The views of foreign footballers and club managers about of Turkish learning

The aim of this study is to determine the views of Professional football players in Turkish leangues and managers regarding Turkish. For this reason, a study has been conducted with the help of a form of a semi-structured interview. The study has been made through a case study known as one of the qualitative research models. Foreign football players in Antalyaspor and Aytemiz Alanyaspor playing in the Turkish Super League have been chosen for the working group in the research Seventeen foreign footballers playing in Antalyaspor and Aytemiz Alanyaspor and six club directors have been determined as a working group by making use of convenient sampling regarded as one of the methods of purposive sampling. Semi-structered interview forms for the research approved by the experts have been translated into Turkish, English and French by the interpreters and also carried out through the assistance of club interpreters. The data acquired through the implementations based on views that contain the levels of Turkish acquired by foreign footballers, the situations of learning the languages of the countries where they have played before, their wishes and desires to learn Turkish, intraclub communicative language and the views of club managers about foreign players' wishes to learn Turkish have been analysed through a program called MAXQDA 12. According to the results of the research, it has been understood that a great majority of foreign footballers in the Turkish Super Leagues have not learned Turkish despite their having been in Turkey for a long time and those who claim that they speak Turkish have little knowledge and capacity to speak Turkish. As to learning Turkish, it has been seen that some factors such as Turkish being distant from their mother tongues, pronunciation, meaning, wording, speaking speed have led to difficulties in learning Turkish. It has also been understood that foreign players have learnt the languages of other countries apart from Turkish to a great extent. It has been seen that footballers have made contacts with the help of translators or by speaking English and have not made enough efforts to learn Turkish although they have stated they should learn English. It has been seen from the views of the clubs and footballers regarding Turkish that the clubs have not provided enough opportunities to teach Turkish and developed programs and it is necessary to learn Turkish, especially occupational language. Our findings show that as in the sample of foreign footballers, the studies of occupational Turkish Language based on needs should be carried out to teach foreigners Turkish and employers should implement certain programs. At the same time, this can be expressed as a language policy implemented by the state.