TRANSLANGUAGING AMONG ARAB STUDENTS ACQUIRING TURKISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Arab students acquire Turkish language at the TÖMER center of Istanbul Aydin University. This research identified Turkish-Arabic translanguaging practices, and the attitudes of the participants were reported and supported by examples. The study engaged 38 participants with ages ranging between 19- 26. The focus of the research was centered on the fact that so many students encounter mispronunciation and misunderstanding problems because of the similarity between Turkish and Arabic vocabularies and pronunciations. For this reason, we worked on answering the following research questions: 1. What is the prevalent way that TÖMER students follow in order to practice translanguaging? 2. To which extent do the students practice the Turkish-Arabic translanguaging technique? 3. What kind of translanguaging obstacles do the students encounter? 4. Are Translanguaging and code-switching practiced both at once during the class? In order to collect the data, the participants were asked to fill in a survey comprising several language-relevant questions. The survey questions solicited general information about the participants, questioned their speaking difficulties, and then probed their aptitude for the encountered obstacles when communicating in Turkish. A focus group interview was the second instrument in collecting the required information where students had the opportunity to discuss and express their ideas verbally and offer more detailed and descriptive attitudes towards the translanguaging practice. The interview supported the researcher to reach very concise responses about the developed questions of the survey. The findings indicated that students' translanguaging has turned to be a kind of code-mixing between Turkish and Arabic. Moreover, it was deduced that translanguaging was facilitated but confused by the similarity between both languages; facilitated when using cognates but confused when using false cognates, and thus, many students were resorting to the strategy of recontextualization. The students recontextualized difficult and vague rules of grammar as well as newly-learned expressions in a way that would fit their understandings of the Turkish context in order to be able to use these structures in the future.