The difficulties encountered in the process of learning Turkish as a foreign language (Case of Ukraine)

Because of having enough old and strong historical and social ties between two countries, our societies had always been in the interaction process. But it is an indisputable fact that Turkish has not been taught as a foreign language in Ukraine for a long period of time. Having regard to the foregoing, the study researches the problems faced by the Ukrainian students in the field of learning the Turkish language. This research is a mixed research having both quantitative and qualitative characteristics from the point of data evaluation based on the descriptive, scanning and survey model. Target population of the study is 183 students who take Turkish as compulsory and elective courses in different year groups at the Department of Turkish Language and Culture of Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, National Pedagogical Dragomanov University and National Linguistics University in Ukraine. The survey, that contains both structured (likert scale type) and unstructured (continuation questions) characteristics, was used by the researcher in order to collect the data. Ukrainian students were asked many dissimilar questions with the intention of indicating the difficulties they has faced during the process of learning Turkish. The opinions obtained from the structured questionnaire have been converted into quantitative data and analyzed by SPSS 20.0 program. The open-ended questions have been evaluated in the qualitative way. In the research results, voice and mood of verbs, word types, proverbs, idioms and metaphorical words, modal verbs, accusative case, sentence structure, vocabulary, speaking, listening, psychological fear problems have been encountered in the process of learning Turkish as a foreign language in Ukraine. In addition, the study presents the information about general notions related to language, classifications of languages, history of teaching and learning the Turkish language. Keywords: Turkish as a foreign language, Ukraine, Difficulties faced in learning Turkish