The First Step in Curriculum Development: Needs and Situation Analysis in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Owing to the fact that teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language (TFL) is a new discipline, determining students’ needs through students’ and teachers’ views is important for students’ active involvement in the educational environment. Thus, an effective curriculum for satisfying student language needs can be prepared in advance. However, there are external factors for designing and implementing the curriculum. So, an analysis of the existing situation is required. In this respect, parameter of “identifying the needs” being the first step of curriculum development model of Taba-Tylar has been the starting point in this study. The aim of this case study in which “Holistic single-case design” has been used is to clarify how to make analyses of needs and existing situation being the starting point for developing an effective curriculum for TFL learners. As a conclusion, the diversity of student needs has been revealed in light of obtained qualitative and quantitative data from observations of 40 young-adult TFL learners in Turkish language teaching center, questionnaire administered to the learners, an open-ended question and interviews with two TFL teachers. Considering these results, TFL curriculum developers should develop a curriculum by taking into consideration the diversity of student needs. Thus, the foundations of this new discipline entitled with teaching TFL can be just laid. With reference to results of this study, some suggestions were offered for TFL curriculum developers.