The paper was a thorough study of official documents which involve the national education councils held in Turkey starting from 1939. It was especially interesting to me in that I had never before read about the history of foreign language teacher policy of Turkey, but I had heard a lot about the constant change that took place throughout the years ever since the foundation of the Turkish Republic. The paper focuses specifically on the education council reports written from 1939 onwards, quite an early date in the history of foreign language education in Turkish state schools. Unfortunately, to my surprise, the only consistent practice was to make new decisions on the practice of foreign language education by the Ministry of national Education (MONE), which has been responsible for designing the macro level framework of the curriculum. It is thanks to this paper that I learned that new regulations concerning even education-related issues are announced on the Official Gazette.
In the paper it is also mentioned that in the European Language Portfolio, learners have autonomy in their learning since they, themselves keep a record of their development by assessing themselves. This procedure is a totally foreign concept to my culture; and I have doubts on the practice of keeping a portfolio based on one’s objective observations of himself in Turkey.
In the article it is mentioned that policy planning involves several authorities, such as parliaments, ministry of education, regional and educational boards and schools in addition to teachers and parents; which I think is a good summary of the structure and addressee of the language education policy process. The factors that affect this process are also given in a nutshell; language policy, psychological, linguistics and educational factors. Discussion on the article made me reconsider the fact that not everybody needs to develop all four skills in English language in Turkey.
Year by year account of the changes in policies were stunning due to the fact that some lasted only one year! Another dazzling point the article mentions is about the reduced number of students in one class, it is given as 30-40, which is still a big number no matter what the age or level of the students are.
The change in methodology was parallel to the change in the dominant theories in psychology and sociology, and the emergence of the communicative approach, though never implemented by all means, was an expected change, and was an ‘ideal’ rather than a practiced phenomenon. Another unpracticed method was not using English as the medium of instruction in science-related courses, yet many Anatolian high schools and many private schools offer these courses in English, even today.
Recent changes follow European norms and standards and are promising. Yet, we will see what the future brings as time goes by, and the as survival even in local circumstances requires to know English more and more every single day in a globalized world where borders are disappearing gradually.