Studying Languages
Apologies - If you have come here looking for the "Trust Me - I'm an Estate Agent", please click HERE to read that article.
Studying Languages - An article by Ros Elliott-Ozlek
I would never describe myself as ‘good at languages’, but studied French at school, with half a term of basic German – now mainly forgotten. I was always afraid to speak in a foreign language, fearing laughter or ridicule. Short trips to France only confirmed my lack of linguistic skills – and I didn’t congratulate myself on reading skills and general comprehension in the foreign language. If one didn’t speak it, then one didn’t know it, and speaking it was too terrifying to contemplate with all the possible errors one could make.
This attitude was forcibly changed when I came to Turkey. I was offered a specialised job at a university. Despite being assured before I came that ‘everybody spoke English’ it was apparent on arrival that hardly anyone did; moreover, those that had learnt some English were also too afraid to try and speak it.
I worked with an interpreter/assistant feeling foolish – she might as well have been teaching ‘my’ subject outright, instead of their paying me such a high salary to do so.
Working first with Turkish language books either lent or acquired I discovered how hard it is to learn a language without a teacher. After two years of stubborn resistance to the new ‘useless’ language I was ‘getting by’ in, somebody lent me a simple course book – so simple I felt I already knew it all; I could read it in 3 sittings en route back to Turkey from UK summer holidays. On arrival at the university I greeted students of mine using this simple Turkish I knew from before and had just re-read. The effects were astonishing. All the students were impressed that I had somehow ‘learnt Turkish’ during the summer. The key point seemed to be the use of short meaningful phrases rather than longer grammatically correct sentences. This is an obvious point to make in learning to speak any language, but it can take students years or even a lifetime to appreciate and put into practice.
I was thus sufficiently inspired to enrol at a language school for one month. Classes were 5 days a week with 4 lessons a day, from 9am to 1pm – tortuously intensive, to my mind. The groups were mixed ages from middle-eastern students in their late teens (aiming to attend Turkish universities) to middle-aged ex-pats and foreign business men. However, the Head of the school took pity on me and invited me to sit in on her own classes for free.
The flexible attitude of both the Head and my own teacher opened my eyes to different styles of teaching and learning. They treated us like friends, and these two teachers are still my good friends more than twenty years later. I don’t know any teacher from my past schools and universities who would have behaved in a similar friendly way, including teachers in the adult evening institutes where I worked in London. However, this Turkish principal regularly ordered a round of coffees and teas for all the students who made it to the first class of the morning, just to help us adjust to being at our desks so early in the day to learn something we hadn’t really wanted to do but now needed. She paid for these welcome hot drinks from her own pocket.
Thus, my lack of grammar was painfully adjusted and I somehow acquired the confidence to use my ‘pidgin’ Turkish – everywhere. This opened doors for me quite dramatically. Students and people I met anywhere invited me home to meet their families. Contacts were easily made and friendships cemented. Shopping and visits to the dentist or doctor became a pleasure instead of a trial and the cold Turkish walls of my self-inflicted prison cell came tumbling down.
Moreover, Turks of all ages and occupations complimented my Turkish as soon as I spoke one sentence. Can one imagine an English person doing this to a foreigner struggling to say something in English?
This was yet another eye-opener in the business of education: Turkish teachers are so encouraging of their students and so polite with their corrections, making sure they do not embarrass or wound the student with their words.
In terms of job opportunities, my horizons opened up too. The choreology Department having been established, my work was finishing at the university, but I had fallen in love with the country, its people, climate and ancient ruined sites. I didn’t want to return to cloudy rainy Britain. With my developing language skills, the hobbies and part-time jobs I had been doing, mainly with ex-pats and their children – such as yoga, tap dance, piano teaching and clarinet teaching – now became available to Turkish students. I found the confidence to teach many different things using Turkish - something I would never have envisioned for myself before, even in a European language such as French. Having to shout in Turkish to make corrections to a class of twenty teenage tap dancers, while simultaneously demonstrating the routine, was not one of my natural talents.
My career has changed several times since then, from choreologist and Tap Dance teacher to English teacher to Yoga teacher and now Bowen therapist, and the majority of my work is with Turks, so learning the language to some degree of fluency has been more valuable than I could ever have imagined when I first came to Turkey.
Although the language I had to learn is not commonly found in a University prospectus, I would say that the benefits are the same for any language learned; Confidence is built up; Horizons are widened; Understanding between cultures is deepened.
...Ros Elliott-Ozlek