The impact of the year abroad on Turkish TEFL dual degree students

ABSTRACT

With the establishment of dual degree programmes between Turkish universities and the State University of New York (SUNY), the number of Turkish students studying in the US has increased substantially. The aim of this qualitative study is to shed light on the impact of the year abroad on student development by focusing on the perspectives of both the teachers and students through the use of questionnaires and interviews. The study focused on the impact of the year abroad on students’ personal, linguistic, intercultural and academic development. Overall, the results of the study pointed to a positive impact of the year abroad on students in all four areas. However, especially in terms of students’ language development, students and faculty gave conflicting reports. While all students believed that they improved their language skills, the faculty indicated that students had not benefited from the programme as much as they could.

KEYWORDS:

• Study abroad
• dual diploma programme
• student development
• language teacher education programme
• international education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aylin S. Dewan Türüdü

Aylin S. Dewan Türüdü holds a PhD in English Language Teaching and has been teaching English for over 20 years. Her research interests include teacher professional development, English language teacher education, and teaching English as a foreign language.

Nurdan Özbek Gürbüz

Nurdan Özbek Gürbüz is an associate professor at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey, where she has been working for over 20 years. Her areas of interest include English language teacher education, spoken discourse, teaching oral communication skills, English as an international language, and intercultural communication.