Pixel International Conferences

My paper discusses the challenges of teaching Turkish to adult European students, the lack of innovative teaching resources together with a creative solution for motivating learners acquiring new vocabulary. Turkish is highly alien to the speakers of Germanic or Romance languages, partly due to the complex grammar and the different word order. However, the essential building block for learning any language is the vocabulary. Without words it is impossible to make conversation and so acquiring new vocabulary is key to confidence and motivation. Existing Turkish language resources such as the Hitit course which is used as the standard teaching material at the Complutense University in Madrid tend to offer a highly traditional approach. Each unit covers a theme, introducing new grammar and vocabulary through basic dialogues which need to be set to memory. Furthermore, the descriptions used often include a level of vocabulary that is too advanced for the students concerned. The considerable time I spent seeking alternatives only confirmed that there really was a dearth of inspiring materials for Turkish teaching. Finally, I chanced upon the available resources for teaching vocabulary to babies and started to consider how natural language learning might assist European learners of Turkish. Flash cards are published for Turkish babies aged from 12 to 36 months. Each card displays a word together with a picture illustrating the vocabulary through everyday objects, pet names, images representing the different genders, etc. The paper describes how I applied these resources to adult students, the methodology used to engage them in group activities and the results achieved in terms of motivating students and making the learning of Turkish more enjoyable. I will also explore more general conclusions of this experiment in terms of how natural language learning can be applied to the study of such an uncommon second language.

Keywords: Turkish, new vocabulary, baby methods;