Not being sure when and if we were to be paid, we continued on our quest to begin teaching English in Turkey. First there was a little matter of the speaking exams to get through! … As the week progressed we tried to get further details about our teaching duties, to no avail. Although the…
Teaching English in Turkey seemed like a good idea before we arrived in the country. Once there, dealing with the students was the least of our worries. We’d already been at the government university in Kayseri for a week, and despite numerous meetings with our director were still no further along in discussions about what…
After Republic day in 2002, the main topic of conversation among my students was the upcoming Turkish elections. It was impossible to ignore them because every other day some party leader came to Kayseri to mount the hustings and win votes. Posters appeared everywhere advertising rallies in Cumhuriyet Meydan, the main square, or in one…
Back in 2004 I worked at Erciyes University in central Turkey. When some of the final year students approached me to be a chaperone on a four day three night trip touring Eastern Turkey I jumped at the chance. This is an excerpt from a longer complete story. “As instructed, we arrived at the faculty…
When I first started teaching English in Turkey I was pretty inexperienced. I’d only taught behavioural sciences at university for a few semesters back home in Australia and then small English classes at a private college in Istanbul for a year. All my students had been in their early twenties, and well able to stay…