be the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century, known as the five Cs (communication, culture, connections, comparisons, communities), integrated with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

The materials will be pilot-tested at three U.S. Research I universities—the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison—and at Yildiz Technical University (YTU) in Istanbul.

An interdisciplinary project team brings expertise in Turkish language and history, anthropology, second language acquisition, foreign language education and pedagogy, instructional materials development, and educational technologies. In-person meetings, site visits, and online and video conferencing will facilitate our international collaboration.