ÖSYM President Ersoy: We will implement the 4 basic skills language exam in English

The ‘Workshop on Inclusive Practices in Turkish as a Foreign Language Exams’, organized in collaboration with the Ministry of National Education, ÖSYM, Turkish Language Association and Yunus Emre Institute, started at a hotel in Ankara. Deputy Minister of National Education Celile Eren Ökten, ÖSYM President Bayram Ali Ersoy, Turkish Language Association President Osman Mert, physicians, language education and assessment experts from universities, representatives of civil society organizations and invitees attended the 3-day workshop. The workshop aims to create a fair, accessible and individual-sensitive assessment environment for students with special education needs to learn Turkish as a foreign language and in the assessment processes.

ÖSYM President Ersoy underlined that the Disabled Candidates Department meticulously carried out studies that would cover all candidate groups for each exam and said, "We conducted exams with special applications for approximately 12,700 candidates in the TYT exam, 8,429 candidates in the AYT exam and 1,102 disabled candidates with health problems in the YDT. In 2024, we offered special applications for various exams to a total of 145,223 disabled candidates with health problems."

Ersoy emphasized that Turkish as a Foreign Language exams are a subject that ÖSYM is particularly interested in, and said, "We will hopefully implement the 4 basic language skills foreign language exam in English next month, on July 19. With this exam, we aim to provide certificates that show the Turkish language levels of international students who will study in Türkiye, in line with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. We have reached the final stage in our work, and tomorrow we will implement our 6th trial. Of course, we will develop our exam content and applications with the outputs we will obtain from this workshop for the validity and inclusiveness of this exam. Therefore, each suggestion from you, our valuable participants, will be very valuable to us in the workshop. Although ÖSYM offers various applications for disabled candidates in language exams, language exams measuring 4 skills will be implemented by ÖSYM for the first time in Türkiye. We will discuss adaptations for measuring listening, writing and speaking skills for the first time. In short, I can say that we will discuss the decisions regarding the applications of this exam regarding disabled candidates together in this workshop."

'QUALITY EDUCATION HAS BEEN REACHED WITH THE PIKTES PROJECT'

Deputy Minister of National Education Celile Eren Ökten stated, "With the Support for Inclusive Education for Children in the Turkish Education System, also known as the PİKTES Project, which has been carried out since 2016 within the Ministry, emphasis has been placed on teaching Turkish to foreigners in order to ensure access to quality education and social adaptation of foreign children, and important steps have been taken. In this context, a program for teaching Turkish to foreigners based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ​​has been developed under the umbrella of the Turkish Century Maarif Model. Teaching materials such as Turkish workbooks and exercise books for foreigners, teacher handbooks with activity content, activity books, and dictionaries have been developed in line with the program, which is in the approval process. In addition, lesson videos, storybooks, thematic songs, P5P materials supporting basic reading and speaking skills, and 25 lesson presentations suitable for B1 level have been prepared and uploaded within the Turkish section of our Ministry's EBA Language Learning Portal. Along with these studies, we are also continuing the preparations for the language teaching application we call 'dilim', and digital content and interactive materials related to this program are being prepared."

DHA

Reporter: News Center