The Deep Approach to Teaching and Learning World Languages and Cultures: Research on Turkish

This research report follows research and development of new ways of stimulating deep learning in a less-commonly-taught language and culture. The purpose of this book is to analyze some impacts of the integration of self-determined educative projects organized with new online instructional materials oriented toward deep language learning. It uses data from a forum among instructors, skype conversations and interviews, teacher reports of classroom experiences, and questionnaires of deep learning and crosscultural sensitivity filled by the students learning a less-commonly-taught language, Turkish.

The book describes the creation, study, implementation and impacts of instructional materials that take a “Deep Approach” to language acquisition. It is an immersive, learner-centered, technology-rich, and project-based approach designed for institutions of higher education in the U.S. and elsewhere that offer programs in language and culture, cultural studies, and international studies.

What can depth in language teaching mean? Within the current structures, when asked what could be deeper, teachers express various clues such as extensive readings of short novels, work on video tele-novellas, field trips and video correspondence, but they do not have a solid framework that would legitimate new forms of deep practices. When we ask teachers what could be deeper, they recognize that slicing contents through grammar topics and exercises does not lead to a sense of deep learning and situated proficiency.

The project worked on a framework that facilitates deep learning and deep education to materialize it into instructional materials that would permit a totally new approach to language teaching and learning. Right from the start, it is important to distinguish the approach from the instructional materials.