Republic of turkey

10. THE STRATEGIC SELECTIONS ABOUT EQUIPPING THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITH FOREIGN LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE

It is necessary to provide the university students with at least one foreign language in Turkey which wants to become a member of European Union and to increase its strength for competition in a generally globalizing world. This is a minimal condition. The European Union countries expect their students to know at least two foreign languages.

It can be stated that the students should improve their foreign language skills at the ages when they are more open to language learning and thus they should come to the higher education with no foreign language problem. Of course, this is an ideal circumstance. However, unfortunately, a great deal of the students starts higher education without having adequate amount of foreign language knowledge. This language problem is to be solved at the higher education level. The higher education cannot ignore this lack. This problem has been in the agenda of Turkey for a long time. It cannot be noted that the harmonisations made up to now so as to solve this problem at the higher education level have been successful enough. Turkish education system should put a strong claim about this matter. The strategic selections about this matter can be counted as follows;

1. In the long run, the students who have finished the secondary education should begin the higher education having solved their foreign language problems.

2. In the short run, the higher education institutions should certainly make insistent efforts in order to fill the language gap of their students by implementing various methods.

3. In order to realize both the first and the second objective, higher education system should quickly increase the supply of the language instructors in the following years.

4. In the middle run, the students who are going to graduate from the university can be expected to take a certain mark in the language level determination tests whose validity is admitted. Students who are going to continue their Graduate level can be expected to fulfil this condition beforehand.

5. It is also inadequate of the universities direct the students’ language learning ability to only learning one language (English). Learning more than one language should be encouraged. The languages of the European Union countries, languages of the Balkan countries which are Turkey’s neighbours, languages of the Middle East and Caucasian countries, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese which are the languages of the countries that play significant roles in the world economy and politics should be taught to as many students as possible.

No detailed suggestions will be given as to how these strategic preferences will be put into effect. The universities are expected to develop effective ways appropriate for their conditions in their own strategic plans. In this context, such ways as developing preparatory classrooms, giving some courses in English by also considering that Turkey will take part in Erasmus system can be improved.

11. THE STRATEGIES OF MAKING USE OF THE NEW APPROACHES AND TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION

There have been crucial improvements in the implementation of new technologies in the field of higher education. It cannot be remarked that these improvements have sufficiently entered the higher education system of Turkey. The old teaching techniques in university education are still dominant.

The methods depending upon the lecture notes which are prepared with limited resources or having the students memorize by having them take notes are quite commonly used in higher education institutions. It is observed that the instructors making use of new teaching technologies in their classes cannot generally draw benefit from these technologies sufficiently. This situation is very much related with concentrating more on the question of what we are going to teach at the universities than the question of how we are going to teach. So long as the question of how we are going to teach is not given the adequate importance, not only can the new teaching technologies be correctly used, but also we cannot get benefit from the contributions that these technologies can make to teaching quality. Today in Turkey, when the benefit from technological developments is mentioned, immediately we commence to think about increasing the benefit we draw from computers and making the use of internet more common in education. Of course these technologies are significant, but the essential problem is beyond the possession of the skills of using them. Teaching in Turkey is mainly done by reading the certain texts and having the students memorize them. If the computer is used only for this purpose, we cannot totally make good use of this technology. While the new teaching technologies are used, visual learning and thinking skills can be developed with the audiovisual tools in accordance with the scope of the teaching point. The most important lack in our classrooms related with providing the services by the help of the technologies and information technologies is about the inability of transforming the visual effects into an efficient way. It is obvious that getting rid of the method of teaching mainly from the text, a teaching which benefits from all the communication sources will contribute more to the students’ cognitive and creative skills. If this kind of approach can be reached, the contributions of the computer technologies to teaching will be benefited much more.

Once we commence to give significance to how it is going to be taught right along with what is going to be taught, we can start thinking about how the technology can be most effectively used in the establishment of teacher – learner relationship. However, what is essential is not the striking and excellent qualifications of a technological medium but the quality of the academic content transferred via this medium. The design of learning sources and operations becomes necessary in order to increase this quality. The academic model designed systemizes the related elements in the presentation of a certain content so as to reach the desired purpose. It can be noted that the most appropriate condition is the ability of the instructors to design the academic models compatible with existing technological opportunities. However, in today’s complicated world, development of these models has become a particular area of specialization. Under these circumstances, it becomes necessary to inform the instructors so that at least they could consciously select from the developed models.

In the part of education vision of this study, it is remarked that transference from instructor centred education to learner centred education at the universities as well is necessary. Such a vision should be related with educational technology. While the educational models are being developed in a suitable way for this kind of teaching, the necessity to equip the students with skills to be able to use these technologies becomes apparent.

As a result, the old and new technologies are used in the limited economical facilities. In order to use new technologies efficiently in equipment and teaching design dimension and select them correctly, the responsibility is on the shoulders of the instructors, students and administrative directors at every level. Teamwork concept in planning and operating technology teaching should be taken as s starting point in the period of teaching design and project development. While creating project teams, the ones having required technical skills and the experts sensitive to qualified teaching periods and strategic planning should be distributed in an appropriate way in these teams.