Professor Dr. Yasin Aktay was at NUN Schools

With the decision of UNESCO in 2012, December 18 is celebrated as the World Arabic Day throughout the world. As NUN Schools, we have been following this important day and hosted Prof. Dr. Yasin Aktay at our school.

Yasin Aktay is one of the first names that come to mind both in academia and in the political world when the subject is “Arabic”. Our students have asked a wide range of questions ranging from how to teach and learn Arabic, which is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, to its importance in the business world.

During the interview in Arabic, Aktay talked about his personal experiences and the importance of learning a foreign language. He stated that he was born as the child of a family from Siirt and did not know a single word in Turkish until the primary school age and he was afraid of the word “bir” which means a “well” in Arabic when they wanted to enrol him to the first grade at primary school, so he started his education from the kindergarten. Drawing attention to the fact that the student years are the most suitable times for learning languages, he warned “we learn a language but we do not speak it. This is our biggest problem. When you don’t speak, it doesn’t improve. Without putting a language into practice in our daily lives, we cannot have a good grasp of it.” Underlining the increasing importance of Arabic in recent years, Aktay said: We need more Arabic-speaking staff than the previous years. We should not forget that there are 4 million Arab citizens in Turkey together with 4 million Arabic speaking people who have come to Turkey after the civil war broke out in Syria. We need Arabic speaking people to communicate with them. Businessmen who invest in Arab countries are looking for Arabic-speaking engineers, architects, technicians, I have witnessed that.

Underlining that the biggest problem of young people in learning foreign languages is to be afraid of making mistakes, Aktay said “ of course you will make wrong statements, you should not give up. Remember the tourists who come to our country and speak Turkish, how much attention do they pay to grammar?  Our students have asked Yasin Aktay to play the lute as they knew he is interested in playing lute. Aktay played and sang a song in Arabic, making a sincere atmosphere. Our activity ended with a gift presentation to Aktay who advised our students to draw their own path with their sincerity.