Research Article
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Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions

Year 2019, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 34 - 47, 25.03.2019
https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.547601

Abstract






















































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Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions



Turkey has hosted many international students from various countries in recent years. After learning Turkish in Turkish language teaching centers of the universities, these students move onto their undergraduate or graduate studies at different departments where they are required to use Turkish in all academic skills without reservation. The aim of this study was to investigate academic Turkish problems of international students. The subjects of the study were 697 international students from 54 universities, and 203 content-area instructors from 15 different universities in Turkey. The quantitative data were gathered through questionnaires and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences program and the qualitative data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using descriptive analyses. The study revealed that insufficient vocabulary range is the primary source of difficulties international students encounter during the instruction of their content courses.  Moreover, instructors are of the opinion that students have much more difficulties in using academic Turkish than they themselves perceive. It is hoped that the results of the present study will contribute to the development of curriculum and materials in such a way as to use it for the benefit of international students pursuing their studies at Turkish universities.

 



Information about Author(s)*



Author 1



Author
(Last name, First name)



 Demir, Dursun

Affiliated
institution (University)



 Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University

Country



 Turkey



Email
address



 demirdursun@hotmail.com

Department
& Rank



 Department of Foreign Languages

Corresponding author (Yes/No)


Write only one corresponding author.



 Yes



Author 2



Author
(Last name, First name)



 Genç, Ayten



Affiliated
institution (University)



 Hacettepe University



Country



 Turkey



Email
address



 dogu@hacettepe.edu.tr

Department
& Rank



 Foreign Languages Education



Corresponding
author (Yes/No)



 No



Author 3



Author
(Last name, First name)



 



Affiliated
institution (University)



 



Country



 



Email
address



 



Department
& Rank



 



Corresponding
author (Yes/No)



 



Author 4



Author
(Last name, First name)



 



Affiliated
institution (University)



 



Country



 



Email
address



 



Department
& Rank



 



Corresponding
author (Yes/No)



 



 


References

  • Akbaş, E. (2014). Are they discussing in the same way? Interactional metadiscourse in Turkish writers' texts. A. Lyda & K. Warchal (Eds.), Occupying niches: Interculturality, cross-culturality and aculturality in academic research, 119- 133. London: Springer.
  • Akbaş, E. (2012). Exploring metadiscourse in master's dissertation abstracts: cultural and linguistic variations across postgraduate writers. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(1), 12-26.
  • Alpar, R. (2010). Spor, sağlık ve eğitim bilimlerinden örneklerle uygulamalı istatistik ve geçerlik-güvenirlik. Ankara: Detay yayıncılık.
  • Bailey, A. L. (2007). Introduction: Teaching and assessing students learning English in school. A. L. Bailey (Ed.), The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test, 1-26. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  • Bayyurt, Y. (2010). Author positioning in academic writing. S. Zyngier & V. Viana (Eds.), Avaliaçoes e perspectivas: mapeando os estudos empiricos na area de Humanas (Appraisals and perspectives: mapping empirical studies in the Humanities), 163-184. Rio de Janeiro: The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
  • Biber, D. (2006). University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company.
  • Boylu, E. (2016). Türkçenin yabancı dil olarak öğretiminde akademik Türkçe sorunu. 9. Uluslararası Türkçenin Eğitimi-Öğretimi Kurultayı. Mehmet Akif University.
  • Burke, E., & Claire, W. S. (1996). Academic and Non-academic difficulties: Perceptions of graduate non-English speaking background students. TESL-EJ, 2(1) http://tesl-ej.org/ej05/a1.html Accessed 15 May 2017.
  • Christison, M. A., & Krahnke, K. J. (1986). Student perceptions of academic language study. TESOL Quarterly, 20(1), 61-81.
  • Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question, and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 19(1), 121–129.
  • Çakır, H. & Kansu Yetkiner, N. (2011). Grammatical Metaphor and Translation: A Contrastive Study of Turkish and English Scientific Discourse. E. D. Adanur (Ed.), IDEA: Studies in English, 497-518. New castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
  • Çakır, H. & Kansu Yetkiner, N. (2010). Nominalization in Scientific Language: A Comparison Between Turkish and English. 15. Uluslararası Türk Dilbilim Kurultayı
  • Çakır, H. & Özden, F. (2015). A Contrastive Study of the Rhetorical Structure of Turkish and English Research Article Abstracts. D. Zeyrek, Ç.Sağın Şimşek, U. Ataş & J. Rehbein (Eds.), Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics, 367-378. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.
  • Çalışır Zenci, S. (2009). Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde olumsuzluğun işlevleri. S. Ay, Ö. Aydın, İ. Ergenç, S. işsever & D. Peçenek (Eds.), Essays on Turkish Linguistics: Proceedings of the 14th International Conferenceon Turkish Linguistics, 247-256. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.
  • Çandarlı, D. (2012). A Cross-cultural Investigation of English and Turkish Research Article Abstracts in Educational Sciences. Studies About Languages, 20(2), 12-16.
  • Dağ Tarcan, Ö. (2017). Türkçe Bilimsel Metinlerde Etkileşimli Üstsöylem Belirleyicileri. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 8(2), 179-194.
  • Dolmacı, M., & Ertaş, A. (2016). Developing a textbook-based academic Turkish wordlist. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 232, 821-827.
  • Doyuran, Z. (2009). Conciliation of knowledge through hedging in Turkish scientific articles. Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 26(1), 85-99.
  • Evans, S., & Green, C. (2007). Why EAP is necessary: A survey of Hong Kong tertiary students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6, 3-17.
  • Goldenberg, C., & Coleman, R. (2010). Promoting academic achievement among English learners: A guide to the research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
  • Gürbüz, R. and Güleç, İ. (2016). Türkiye’de Eğitim Gören Yabancı Öğrencilerin Türkçeye İlişkin Görüşleri: Sakarya Üniversitesi Örneği. Sakarya University Journal of Education, 6(2), 141-153.
  • Haidari, S. M. & Yanpar Yelken, T. (2018). Language Difficulties That International Postgraduate Students Experience During Their Education with the Medium of Turkish Language. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 14 (1), 194-210.
  • Haneda, M. (2014). Introduction: Why should we care about academic language? Linguistics and Education, 26, 88-91.
  • Hellekjaer, G. O. (2010). Language matters: Assessing lecture comprehension in Norwegian English-medium higher education. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula & U. Smit (Eds.), Language use and language learning in CLIL classrooms, (pp. 233-258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Hyland, K. (1997). Is EAP Necessary? A survey of Hong Kong undergraduates. Asian Journal of English Language teaching, 7, 77-99.
  • Johns, A. M. (1981). Necessary English: A faculty survey. TESOL Quarterly, 15, 51-57.
  • Kesten, A., Kırkoğlu, K. & Elma, C. (2010). Language and Education Problems of International Students in Turkey. Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 24, 65-84.
  • Kim, S. (2006). Academic oral communication needs of East Asian international graduate students in non-science and non-engineering fields. English for Specific Purposes, 25, 479-489.
  • Leki, I. (2001). A narrow thinking system: Nonnative-English-speaking students in group projects across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 39-67.
  • Liu, J. (2001). Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in U.S. universities: An emic perspective. Westport, CT: Ablex.
  • Ostler, S. E. (1980). A survey of academic needs for advanced ESL. TESOL Quarterly. 14(4), 489-502.
  • Phakiti, A., & Li, L. (2011). General academic difficulties and reading and writing difficulties among Asian ESL postgraduate students in TESOL at an Australian university. RELC Journal, 42(3), 227-264.
  • Saville-Troike, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 17, 199-219.
  • Tok, M. (2013). Türkçenin yabancı dil olarak öğretiminde akademik yazma ihtiyacı. Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 23, 1-25.
  • Türkkan, B., & Yağcıoğlu, S. (2006). Türkçe Bilimsel Metinlerde Gönderimsel Bağdaşıklık ve Köprü Gönderimi: Merkezleme Kuramı Çerçevesinde bir Yaklaşım. Dilbilim Araştırmaları, 59-70.
  • Uzun, L. ve Huber, E. (Haz) (2002) Türkçede Bilgi Yapısı ve Bilimsel Metinler. Essen, Almanya: Die Blaue Eule.
  • Wong Fillmore, L. (2004). The role of language in academic development. Santa Rosa: CA: Sonoma County Office of Education. https://www.scoe.org/docs/ah/AHlanguage.pdf Accessed 30 November 2015.
  • Yahşi Cevher, Ö., & Güngör, C. (2015). Yabancı dil olarak Türkçe öğretiminde akademik Türkçenin önemine ilişkin uygulamalı bir araştırma: Türk dili öğretimi uygulama ve araştırma merkezi örneği. International Journal of Languages’ Education and Teaching, 2267-2274.
  • Yahşi Cevher, Ö., & Güngör, C. (2016). The importance of teaching academic Turkish as a foreign language. The Anthropologist, 24(1), 309-318.
  • Yıldız, G., & Aksan, M. (2013). Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde eylemler: Derlem temelli bir inceleme. 27. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı, 2-4 Mayıs 2013, Antalya, Kemer.
  • Yılmaz, İ. (2017). Opinions of Turkish as a Foreign Language Learners on Academic Turkish. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(2), 180-189.
  • Zwiers, J. (2014). Building academic language: Meeting common core standards across disciplines, grades 5-12. San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.
Year 2019, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 34 - 47, 25.03.2019
https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.547601

Abstract

References

  • Akbaş, E. (2014). Are they discussing in the same way? Interactional metadiscourse in Turkish writers' texts. A. Lyda & K. Warchal (Eds.), Occupying niches: Interculturality, cross-culturality and aculturality in academic research, 119- 133. London: Springer.
  • Akbaş, E. (2012). Exploring metadiscourse in master's dissertation abstracts: cultural and linguistic variations across postgraduate writers. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(1), 12-26.
  • Alpar, R. (2010). Spor, sağlık ve eğitim bilimlerinden örneklerle uygulamalı istatistik ve geçerlik-güvenirlik. Ankara: Detay yayıncılık.
  • Bailey, A. L. (2007). Introduction: Teaching and assessing students learning English in school. A. L. Bailey (Ed.), The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test, 1-26. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  • Bayyurt, Y. (2010). Author positioning in academic writing. S. Zyngier & V. Viana (Eds.), Avaliaçoes e perspectivas: mapeando os estudos empiricos na area de Humanas (Appraisals and perspectives: mapping empirical studies in the Humanities), 163-184. Rio de Janeiro: The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
  • Biber, D. (2006). University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company.
  • Boylu, E. (2016). Türkçenin yabancı dil olarak öğretiminde akademik Türkçe sorunu. 9. Uluslararası Türkçenin Eğitimi-Öğretimi Kurultayı. Mehmet Akif University.
  • Burke, E., & Claire, W. S. (1996). Academic and Non-academic difficulties: Perceptions of graduate non-English speaking background students. TESL-EJ, 2(1) http://tesl-ej.org/ej05/a1.html Accessed 15 May 2017.
  • Christison, M. A., & Krahnke, K. J. (1986). Student perceptions of academic language study. TESOL Quarterly, 20(1), 61-81.
  • Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question, and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 19(1), 121–129.
  • Çakır, H. & Kansu Yetkiner, N. (2011). Grammatical Metaphor and Translation: A Contrastive Study of Turkish and English Scientific Discourse. E. D. Adanur (Ed.), IDEA: Studies in English, 497-518. New castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
  • Çakır, H. & Kansu Yetkiner, N. (2010). Nominalization in Scientific Language: A Comparison Between Turkish and English. 15. Uluslararası Türk Dilbilim Kurultayı
  • Çakır, H. & Özden, F. (2015). A Contrastive Study of the Rhetorical Structure of Turkish and English Research Article Abstracts. D. Zeyrek, Ç.Sağın Şimşek, U. Ataş & J. Rehbein (Eds.), Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics, 367-378. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.
  • Çalışır Zenci, S. (2009). Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde olumsuzluğun işlevleri. S. Ay, Ö. Aydın, İ. Ergenç, S. işsever & D. Peçenek (Eds.), Essays on Turkish Linguistics: Proceedings of the 14th International Conferenceon Turkish Linguistics, 247-256. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.
  • Çandarlı, D. (2012). A Cross-cultural Investigation of English and Turkish Research Article Abstracts in Educational Sciences. Studies About Languages, 20(2), 12-16.
  • Dağ Tarcan, Ö. (2017). Türkçe Bilimsel Metinlerde Etkileşimli Üstsöylem Belirleyicileri. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 8(2), 179-194.
  • Dolmacı, M., & Ertaş, A. (2016). Developing a textbook-based academic Turkish wordlist. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 232, 821-827.
  • Doyuran, Z. (2009). Conciliation of knowledge through hedging in Turkish scientific articles. Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 26(1), 85-99.
  • Evans, S., & Green, C. (2007). Why EAP is necessary: A survey of Hong Kong tertiary students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6, 3-17.
  • Goldenberg, C., & Coleman, R. (2010). Promoting academic achievement among English learners: A guide to the research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
  • Gürbüz, R. and Güleç, İ. (2016). Türkiye’de Eğitim Gören Yabancı Öğrencilerin Türkçeye İlişkin Görüşleri: Sakarya Üniversitesi Örneği. Sakarya University Journal of Education, 6(2), 141-153.
  • Haidari, S. M. & Yanpar Yelken, T. (2018). Language Difficulties That International Postgraduate Students Experience During Their Education with the Medium of Turkish Language. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 14 (1), 194-210.
  • Haneda, M. (2014). Introduction: Why should we care about academic language? Linguistics and Education, 26, 88-91.
  • Hellekjaer, G. O. (2010). Language matters: Assessing lecture comprehension in Norwegian English-medium higher education. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula & U. Smit (Eds.), Language use and language learning in CLIL classrooms, (pp. 233-258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Hyland, K. (1997). Is EAP Necessary? A survey of Hong Kong undergraduates. Asian Journal of English Language teaching, 7, 77-99.
  • Johns, A. M. (1981). Necessary English: A faculty survey. TESOL Quarterly, 15, 51-57.
  • Kesten, A., Kırkoğlu, K. & Elma, C. (2010). Language and Education Problems of International Students in Turkey. Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 24, 65-84.
  • Kim, S. (2006). Academic oral communication needs of East Asian international graduate students in non-science and non-engineering fields. English for Specific Purposes, 25, 479-489.
  • Leki, I. (2001). A narrow thinking system: Nonnative-English-speaking students in group projects across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 39-67.
  • Liu, J. (2001). Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in U.S. universities: An emic perspective. Westport, CT: Ablex.
  • Ostler, S. E. (1980). A survey of academic needs for advanced ESL. TESOL Quarterly. 14(4), 489-502.
  • Phakiti, A., & Li, L. (2011). General academic difficulties and reading and writing difficulties among Asian ESL postgraduate students in TESOL at an Australian university. RELC Journal, 42(3), 227-264.
  • Saville-Troike, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 17, 199-219.
  • Tok, M. (2013). Türkçenin yabancı dil olarak öğretiminde akademik yazma ihtiyacı. Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 23, 1-25.
  • Türkkan, B., & Yağcıoğlu, S. (2006). Türkçe Bilimsel Metinlerde Gönderimsel Bağdaşıklık ve Köprü Gönderimi: Merkezleme Kuramı Çerçevesinde bir Yaklaşım. Dilbilim Araştırmaları, 59-70.
  • Uzun, L. ve Huber, E. (Haz) (2002) Türkçede Bilgi Yapısı ve Bilimsel Metinler. Essen, Almanya: Die Blaue Eule.
  • Wong Fillmore, L. (2004). The role of language in academic development. Santa Rosa: CA: Sonoma County Office of Education. https://www.scoe.org/docs/ah/AHlanguage.pdf Accessed 30 November 2015.
  • Yahşi Cevher, Ö., & Güngör, C. (2015). Yabancı dil olarak Türkçe öğretiminde akademik Türkçenin önemine ilişkin uygulamalı bir araştırma: Türk dili öğretimi uygulama ve araştırma merkezi örneği. International Journal of Languages’ Education and Teaching, 2267-2274.
  • Yahşi Cevher, Ö., & Güngör, C. (2016). The importance of teaching academic Turkish as a foreign language. The Anthropologist, 24(1), 309-318.
  • Yıldız, G., & Aksan, M. (2013). Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde eylemler: Derlem temelli bir inceleme. 27. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı, 2-4 Mayıs 2013, Antalya, Kemer.
  • Yılmaz, İ. (2017). Opinions of Turkish as a Foreign Language Learners on Academic Turkish. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(2), 180-189.
  • Zwiers, J. (2014). Building academic language: Meeting common core standards across disciplines, grades 5-12. San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.
There are 42 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Dursun Demir This is me

Ayten Genç

Publication Date March 25, 2019
Published in Issue Year 2019 Volume: 15 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Demir, D., & Genç, A. (2019). Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 15(1), 34-47. https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.547601
AMA Demir D, Genç A. Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. March 2019;15(1):34-47. doi:10.17263/jlls.547601
Chicago Demir, Dursun, and Ayten Genç. “Academic Turkish for International Students: Problems and Suggestions”. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 15, no. 1 (March 2019): 34-47. https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.547601.
EndNote Demir D, Genç A (March 1, 2019) Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 15 1 34–47.
IEEE D. Demir and A. Genç, “Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions”, Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 34–47, 2019, doi: 10.17263/jlls.547601.
ISNAD Demir, Dursun - Genç, Ayten. “Academic Turkish for International Students: Problems and Suggestions”. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 15/1 (March 2019), 34-47. https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.547601.
JAMA Demir D, Genç A. Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. 2019;15:34–47.
MLA Demir, Dursun and Ayten Genç. “Academic Turkish for International Students: Problems and Suggestions”. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, pp. 34-47, doi:10.17263/jlls.547601.
Vancouver Demir D, Genç A. Academic Turkish for international students: Problems and suggestions. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. 2019;15(1):34-47.