Abstract:

The objective of the present paper is to shed light on multilingual learning environment in French and German language teaching departments in Turkish universities. The students in these departments are mostly the ones that take university entrance exam, national baccalaureate, and a test in English. They start to learn French and/or German using Turkish. In our study, we suggest that they can acquire these languages by means of using their first foreign language, English, which has typological (syntactical and lexical) similarities instead of using Turkish, which is not of the same family of languages. It is found that using English to teach French/German, therefore, instead of Turkish as a medium of communication in the class, creates a multilingual learning environment, which facilitates vocabulary learning, maintains input permanence, help think and act in that language due to typological features. As shortcomings, it is indicated that falsefriends and teachers lack of English are obstacles to create a multilingual learning environment.

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