Evaluation of the Turkish Curriculum for High Schools by Ministery of Education
By: Nilay Dede
Tags: Curriculum, Learning, Turkish, High School

When we analyze the Turkish curriculum for high school we may understand

that Turkey cares about the education of foreign languages, especially English.

According to the curriculum, students who are from 9rd to 12rd are exposed to

English courses 4 hours a week. The curriculum has been designed in

accordance with The Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages (CEFR) therefore, the language proficiency levels are reflected as

A1, A2 (Basic Users) and B1, B2 (Independent Users)

When we look under the hood of each grade, we see the curriculum aims that

9th graders deals with the courses as A1/A2, 10th graders A2+/B1; 11th graders

deals B1+/B2 and 12th graders B2… As for content of the curriculum, it

indicates that it is based on action-oriented approach. Because of the lack of

communicative competence of Turkish students and the priority which has

been given grammatical competence among Turkish teachers, the new English

Curriculum is designed as intended foster communicative skills which can be

supported by Ziya Selcuk’s Education Vision for 2023 or 21st century skills,

life skills etc. The target language (English) is seen as a vehicle for

communication rather than a lesson to study, both students and teachers speak

the target language to communicate.The curriculum encougares task-based,

project-based activities and collaboration among students rather than

competition. So far so good, the curriculum is planned ideally “in theory”. What

about practice? I personally believe that the weekly course hours for English

classes are not enough to develop communicative and productive skills. Because

the students (in general) have no interlocuters to communicate with them using

the target language apart from the English classes. The program indicates that

giving students authentic assessment to maintain productivity after school. This

is logical and ideal, but still not enough.. Because teachers can not check the

assessments of each student on time. The weekly course hours should be

increased and enriched with the reading clubs, listening classes, video classes,

stoy-telling classes etc. At this point we can compare Turkey’s English

curriculum with the curriculum in Norway. Because Norwegian students are

highly exposed to English through different media, e.g. film, TV, music,

gaming, and social media. Norwegian national TV channels do not dub any of

the English media, and new media habits lead Norwegian students to

increasingly access English media via for instance YouTube, where the learners

need to rely on context to understand the language. The Norwegian national

curriculum isalso inspired by European trends and the Common European

Framework of References for Languages (CEFR) Evaluating students with a

pen-paper exam is another weak point in my opinion. When students are

evaluated like this they can not see the target language (English) as a vehicle for

communication rather than a lesson to study.The goals of the Curriculum are

perfect, it is designed interactively, but the English classes of our schools

should adjust according to the curriculum to provide student-based and

communicative language learning.