Linguistic competence as the substantial Dimension of the training process of foreign language teachers: Self-assessment of the candidate teachers for German

Linguistic competence undoubtedly represents one of the substantial dimensions of the training process of foreign language teachers in general and of German teachers in particular. In accordance with the belief that teachers must function as language models for their pupils, this article investigates the attention paid to the linguistic competence in the education of Turkish teachers of German in an effort to point to a comprehensive representation of the potential linguistic competence of the future teachers of German in Turkey. The study, therefore, analyzes in particular language competence from the perspective of the target group, because expectations and changes of the characteristics of the target group have concrete effects on the organization and execution of education programs, making alterations and reorganizations indispensable. For this purpose, a research was conducted in the academic year 2006/2007 at the department for German Language Teaching of Hasan Ali Yucel Faculty of Education of Istanbul University. A total of 124 students from different grades, all from migrated family backgrounds, participated in the research. Evaluation of the data collected in the research is presented in the article in order to discuss and explore possible revisions and optimizations to be made in the process of training the Turkish prospective teachers of German.