Bilingual Education in Turkey - Research Paper Example

Bilingual Education in Turkey Introduction Bilingualism is where by individuals or a society as a whole is competent in more than one official language. Turkey is one of the bilingual societies comprised of minority language speakers such as the Kurdish and Armenian. However, turkey has been trying to ensure that the ideology of one nation one language is achieved and that the ideology of one nation different languages is not tolerated. This paper majorly undertakes to see how turkey is trying to uphold the idea of one nation one language and its effects to the nature of linguistic diversity. Therefore, we are also going to see the place of the minority language speakers such as the Kurdish and the Armenian, in their everyday life and education as well (Kaya 31). There are programs of bilingual education undertaken in turkey and the possible ways that can be used to teach English in a more efficient way. Finally, the problems experienced in teaching and acquisition of English language in turkey and especially the minority communities, Kurdish and Armenian and the possible solutions that can be adopted in attempt to solve the problem of acquisition and teaching of English language. The common language ideology in turkey and its effects to the diversity of language The geography of turkey is feasible, the climate is warm hence very conducive for human life and is very rich in natural resources, and thus it attracted people from different areas. There are different languages that the researchers have used over time; this gives the evidence of turkey as a bilingual state. The nationality of turkey has undergone changes over time resulting from the change of its nature and constituency. Turkey has been concentrating on issues concern the building of its nation since the twentieth century but currently it has undergone several changes into a state power despite the social problems it undergoes. First, the citizens of Turkey were disappointed by the hegemonic system of government where their hopes very high, consequently, the government failed. The military coup that took place in 1960 showed the failure of this system of government which was later followed by several interventions of the military. Legality and freedom, which were the core values of western regime, were violated. Therefore this resulted in many citizens of turkey to feel unwanted. The failure of the government system was mainly shown when it was unable to fulfill its promises of proving wealth especially materially by the development of modern economy. Therefore the Turks had very little faith in the government system and as a result they were not able to either trust the modern government system or the traditional government system and this led to identity crisis (Issa 104). The elites in politics failed to meet people’s expectations and needs yet they had raised the peoples hopes high. The political elites had promised people freedom, equality, dignity, good education and employment which were the opposite of what the people were undergoing such as inequality, oppression, corruption, ignorance and poverty. Eventually, this diluted the hegemonic state of government of turkey and thus caused the identity crisis. Hegemonic government is where the state rules and controls every aspect of life including how people interact socially with each other, exchange of opinions, ideas and culture are all restricted. This kind of government protects its citizens from influences from outsiders since it creates a solid identity of its nationalism. This kind of system of government comes along with bias. It favors the main or major group of people which is the Turks and thus affects the minority groups of people who are the Kurdish and the Armenian (Yücel and Salomon 93). During the time of the ottoman administration the pre-ottoman and pre-Islamic era were introduced again. This time it was just to seek for national unity and not because of scientific work to improve the state. During this era, all the languages were resuscitated which were a total of about 16. However, the ottoman administration became unsuccessful and thus they lost their reign. This led to the Turkish establishing their rule and national identity. The policy of denying all the minorities’ national identity was adopted and the Kurdish became mountain Turks. The Armenians on the other hand were deported to Mesopotamia during the reign of ottoman so that they would not take sides with the troops of Russia. Turkey has adopted one national language which is Turkish and the entire minority communities have adopted Turkish as their national language (Ibrahim 42). Situation of the Kurdish and Armenian in daily life and education Kurdish Twenty percent of Turkish population consists of the Kurdish who commonly speaks Kirmanji and occupy north and northwestern as Alevi and Sunni respectively. According to the Kurdish Awakening, Kurds posed a guerilla war through Kurdistan workers party mainly to fight for their nationalism. Therefore the Kurds who remained in turkey banned education. Religion is the major factor that causes wrangles among the Kurds since some believe in Islam law while some believe in the Shafii School. There are some sects of the Kurds who also believe in the yazidi who believe that the government does not protect their religion and therefore they had to migrate to German. Despite the fact that Kurdish is recognized as a minority community in the Lausame Treaty, the constitution does not recognize them as one of the minority linguistic or ethnic community nationally. In addition, the Kurdish language is restricted and is illegal to speak Kurdish language during any debate or political meeting held in Turkey yet Kurdish hold several political meetings in Turkey (Haas 75). There are no clear guidelines or legalization of the Kurds to participate in the states government affairs, economic or social affairs and any Kurd member that comes up loud and clear in public faces oppression and violence. Consequently the authorities of the state have illegibly continued to draw boundaries with the Kurdish and the boundaries became even more distinct after the Kurdish revolted in Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan. Currently, the government has decided to discuss with the Kurdish on the settling their issues and this seems to considerably work since both camps of the Kurdish have come to a compromise (Joseph 88). Armenians They are about 60000 and they belong to the apostolic church of Armenia majorly although there are some who are Protestants and catholic. Unlike the Kurdish, the Armenians support their own old peoples homes and schools as well as reading their own newspapers. They adhere to there Christian faith in spite being merchants with worldwide contacts and bankers as well. They are well recognized by the constitution as a minority community in Turkey although they are still regarded as foreigners and thus they do not just register their children as Armenians but as Turkish. The Armenian religion is recognized in turkey and their orthodox comes second as the largest denomination of Christian in the state while the rest join the Roman Catholic Church or other protestant churches. However, there are several problems facing the orthodox. There is no more training for the clergy since they can not hold seminaries for training. This is as results because there is no legal assurance in regard to the institution. The courts and the general director of foundations cannot offer the mandate of holding a seminary for training. Another problem is that there have been several successive governments who have ruled after the Turkish republican which appointed and elected the religious leader of Armenia. Other Armenian religious leaders face the same problems as the orthodox such as lack of proper establishment of education, insecurity in their properties, obstacles such as unable to hold training seminars for the clergy (Bilgin and Ali 67). The Turkish authority and Armenians have animosity in between them and thus the Turkish do not trust the Armenians because of the same rivalry that occurred during the World War I where by the Armenians joined their forces with the Russians and fought against Turkish and the Turkish later deported them to Assyria and Mesopotamia. This animosity makes the Turkish authority to neglect the Armenians. Examples of bilingual education programs In bid to sustain its bilingual nature, turkey came up with education programs that incorporate it nature. One such program is the submersion education which is mostly exercised or undertaken by the students of the minority communities. Another education program is the mainstream education which also constitutes the teaching of foreign language. Some schools also exercise the models used in international schools and European schools. Ozel Lisesi is a bilingual program for secondary school which is private undertaken in turkey. This constitutes several other programs joined together and mainly to help the bilingual students. The program is as a result of the model exercised in European schools and the model used in Mount Scopus and is exercised in most of the private schools in Turkey. Few schools have immersion in Russian, German and French and most of them use the Ozel Lisesi program for English immersion. The Ozel Lisesi program begins right at the elementary school throughout to the end of the secondary school. Learners take a class of the second language although they do not learn any content. One year is spared for the learners to undertake their learning of the second language which is mostly English before they transit to the junior high school where the second language is immersed as it expands in the senior high school. Another language is introduced in the junior high school where content is not given until high school. Therefore a student can either decide to continue with the studies to the next level which is the tertiary level and there after proceed to an English school which is situated in Turkey or can even attend English supplementary schools in abroad (Libaridian 33). The program constitutes three main features of English which include; English as a language in target or English used as a major medium of instruction. This is whereby English is used in teaching of several subjects such as sciences, humanities, mathematics and others. Secondly, all learners enter into the English class with the same level of proficiency. This means that all learners are exposed to the same measure of content and this provides a fair ground for competitions and learning the content (Rodriguez, Angela and Kyung 41). Lastly, the first language is always developed and respected. In most occasions the first language is the basis of learning the second language. A learner must first master the first language including all its rules to be able to master the second language. The curriculum is prepared by a common body and this means that all schools in turkey teach the same curricular especially in sciences and mathematics and leaves the schools to choose for themselves the texts for courses of English and literature. The main outstanding difference between the Ozel Lisesi programs from both the European schools and the immersion models is that it only allows the Turkish culture and strictly restricts other cultures unlike the two models of immersion and the European; diversity in culture is greatly encouraged. Any culture or aspect of culture from a student from the minority community is merely turned down (Bahun, and Dušan70). The teachers in the European model program are the native speakers of English while in the Ozel Lesesi, the teachers are the bilinguals of English Turkish and thus the standards of English proficiency is low. This leads to a mixture of English being taught. All in all the most essential language is Turkish since the university entrance exams is set in Turkish and there are after class review of the lessons being taught in English especially mathematics and sciences class of which supplementary classes are available. The mixture of English is also considered important and very necessary for some students since they could be natives of such English. The staff purely consists of the Turkish bilingual or monolingual speakers and very few native English speakers who are recruited in the basis of marketing and public relations and not on the academic basis. The minority communities such as the Kurdish, Armenians, Jews and many more are not represented at all (Watts 104). The immersion schools are quite expensive and few parents can afford. Although some students are always picked on scholarships but most of them come from well off backgrounds. The students have to be well performing and must have attained a very high mark in order to qualify to join the school. The student also has to maintain the high performance in order to remain in the school. The results of the students from the immersion program are impressive in that despite the fact that they do not achieve the level of pronunciation, accuracy and fluency as that of the natives. They are also better than those other students who learnt in a traditional school. The current state of English in turkey is that it is mainly instrumentally or integrative motivated. Integrative motivation is whereby the position or place of English in the society. English is seen as a prestigious language and most people would want to learn and know it and that is why Turkish enrolls students for English classes. Instrumentally motivated means that the Turkish learn English language because they want to be lingua franca since it is encouraged widely even by the ministry of national education in order to communicate with people from different natives. Lack of productive skills, as the Turkish English state, is a major problem since the learners will not be able to learn how to use English language effectively (Bahun and Radunović 77). Effective ways of teaching English in Turkey Improving the speaking skills of the learner should be the main aim of the teaching English language and thus it should be taught in a communicative manner. An individual’s prowess in English is not judged by the way they write it but by the fluency in which they can speak the foreign language. Therefore, this calls for the development of the speaking abilities and skills of the learner more than developing their writing abilities and skills (García, Zeena and Bahar 233). Teachers should also develop the four skills of learning in their learners. These four skills include listening, writing, reading and speaking and none of the four skills should be left out since language requires integration. Both learners and the teachers should focus on the four skills of learning. Problems in acquiring and teaching English in Turkey There are several problems and difficulties associated with learning and acquiring English language in Turkey. One of the problems is that the students in Turkey mainly focused on studying grammar and vocabulary mostly which is in attempt to satisfy the requirement of the SBS curriculum which would only enable them to pass the examination. The teachers concentrate on the training the learners on answering the questions only which are based on multiple choices and thus the learners end up memorizing the content for the sake of the SBS exams. In brief, the learners are drilled and prepared just for the sake of passing the exams and not to learn and acquire the language. The policy of learning for the sake of the exam makes the learners to memorize the vocabulary as well. This has led to the teachers ignoring other parts of language skills and deal with the exam areas. The teachers have to critically follow the course books since it was designed by the government and the end exam is only set from the course books. They pay much attention to the topics and the vocabulary in the course books. This shows that they followed a guideline for reading and for the vocabulary (Lewy 57). Both students and teachers use their mother-tongue for translations. Although it is a policy not to translate in mother-tongue, teachers are vulnerably pushed around by the students to translate for them and thus it becomes very difficult to maintain the efficiency of learning English language since it is learnt in mother-tongue. Possible solutions in acquiring and learning English language in Turkey Possible solutions to curb the difficulties of learning and acquiring English language in Turkey include emphasis on the four learning skills. In order to learn a language, an individual needs to pay attention to the four learning skills which include listening, writing, speaking and reading. Both teachers and students should play a major role. Another possible solution is that both the teachers and the learners should go an extra mile to research in the library or read other essential books apart from the course books. This will expand knowledge and also make the process of learning English more efficient (Parla and Andrew 201). The government of Turkey should also recruit more native English speakers and allow cultural diversity as well as testing or setting exams in English language. This will enhance the efficient learning of English language. Conclusion In summary, this paper has enlisted the bilingual education in Turkey and especially of learning English as a second language. Several factors have contributed to none effectiveness of English language learning in Turkey. The minority communities such as the Kurdish and Armenia, not forgetting the rest such as the Greek, Jews and many others are the sufferers. English is a prestigious language and it is advisable for Turkey to venture into it as much as they prefer to use Turkish as a unifying factor. Therefore, a state has to be competent in English as well in order to communicate with several other people from different communities since many states use English as a national language. Work Cited Bahun, Sanja, and Dušan Radunović. Language, Ideology, and the Human: New Interventions. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012. Internet resource. Bilgin, Fevzi, and Ali Sarıhan. Understanding Turkeys Kurdish Question. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013. Internet resource. 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