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| Lutfullah and Me watching a Turkish football game |
As I was making dinner this week my friend
Muhammet told me that I have changed a lot since I first arrived here. He told
me that at the beginning of Erasmus, for example, when I joined them for a
Turkish meal, I seemed a little unsure and awkward. Now, after two months (I
still cannot believe it has been that long), I am very at ease and comfortable
with my Turkish friends’ culture and rituals. At first I disagreed with him and
told him that I had always felt relaxed around them, however when I began to
think back to my first week there were certain things that seemed very alien to
me.
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| Turkish Coffee and Turkish Delight |
The first time I ate with my Turkish friends
they made potatoes and egg, similar to a Spanish Omelette, which I found very
normal. However, when we began to eat, I realised they do not use forks to eat
with, but bread and had tomatoes and ‘Turkish cheese’ to add to their food.
They also did not use individual plates, but ate together from the saucepan in
the middle of the table. Now that I have experienced this for a couple of
months, I understand that the cultural reason for this is that eating together
from the same plate brings the people together. I also discovered that they eat
bread with almost everything! During Erasmus I have learnt that there are very
important Turkish rituals such as the expression which is used to compliment
someone when they have prepared a meal for you, “Eline sağlık”. This literally
translates as ‘health to your hand’ and when said, the person replies “Afiyet
olsun” which is similar to the French “bon appétit” which means “May there be
good appetite”.
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| My 'Turkish Culture' Teachers |
Just as certain idioms and colloquialisms are
unique to each language and culture, so are body gestures, as I realised during
my first month. I subsequently
discovered that a gesture in one culture may be meaningless or insignificant in
another culture or worse may indicate a completely different meaning. I had
occasionally thought that my Turkish friends were being dismissive or were disapproving
of me as they would often ‘tut’. This had made me very uncomfortable and
anxious. Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask why they continued to do
this and to tell me what I was doing wrong. They explained that Turkish people
often tilt their head upwards while making a ‘tut’ sound to indicate “no”. I felt a massive sigh of relief once they
explained this to me as I finally understood!
It is easy to focus on language barriers when
meeting people from different countries however, I never realised how important
facial and body gestures can be in communicating information. Unfortunately a
lack of knowledge of these gestures can often lead to a miscommunication and
sometimes even offending someone. According
to Dörnyei & Thurrell (1994), body and facial gestures are non-linguistic tools
that can be used by learners and teachers to overcome communication breakdowns,
however for this to work in a multicultural class, teachers must introduce
children to these gestures before assuming knowledge, which may often be
forgotten about.
References:
Dörnyei, Z. & Thurrell, S. (1994).
Strategic competence and how to teach it. ELT Journal, 45, 16-23
NMELRC (2013).
Available at, http://nmelrc.org/documents/Handbooks/TurkishHandbook.pdf
accessed on 14/03/13
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