Teaching Turkish to foreigners in the west in the 19th century: W. B. Barker?s work

In today?s world, the foreign interest towards Turkey is experiencing a large-scale renaissance due to its ever-increasing role and importance in the international arena. This interest has intensively been directed to the language, which is the main building-block of the country?s culture forming the social domain, as much as it is in the political and economical domains. Now, Turkish is taught as a foreign language not only at the universities and private language schools in Turkey, but also at the Turkish schools and cultural centers and many prestigious international universities around the world. Moreover, international Language Olympiads for Turkish Language are now held. However, the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language is not a brand-new phenomenon and has a rich historical background. It is clear that this richness was mostly experienced in the 19th century together with the Industrial Revolution in the West. Many western orientalists that had been to the Ottoman Empire as both diplomats and travelers wrote many works on the Turkish language. And the aim of these books were to teach this exotic language to its European fanciers. Among these books, the most comprehensive and, in a sense, the most innovative one in terms of the foreign language teaching methods and techniques was ?A Reading Book of Turkish with a Grammar and Vocabulary? wrote by an English diplomat and orientalist William. B. Barker in 1854. It is thought that this book, which has been chosen as the subject of this study due to the characteristics that distinguish it from its contemporaries, will mirror the studies of teaching of Turkish as a foreign language in the 19th century. So, it is predicted that this study, in which the grammar, writing (composition), pronunciation, reading texts and vocabulary parts of the book in question have been analyzed in detail, will make an important contribution to the relevant literature in terms of the subjects of foreign language teaching and teaching of Turkish as a foreign language in the 19th century.