An Evaluation of Basic-Level Turkish Language Instruction in Military Settings: Pedagogical Methods and Content Analysis

Abstract

The number of studies on teaching Turkish for special purposes has increased in recent years. Although most of these studies focus on mainly academic Turkish, there are also many studies on teaching Turkish for specific professions such as banking, law, health and tourism. With the international military agreements signed by Turkiye, teaching Turkish to foreign military personnel stands out as another branch of teaching Turkish for special purposes. The activities of teaching Turkish to foreign military personnel, which date back to the 1930’s in Türkiye, are currently carried out by National Defense University and Yunus Emre Institute. When the literature is examined, it is seen that there are not enough studies on teaching Turkish to foreign military personnel. In this study, it was aimed to examine the textbooks used in teaching foreign languages to military personnel in order to determine the language teaching methods used in teaching foreign languages to military personnel and make suggestions for material development studies for teaching Turkish to foreign guest military personnel. With this purpose Campaign English for the Military 1 textbook was selected as the object of the study. The question of how daily and military English is taught in the textbook was sought to be answered. In this qualitative study, data were collected through document analysis, and the collected data were analyzed through content analysis. The findings based on the data obtained were interpreted according to the theoretical framework and sub-problems of the study. Results of the study show that 85.71% of the units and sections in the object of study were named with military terminology. It was observed that the language functions in the textbook include situations that soldiers will need in their daily social life as well as their professional life. It was also determined that 61.11% of the vocabulary in the course material analyzed were presented in the military context, but the vocabulary was also included in the daily context. When analyzed on the basis of sections, it was found that 85.71% of the sections of the book targeted military English. Although there is a separate section for everyday English in the book, the two contexts are presented as integrated and there are no clear distinctions between the sections. In line with the results, it is suggested that as a group with different interests and need, textbooks for teaching Turkish as a foreign language to military personnel should include military-oriented context in terms of content (functions, vocabulary, etc.).