On April 21st, 2022, The Yunus Emre Institute USA (YEE) hosted in collaboration with The #UniversityOfIllinois. Doctor Ayşe Özcan, Director and Language Coordinator for the Turkish Program in the Department of Linguistics, and Doctor Angela Williams, Director of the Center for Global Studies at #Illinois opened up the session by discussing the long-standing collaboration that has been ongoing with the university and how we are looking to many more collaborations together.
Hüseyin Aydin, a resident instructor at YEE took over and dove right into the program by calling out to some of the students that were present during this event. His teaching style was very interactive and so lively that you could see some reluctance from the students in interacting right away. After a few tries, the students became very engaged and they got used to his teaching style as the repetitiveness of these #TurkishPhrases were urging them to learn in turn by repeating the words after the resident instructor. The YEE was able to introduce the students to #Turkish #Culture while learning the #TurkishLanguage.
In the end, the resident instructor asked for everyone’s feedback and it was unanimous that everyone enjoyed themselves. One student said that he really liked his teaching style as he is trying to become a Turkish teacher and that it was helpful in seeing how it is easier to learn with this style in mind. One another said that this was the best way by far of learning a new language as it urges you to learn the words and repeat them without hesitation. All the students raved about how this was a very productive lesson and they were looking forward to more.