Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The Fifth Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Türkiye, 24 - 26 Mayıs 2012, sa.1087, ss.183-189
The Perspectives of Turkish Prospective
Teachers on “ELF” and Their Awareness of It in
Their ELT Programs
Burak Tomak∗ and Pınar Kocaba¸s†
Abstract
English is one of the widely-used languages in the world as Konig (1990) confirms
this by stating that roughly 700 million people speak it. In some countries, it is
used as a mother tongue whereas in other countries it is used as a second language,
which means they use it as an official language even though they have their own
native tongue. In Turkey, English is considered as a foreign language and it
is taught/learnt for international communication with other nations. Thus, this
study was conducted with 94 students enrolled in two different prestigious state
universities located in Istanbul so as to determine their awareness of the recent
trends in ELT by taking “ELF” into account. The participants of this study are all
first year students who are attending ELT department as freshmen. The aim of this
study is whether they are aware of this “ELF” issue and to find out what they expect
from their department curriculums to meet their needs. Questionnaires were given
in two different state universities in Istanbul to two different groups showing similar
characteristics. Results of this study emphasize the importance of awareness-raising
lectures to these first-year-students of ELT and the educational implications will be
discussed by giving some advice on the ELT curriculums of these universities.
Keywords: ELF, Turkish prospective teachers