by Evrim Babahan
I am a senior FLE student with a passion for Linguistics and I am here to share my and most of my friends’ battle with this beautiful scientific study of language because I know that most of FLE students do not like Linguistics courses for variety of reasons. I am here to talk you out of rejecting Linguistics before it is too late. What you are about to read is an honest piece of my mind. I hope you enjoy it.
When I first came to the department, Linguistics was a means of torture, a test for the strongest patience for me and most of my friends. Although some of the reasons for this are not worth mentioning here, the main reason for us to suffer from Linguistics was that we had never seen such a study before in our lives. It was a new, broad area that we were not ready to handle. Thus, most of us, including myself, rejected the idea of having a challenge just after finishing with another huge one (namely ÖSS). I was getting bored to death in Linguistics classes and I was thinking that I did not want anything to do with Linguistics until someday I changed my mind for personal reasons. Don’t be discouraged by my reason being personal, I am sure that I would find another solid reason if I did not have my personal one. And here is a solid reason for you: Your future profession is a part of Linguistics and knowing about it will make your job a lot easier and will make you have confidence in what you teach. It will, because English is not all about grammar rules that we teach in forms of charts, it is a language with lots of features to be discovered by you. Ever since I realized that, I have been trying to show each and every peer of mine that it is true. It is true that language teachers need to know Linguistics in order to be more beneficial for their students. We are and will be METU graduates who have to know better. We need to open our eyes to any chances when we can improve ourselves professionally.
When I was asked to write this article, I wondered how I can write it without sounding arrogant but I really want METU-FLE family to be aware of their responsibility when it comes to learning about Linguistics. No matter what it is that we are interested in, it could be Literature or ELT itself, extra information is what we should seek for because a little sweat never hurts anybody. 🙂
Learning to Teach English 
That was great to read such an article advocating Linguistics. But, dear Evrim, I do not think we can talk anyone into liking anything which does not match with their personalities, interests and preferences. The very first sessions I sat in Linguistics I class, I realized it was something I had been in search of for years. I enjoyed each and every second of the class because it was full of discussion and new things I had never heard of before. It opened a new window in my life. It made me feel the satisfaction I have never felt in our ELT classes (no offence to ELT lovers) although we took way more ELT classes that Linguistics classes. The point I am trying to make here is that, the impact of a couple of Linguistics courses overtook that of so many ELT courses because it was in my genes to be appealed by Linguistics and not by ELT!
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