The Teaching of German as a Foreign Language in Consideration with The New Reforms in Turkey

The Teaching of German as a Foreign Language in Consideration with The New Reforms in Turkey

KARASU, Gönül
KURKCUOGLU, Fatma Şükran

Key words: Intercultural Comminication ABSTRACT In recent Key words: Turkish language policy, EU language policy, multilingualism, foreign language teaching, Education ABSTRACT To develop international relationships in the fields of social, political, economic, educational and cultural, the communities are in need of people who speak a foreign language. As a result, multilingualism is an inevitable fact throughout the world. To be able to take place and compete with the developed countries, high and qualitative foreign language education in Turkey must be in the level of the developed countries. Within the framework of this understanding, the purpose of this study is to describe “Turkey's approaches to education goals towards multilingualism". First, the curriculum that the new program covers on the teaching of foreign languages through 4 + 4 + 4 compulsory education reform will be described. As is well known, after the Education Reform in 1997, the teaching of German as a foreign language kept its secondary place following English in our country. In this study, the revision and comparison of both the early 1997 reform and new 2012 reform will be presented and discussed. Students begin learning a foreign language at an early age in accordance with the law published in March 30, 2012 in the Official Gazette No. 6315 27728. Although this new regulation in “primary education and training” law builds an important ground for the teaching of foreign languages, it hinders the teaching of German as foreign language for it is placed among many selective courses. This research aims at finding the place of German as a foreign language in the national education in Turkey through legal supports and its structural arrangements. In addition to the qualitative and quantitative applications from the Ministry of National Education, scientific research on the issue is also be benefited to depict the current case. On account of the fact that 2012 education reform has been so recent, this research will only focus on the schools of `Eskişehir` in understanding the situation of German language teaching. What kind of precautions and requirements are needed in increasing the interest in German courses will specifically be discussed and described.years, with the development of technology and transportation facilities people of different languages and cultures communicate with each other more and more because of such reasons education, trade, tourism, etc. Nowadays, national borders lose its significance. An event anywhere in the world can affect the lives of people who live in the other parts of the world. According to Marshall McLuhan, the world turned to a global village. To know foreign languages has become a necessity to keep pace with the developments and changes in the world. As a parallel to this situation, the methods developed for the teaching of a foreign language have increasingly diversified. For language teaching, it is not enough to teach specific words and grammar structures. In order to use a language in a competent manner, the language of the dominant culture is also required. A behavior adopted as appropriate in a culture may not be considered appropriate in another culture in accordance with the behavior of a culture, customs, traditions, social experiences, belief systems, etc. Non-verbal communication behavior does not express the same meaning in all cultures. Language learners should have cultural awareness and ability to deal with different cultures. With these needs of foreign language teaching, the concept of intercultural competence came to the fore. Intercultural competence is ability to communicate effectively among individuals from different cultures. These individuals can learn about different cultures and accept them while gaining awareness of their own culture. The approach of intercultural competence in foreign language teaching aims to get language learners’ curiosity towards the target culture, to understand the others by emphasizing and to tolerate the differences. This situation avoids misunderstandings and conflicts due to the features of different cultures. For effective communication of people learning a foreign language, intercultural competence is of great importance. In this study, on the basis of the importance of foreign language teaching intercultural competence, the proficiency of the students who learns Turkish as a foreign language in Gazi University TÖMER is tried to be determined. In the survey, some questions are directed to students about Turkish culture and the links between their own culture and Turkish culture as a target culture have been tried to determine. For the interpretation of the questionnaires, Milton Bennet’s Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity is used as a sample. In this study, the concepts of intercultural competence have been introduced and the importance of cross-cultural competence, cultural interaction in teaching Turkish as a foreign language is discussed. It is stated that it is necessary to promote the acquisition of intercultural competence in foreign language teaching. In recent years, the number of people who want to learn Turkish as a foreign language has been increased and thus, the studies in the field of teaching Turkish as a foreign language are speeding up. In this study, it is tried to make a contribution to the studies conducted in this area.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

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