HOŞGELDİN 🇹🇷🎉
WHO IS IPEK AND WHAT DOES SHE DO?
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I’m a Turkish teacher, Linguist and language coach. I have been teaching Turkish for 8 years now.
I am the first language coach in this field (teaching Turkish as a foreign language).
I teach Turkish to those who has a Turkish wife or husband, who study in Türkiye, who wants to speak fluent Turkish with confidence with a new mindset.
MY STORY – HOW DID I END UP HERE?
📍 2016, Ankara Türkiye – University of Ankara – Department of Linguistics
Newly graduated…
On the suggestion of my friend, I applied for the certificate of teaching Turkish to foreigners from TÖMER (one of the largest Turkish teaching centres in the world, affiliated to Ankara University Department of Linguistics) and spent the money that I had saved by working at the market all summer to get this certificate.
I love what I do so much that I came into this world to teach foreigners my mother tongue, my culture and to help them with the mental blocks they get stuck on while speaking Turkish
I was in love with what I was doing, but my rights were being exploited in the language education centre where I was working, the method of teaching Turkish did not satisfy me (the Turkish language of the students did not improve) and this situation made me unhappy.
All these things had driven me into a deep depression and I didn’t even realise it.
I had to move from Ankara to Istanbul to live with my family because of serious financial difficulties.
To be honest moving to İstanbul made me nervous because I had no idea what was waiting for me. I was feeling alone and lost.
I started to teach 1-1 (online, offline) private students. My first private student was Uco (bottom right). He was a Dutch and COO of an insurance company in İstanbul. It was great to have the chance to meet him because teaching a businessman was my first step to improving myself, bring out the explorer in İpek, extend my vision and go beyond…
Since I was a little kid I was eager to unlock the potential within me. Moving to İstanbul and meeting business people boosted my dream to teach Turkish more and more… I started working in another language centre (one of the biggest in the world) in İstanbul but same spiral occurred. Exploitation, an unpleasant work environment and unhappy İpek!
I had to say a BIG NO to everything I was going through to have a better life and be able to create my own language center I have been dreaming of for a long time.
I started travel in Türkiye and other countries. Travelling helped me a lot to start to bring out the real İpek (my real potential).
The real İpek believes that life is too short to keep worrying about what other people think of me and confine myself within other people’s expectations..
She believes in self improvement.
She knows no such a thing as holding herself back, complaining and trying to control things that she cannot have control over and restricting the potential in her life…
THE THINGS THAT I STAND FOR
The fear of making mistakes when speaking in the second language you have learnt, the fear of what people will think of you, the fear of ‘If I pronounce the words wrong, I will look stupid’ is what limits our potential. This is something that can be overcome, the reasons why we experience this are much deeper. That’s why :
personal development, to enjoy life, fighting to bring out the fearless, authentic person inside (not an easy journey) are the things that I stand behind.
MY CHARACTER
📌 I focus on solutions, not problems
📌 Instead of saying ‘I can’t do this’, I say ‘How can I do this?’ and I don’t waste the energy on complaint and victimisation
📌 I like my mistakes, I know how to learn from them. If I upset someone, I can say ‘I’m sorry’.
📌 If I don’t want to do something, I can say ‘no’.
📌 I like to push my limits, I always think about how far I can go.
📌 I respect people’s personal boundaries and make my own boundaries clear.