LAUSR

The first person to learn Turkish as a foreign language is a Chinese woman writing Turkish love letters for her exiled husband in the 4th century. However, we do not know much about how this woman learned Turkish. The known history of teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language goes back to the first concrete material produced for this process. They are usually bilingual dictionaries and the oldest one was written in the 11th century. It is therefore more accurate to say that teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language has a history of nearly a thousand years. The changing educational paradigm since the 20th century has deeply influenced the teaching of language, which was previously carried out in accordance with the grammar – translation method. And, dictionaries ceased to be the main device for language teaching and became a source of complementary materials in learning environment, which has necessitated their re-regulation. Yet, Turkish dictionary authors continue to maintain old habits and produce classical bilingual dictionaries. The bilingual dictionaries, proven to be more helpful on second language teaching, have been used across the world from the 1980s onwards. In this paper, the history of the teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language is briefly explained by taking into consideration the resources used in the second language teaching and then answers are given to the questions "Why should bilingualized dictionaries be used in the teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language" and "How should two bilingual dictionaries be prepared?".