CoHE's New Project: Academic Foreign Language Support Project

May 17, 2022


CoHE developed a new project to improve the ability of young scientists to publish their articles in a foreign language in international journals and to make their scientific research in Turkey more visible at the international level. For this purpose, the Program for Writing a Scientific Text in a Foreign Language for Young Researchers with a PhD , which aims to develop the academic writing skills of academics in a foreign language, is being implemented.

In his statement, CoHE President Erol Özvar said that high quality and comprehensive publications were made at Turkish universities and that the project would contribute greatly to bringing the international visibility of these publications to the desired level.

"It is necessary to make the high-quality scientific studies conducted by our academics at Turkish universities more visible at the international level. The language of science in the world today is predominantly English. Therefore, most of the scientific journals are published in English and the articles written in English are cited more. We can make them more visible by having scientific publications published in these journals. For this, it is important to help improve the writing skills of our academics in a foreign language. Our new project is extremely important in this respect. We are thinking of increasing the number of participants and enriching the content of the project in the upcoming years."

The courses of the program will be offered online by Middle East Technical University (METU), whose language of instruction is 100% English and is experienced in academic English.

200 academics with the following conditions will be able to benefit from the courses this year:

a) To have a PhD degree,

b) To certify that he/she has received at least 70 points from YÖKDİL, YDS, E-YDS or from an international foreign language exam whose equivalence is accepted by ÖSYM in the last three years (as of May 2019),

c) To be working as a research assistant, lecturer or assistant professor at one of the twenty state universities determined by the Executive Board of the Council of Higher Education.

The program will start in the fall semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. In the first phase of the program, the lists of trainee candidates with sufficient language scores must be determined by the relevant universities and submitted to CoHE within the framework of the quotas determined by CoHE.

Candidates who are found suitable for the course as a result of the examinations will be allowed to take an online placement test to be held by METU in the second stage, and the levels of the candidates in target skills will be determined.

In order to ensure that the trainees who are eligible to take the courses fulfill the requirements of the courses and receive the highest level of benefit from them, performance criteria such as course attendance and presentation/writing assignments will be followed by the Council of Higher Education and the institution that will offer the courses. The estimated duration of the courses, which will be offered online, is 90 hours.

Click here for the procedures and principles of the Academic Foreign Language Support Project.

Click here​ to view the number of candidate trainees for the Academic Foreign Language Support Project.