70021 B Turkish – Reading and Writing Skills in Turkish
Sofia Prokou
Specialised Teaching and Research Staff (EEDIP/EEP)
3 hours per week
Course Objectives
The course aims to consolidate knowledge of written Modern Turkish in its standard version, at an intermediate level. Given the fact that teaching Turkish as a foreign language in the Faculty complies with the basic principles of the Common European Framework for Languages, this particular course focuses on the development of reading and writing skills at an intermediate (B1-B2) level.
With regard to reading skills, students of the 6th term are expected to be able to comprehend a variety of texts and understand the meaning of most words, quickly grasp news items, articles etc., and decide if a closer reading is worthwhile, and if relevant to their interests, can obtain information, ideas and opinions related to their interests. As a result of their training, students of this level should be able to study relatively simple contemporary narratives such as plays, short stories and poems.
As for writing skills, students are expected to be able to write clear and detailed presentations or compositions on a wide range of subjects related to their interests, summarise articles and write informative texts about a subject of a composition. Finally, they are expected to be capable of writing personal letters or e-mails conveying different feelings or write a short review of a film or a book.
Course Structure
Given the aims stated above, a selection of a variety of texts from newspapers, magazines as well as some fairly simple contemporary narratives constitute the corpus of this course. Book and film reviews selected from Turkish dailies, simple texts of historical content – Ottoman and Contemporary History of Turkey – political articles by famous Turkish columnists about general Turkish internal or international affairs, various articles of ecological, technological or artistic interest are compiled in order to form the basis for the development of the reading skills at an intermediate (B1-B2) level.
As for the development of writing skills, apart from the open-end questions related to texts examined in class, and the brief summaries prepared by the students as homework, vocabulary exercises and work on Turkish sayings are done. Excerpts from fables of popular heroes such as Nasreddin Hodja or Karagoz may be analysed in extended paragraphs which are discussed and corrected collectively in class. Written accounts from students’ own experience or thoughts and opinions about a topic discussed in class is given as homework almost each week, during the 13 weeks term. The texts produced by the students are e-mailed to the lecturer in order to be commented and sent back. Some texts or parts of texts may be chosen and examined in class situation, anonymously, in order to illustrate points related to writing skills at this level.
Assessment
Progress is assessed through the mid-term and final written examinations (20% and 80% respectively). An extra bonus (max. 20% of the final grade), is attributed according to the quality of the texts produced and corrected by the lecturer or collectively in class.
Bibliography
1. Turkish daily newspapers and weekly or monthly magazines.
2. Selected readings from textbooks such as:
Özsoy Sumru, Türkçe-Turkish, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları, İstanbul, 1999.
Tömer, Hitit-Yabancılar için Türkçe, ve Yeni Hitit, vol 2, Çalışma kitapları Ankara Üniversitesi Yayınları, Ankara , 2002, 2008.
Selected short stories by writers such as Aziz Nesin, Sait Faik, etc., contemporary poets and other writers.