Cultural Transfer and Creating Cultural Awareness in Teaching Turkish as A Foreign Language: A Sample from Gaziosmanpaşa University Tömer

Abstract

Culture and language are two phenomena that have existed by influencing each other for centuries. It is impossible to think independently of the culture on which the language is cultivated, nor on the language, which influences culture. One of the best signs of mastering a language is the ability to understand the cultural elements and the cultural codes that a language carries. There is a need for transferring of cultural elements in order to achieve foreign language learning in the best possible way. In this way, it is aimed to teach the target language in the most natural way and to ensure that the language competencies of the students are at the highest level. In the globalizing world, that the language teaching has gained different dimensions and new developments on cultural transfer have been seen. The most important of these are intercultural communication and cultural awareness. During language teaching, awareness of the target culture positively affects intercultural communication. In this study, 19 students who are learning Turkish at Gaziosmanpaşa University TÖMER -Center for Teaching Turkish- were given a questionnaire in order to learn their ideas about cultural transfer while learning a foreign language and the obtained data were examined in accordance with the possibilities provided by qualitative research and the findings were interpreted. Among the results obtained, it has been seen that the majority of the students in the general framework have a positive attitude towards cultural learning. The reasons behind the students' attitudes on approaching culture learning kind of a negative way are also investigated. The findings of the students on how and at what level the culture transfer should happen were interpreted and all the findings were synthesized in the conclusion. At the end of the research, some suggestions on teaching Turkish as a foreign language were presented.

Keywords: Foreign Language Teaching, Cultural Transmission, Teaching Turkish