Turkish: Ankara, Turkey


Location: Ankara, Turkey
Dates of program: June 18 - August 19, 2012
Hosting institution: TÖMER Institute, Tunali Hilmi branch
Language offered: Turkish
Levels offered: Beginning, intermediate and advanced

Program Structure

The CLS Turkish institute covers approximately one academic year of university-level Turkish study during the 8-week program, and is designed to meet the needs of students from a variety of language levels and backgrounds, including advanced students and those learning the language for the first time.

Formal classroom language instruction is provided for an average of four hours per day, five days per week. Extracurricular activities are designed to supplement the formal curriculum, including regular one-on-one meetings with peer tutors for conversational practice, as well as cultural activities and excursions designed to expand students’ understanding of Turkish life and culture. Students also live with host families, which gives them an opportunity to experience life inside a Turkish family and practice their language skills outside of class.

CLS students in the beginning class in Ankara with their language instructor.

Outcomes

In 2010, the CLS Program adopted the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) as an additional measure of the effectiveness and quality of the institutes overseas. Before the program, students take a diagnostic OPI test; at the end of their 8-week course of study, they take an ACTFL-certified post-program OPI assessment. The scores on these tests give students a concrete, widely-recognized measure of their speaking skills in Turkish.

Student Activities

As part of their curriculum, students in Ankara take on independent projects, researching aspects of Turkish culture that interest them. For her project, 2011 CLS Ankara student Katrina Lim produced a video about Turkish ice cream.

Alumni Highlights

A CLS student in the city of Beypazari, a short distance from Ankara.

Jordan Matthews was a beginning student on the CLS Program in Ankara in 2010 and fell in love with the Turkish language during the program. She was later awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study the transformation of public spaces in former capital cities in Turkey through visual media (collages, drawings, models, photographs, etc.). As a Fulbright fellow, she lived in Istanbul and conducted research in Istanbul, Bursa, Iznik, Konya, Edirne, and Ankara. Her work was exhibited at Kadir Has University, and she hopes to exhibit it in the U.S. in the future. Click here to see some of her work.

Program Highlights

View videos, read highlights, and more on the CLS Blog!

Alumni Ambassadors



Anna Pirsch, '10	Jeremy Bender, '11	William Zeman, '09	Brandon Thomas, '11 (Izmir)