IF YOU TEACH IT, THEY WILL* COME! *may or may not

I had a few weeks off from teaching because the planning to start new courses had not been approved. I sent out emails before the Kurban Bayramı but had received no response. This is mostly due to the new culture of emailing here. In the States, you would expect at least an acknowledgement of something so important, but here, I am convinced that email is used as a novelty item still. So after the holiday, I spent a few weeks putting together the best schedule that I could come up with.

I was rather disappointed that I wasn’t so effective in helping change the Turkish English that is spoken here. I had to stop and re-evaluate what it is that I am trying to do here. I did find some positive aspects of my course, and that was based around discussion of the articles I presented. I decided I would continue that in my “advanced English” classroom with the topic of “Environmental Issues”- this is also interesting for me because I think environmental protection is a huge problem in Turkey.

That aside, I really decided that I wasn’t going to change the way these people have learned English. They learn it from other learners of English, also Turkish, who may speak with a heavy accent and stilted grammar. This results in a population of language learners who are learning what they think is English, but what is actually a hybrid language. I was really shocked to hear mostly Turkish spoken when I visited English language classrooms. This is a common practice and I even heard one student tell a teacher at another university that they didn’t understand the teacher because they were used to her speaking Turkish, not English!

So then I thought about what I can do, and what I know how to do is teach German! So I made up my mind to teach German. Then I considered, why not teach French and Spanish while I’m at it. At first, it was just an idea, but then I came to the conclusion that I could teach basics in all the languages. At least what they learned from me would be communicative, and modern, as opposed to their English grammar translation that results in Zero communication ability.

I have never taught French nor Spanish, but before U of I , I hadn’t taught German either. SO I decided I could do it. I developed some lesson plans using livemocha.com. It became obvious that not having a text for these languages was going to be very difficult. I don’t know the order that things are taught in French/Spanish for beginners. It dawned on me that I could be rushing to step 10 before completing steps 1-9, so I have been in contact with colleagues who teach these languages and I have been doing a LOT of research!

The advertisement and sign-up for these classes was a botched mess. I tried to get the word out by email, but that email only ended up going to grad students and faculty, then I tried advertising by having a little kiosk in the buildings with classes, but then nobody wanted to approach me. Finally we ended up putting up flyers with my email and the email flood started.

I got a small office with an old dumpy desk and tried to work out of there. I did get a printer, though. I have to print out all my own materials and I needed some way to do that. Then I kept asking for other little things like paper clips and a chair to sit in and a bigger desk and one day a miracle happened… a whole office suite landed in my little room. I look like an executive now! I can work in there very comfortably and look forward to using it to its max! I am starting to feel a little like I am taking advantage of their hospitality, but I am also giving a lot with more hours of teaching than I am supposed to teach and certainly no other ETA is teaching 3 additional languages.

With that said, the first week, students didn’t really show up. But in the 2^nd week they were there in hordes, most of them wanting to learn English. However, there is a pretty large population of students who wish to learn the other languages as well. It is really tough and I require that only the language being taught is spoken in the classroom. That means NO TURKISH, Türkçe Yasak! –is what I tell them “Turkish is forbidden.” I had to get serious a couple of times when they kept answering for other people and translating my questions into Turkish. I definitely let them know that they would be very unsuccessful in learning a 2^nd language if they only want to speak Turkish. I think they got the point after several “Speak English, Türkçe Yasak” announcements were made.

I understand that my style of teaching is new to them and they are not used to using a language other than Turkish for communication, but when I heard some students practicing Spanish in the hall when I went to get some tea, I knew that what I was doing is pretty cool. I am really convinced that I am helping here and that makes my job very worth it. There’s nothing like the feeling that you are spreading knowledge and to me, nothing is more important than spreading language because it opens up the doors of the world and allows for the understanding of a people and culture that will hopefully lead to tolerance and ultimately acceptance of the diverse people and cultures in this world! I’m gonna save that line to close some lectures with that I will give in the future!