Bilingual education in TURKEY

Bilingualism in Anatolia before Turks

The constitution of three continents: ANATOLIA- the cradle of many civilizations.

In ancient Anatolia, bilingual scripts came out as a result of language contacts.

Bilingualism in Anatolia after Turks

Before coming to Anatolia, the elitist and folk types of bilingualism were Turkish, Gothic and Latin languages.

Converting to Islam

After Islam, intellectuals created a diglossic society by creating a high variety called Osmanlica, a mixed language of Turkish, Arabic and Persian.

Ottoman Empire era (1299-1923)

During the time of the Ottoman Empire, there had been many speech communities speaking different languages (There were 22 non-islamic groups 47 ethnic groups (including islamic and non-islamic groups)

Republic era ( 1923- … )

The Turkish Language Association was founded in 1932 with an important aim to purify the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian words and to standardize the language.

Turkish was accepted as the only medium of instruction in public schools. However, foreign language courses were also allowed to be taught at secondary and high schools and universities.

Folk bilingualism in Turkey

The distinction between “national language” and “native language”.

There are many languages spoken in Turkey besides Official Turkish Language.

This is because of multi- ethnicity, multi-culturalism, soci-economic diversity, urban-rural distinction, dominant- recessive languages, politics and immigration.

The most issued one of those languages is Kurdish.

Kurdish – the mother tongue of our Southeast in South-eastern part of Turkey Kurdish language

is the mother tongue . at the very beginning of Primary Education, the

Kurdish pupils have to make a lot more efforts than the students whose mother Tongue is already Turkish.

English as the first language

English language is the language of privilege or prestige during education life or work life.

In a way English is institutionalized in each phase of education starting from Kindergarten.

In Turkey,

People speak Turkish Children are taught in Turkish Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir etc. – lots of foreigners

= some international schools, bilingual schools (mainly Turkish/English)

First language is taught from 2nd grade (age 7 years) in public schools

In private schools, at the age of 3 pupils start to be taught the first language.

In most of the private schools; from the age of 2,

English is taught in “sandwich lessons”

Sandwich lesson:

The lesson in which both English and class teacher teach at the same time to make pupils be familiar with the foreign language.