Foreign language should not be traumatic; Focus on listening and writing skills

Drawing attention to the need for foreign language learning in Turkey, which is growing and opening up day by day and even being a center of attraction in many fields, especially in higher education, Istanbul Gelisim University School of Foreign Languages ​​Director Dr. Instructor Member Şahin Gök stated that foreign language exams should be designed to measure listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. Gök said, “Language is mostly a means of verbal or written communication. We traumatized foreign language learning with an approach that only reads and understands the language but does not produce it.”
“FOCUS ON LISTENING AND WRITING”
Emphasizing the need to focus more on listening and writing skills while learning a foreign language, Dr. Instructor Member Şahin Gök said, “In our current understanding of foreign language learning, we learn by reading only with our eyes and save it in our brain as a language input. Since the audio input, that is, the listening rate, is almost non-existent, the audio output, that is, the speaking, is also very low. Writing skills also contribute to meaningful language outcomes and permanent learning.
LISTENING INTENSIVELY AND UNDERSTANDING, READY TO SPEAK Spontaneously
Gök stated that listening intensely and with understanding, as children do, lays the groundwork for spontaneous speech and said, “By listening intensely and with understanding, we catch the rhythm of the language and its unique music with our ears. When sufficient listening occurs, we see that the language naturally pours out from our language, not word for word, but with meaning groups, block by block, and even we cannot prevent it. In the second step of the speaking phase, trying to convey the message to the other party without focusing on mistakes, like children, makes communication happen.
WE FOCUS ON AWARENESS CREATING WORK
Stating that they minimize the use of Turkish in the classroom by focusing on listening and speaking, contrary to the memorized understandings within Istanbul Gelişim University, Gök said, “We are trying to establish the culture of speaking in the target language. We motivate our students to speak and use English inside and outside the classroom by informing them. We focus on raising awareness about how to learn the language rather than trying to teach it.”
“CHANCE IN FOREIGN STUDENT LANGUAGE LEARNING”
Stating that they increase the number of foreign students every year, Gök said, “We observe that these students have a great contribution in communicating in English. We currently have around four thousand foreign students, and we aim to increase this number to ten thousand.