Comparison of awareness levels of Turkish students as a foreign language

With the development of technology, increase in trade between countries, forced migrations and other reasons have made intercultural communication compulsory. This has enabled cultures to communicate with each other more. A healthier intercultural relationship will become possible with an increase in the level of intercultural awareness. If we think of our country as a developing country, the level of multiculturalism of our population is increasing day by day. Multiculturalism growth in Turkey leads to more demand for Turkish education. This need emerges due to war, ethnic and religious oppression, education etc. The aim of the study is to reveal(deduce) whether Turkish language learners' intercultural awareness makes a difference according to age, gender, mother tongue, Turkish level, and objectives for learning Turkish. In this study the Intercultural Awareness Scale was used, which was developed by Rozaimie et al. (2011) and adapted into Turkish by Hatice Karabuğa Yakar (2015) after a validity and reliability study was done. The scope of the research consists of learners who have learned Turkish as a foreign language in different cities of Turkey with different methods. The study sample consists of 163 learners. The data obtained from the research were analysed using SPSS Statistics 26 and IBM SPSS Amos 23 programs. Frequency analysis was performed for the personal information of the participants in our study and demographic findings were explained with tables. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was applied to the Cultural Awareness Scale. T-test and Anova Tests were conducted to test the relationships between the expressions of the participants and the cultural awareness level of the participants. The result of the study has shown that there are significant differences between their intercultural awareness and the learners' nationalities, mother tongues, education period in Turkey etc. Keywords: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, culture, intercultural awareness.