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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 nonislamic 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, multiculturalism, 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.