Sociolinguistic evaluation of Arabic support education for Syrian children

This master's dissertation aims to evaluate the Arabic language support program offered by the Ministry of National Education of Turkiye to improve the language skills of Syrian children studying in public schools whose heritage language is Arabic from a sociolinguistic perspective. This research investigates the relationships of bilingual Syrian immigrant students studying at an Imam Hatip Secondary School in the Başakşehir district of Istanbul with their heritage language, Arabic, and focuses on the extent to which the support program meets the needs of the students. In the research, which is carried out with ethnographic sensitivity, the relationships of the Syrian students with Arabic and their needs and expectations are analyzed considering the Syrian immigrant students as individuals, their families, the school setting, and broader layers of society in a holistic approach including all significant actors. This approach provides a crucial basis for the research to understand the complex interactions of language and culture and to enrich language education processes. The observations and notes during the fieldwork, student assignments and in-class observations carried out during the research were evaluated in detail, and the audio recordings obtained from regular interviews with students and their families were transcribed and examined within the framework of the research questions through discourse analysis. The findings reveal that all participating students need support in their Arabic language skills. These findings also support the feature of language being deeply connected to the values, norms, and identity of a community beyond words and sentences and show that students build the importance they attribute to their heritage language, Arabic, based on the nation they belong to, their religious, and cultural identities. Also, the findings support the sociolinguistic approach, which emphasizes that language is not only treated as a means of communication but also plays a determining role in transmitting culture within society.