Turkish Learning Experiences of Syrian Students within the Context of Turkish Higher Education System: From War to Education

The necessity for studies based on the different dimensions of teaching Turkish as a foreign language during the period of globalization of education has considerably increased. The language courses for the Syrian refugees provided by the Research and Application Center of Turkish and Foreign Language (known as TOMER) established in various foundations, cultural centers, Turkology research and university centers, have met this need on a vast scale. However, reporting the difficulties of teaching Turkish as a foreign language and increasing the quality require much more research. Hence, the experiences of the Syrian students learning Turkish were investigated in this study. To obtain data, snowball sampling strategy and semi-structured interviews were carried out with the Syrians living in Osmaniye and Kilis. Considering findings, internal and external difficulties faced by the Syrian refugees were determined. The results were discussed in terms of contributing both to the literature of teaching Turkish as a foreign language and to the integration of the refugees into the Turkish society. The results show that the productive skills need to be highlighted much more while teaching Turkish and alternative course books for teaching Turkish seem to be needed as there are not many different books published in this field. Keywords: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, Teaching, Syria, Syrian refugee students, Turkish Higher Education