THE IMPORTANCE OF TARGET LEARNERS IN TEACHING FOUR BASIC LANGUAGE SKILLS IN TURKISH

Resumen

In today’s world, teaching Turkish to people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds has become essential for effective communication. Factors such as native language, learning goals, and cognitive abilities affect the pace of language learning. Recently, the students who come to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) from third world countries for education have shown an intense interest in learning Turkish language, and consequently, Turkish has started to be taught as a foreign language to these students both at universities and private institutions. This study aims to determine the pace of Turkish language learning of foreign students who came to TRNC to study at university. The study was conducted in the fall semester of the 2022-2023 academic year with a total of 75 students learning Turkish as a foreign language at TRNC universities. The participants were students from different countries such as Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Palestine and Germany, studying in various departments in TRNC. Using a mixed-method approach, the study employed a pre-test and post-test one-group design. Results showed that Azerbaijani students had the highest scores in both tests, Iranian and Syrian students made notable progress, and Congolese students showed the least improvement.