English Education in Turkey
Hello, dear steemians. As you probably know, I am a citizen of Turkey who is working as an English teacher in Izmir, Turkey. Today, I would like to talk about my profession which is English language teaching. English teaching is one of the biggest problems in our education system. There are various reasons which create this problem. I am going to mention them in the rest of this post, so you can understand why we, as turks, are having serious difficulties in globalising and expressing ourselves in English. If you look at the posts of Turkish people, you can observe that most of Turkish writers post their contents in Turkish as they can't use English efficiently.
Grammar-based Teaching
One of the biggest mistakes which is done in especially public schools is that English lessons are carried out mainly based on grammar teaching. I am working in a private language school. What we offer in our school is completely different than the traditional teaching method. We try to encourage our students to lead the lessons by themselves, we are just team leaders who show them the way to improve themselves. How do we do that? In public schools, teachers don't usually pay attention to pair-work activities or speaking exercises. In modern teaching, students should be able to use the language effectively in their daily life. This is one of the main things that must be changed in our public schools. We can't help them to speak this international language by giving them "fill in the gaps" activities.
Exposure To The Language
There is another major problem we are facing in Turkey. Unfortunately, everything we watch or read is in Turkish as people are usually lazy. It is a typical characteristic of people living in countries which are by Mediterranean sea. For example, when you watch a movie on a Turkish channel, it is shown in Turkish language. It is really ridiculuous to watch Leonardo Di Caprio speaking Turkish in Titanic. As people are not exposed to language in their daily life, their English learning process can't happen well. The same problem is happening in other Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece and Italy. People from these countries have similar problems that I explained above with Turkish people. That's why, I always motivate my students to watch films in their original language with subtitles.
Unawareness Of Opportunities
Another point that is missing in our teaching is the movitation. If you don't give your student a good reason to study , that person will never be successful in lessons. Teachers have to be friends with their students and show them what they can get If they manage to speak this language. I usually prefer to talk about my experiences that I have had during my Erasmus education and volunteering experience. Some of them feel really motivated and put more effort to learn so that they can go on adventures like me. In my opinion, all teacher must create this kind of relationship with their students to help them achieve something in life.
Teaching!
I would like to end my post with a photo that was taken 4 years ago. I have been teaching English for a long time and I love doing my job. I really hope that English educationg will better in the future. If I couldn't speak English, I wouldn't be able to express myself on this amazing platform so more people should have this chance and I must lead them on their adventure. Thanks for reading!
