DIANE MAKAR MURPHY Turkish student at YSU overcomes the language barrier

Down a flight of stairs, tucked into the corner of Youngstown State University's Tod Hall is an unassuming, windowless set of rooms that is nonetheless instrumental in changing lives.
When a student from another country chooses YSU as his or her college, those stairs, that hall, those rooms, may become frequent stomping grounds.
It is the ELI (English Language Institute) housed there that teaches them to succeed -- in English.
Aylin Ulus and Shingo Tanaka, for example, both credit ELI with helping them navigate through a new language and a new land.
'They made me come'
Aylin is beautiful and petite with gentle features and long, dark hair. She came to Youngstown from Turkey at the insistence of her uncle and sister. "They made me come," she said. Her uncle lived in Warren at the time and her sister was beginning a YSU graduate degree.
"I wanted to [go], but it was scary," Aylin said.
On the up side was the American system of universities and freedom to study what she wanted. In Turkey, according to Aylin, an exam score is used to place students in a major. Exams may only be taken once a year.
Though Aylin, like other Turkish high school graduates, took an exam preparation course for a year, she did not get a score high enough to give her many options. She was allowed to study only business in Turkey. At YSU, she could pursue whatever major she wanted.
On the down side, however, was leaving her mother, father, sister and two brothers behind in Turkey. In addition, she spoke no English. What was the likelihood she would succeed at an American university?
Regardless, she applied for a visa. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, she thought it would be impossible to get one, but she did. Aylin arrived in Youngstown Jan. 20, 2002. "I stayed with my sister in the dorm. I couldn't talk at all," she said of her nonexistent English language skills.
Learning English
"Then I met Lynn [Greene, ELI coordinator]. She said, 'She knows NO English?!'" Greene was, to say the least, a little worried for a student who had no prior English skills.
Before being able to enroll at the university, Aylin would have to score 500 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language.
"I was frustrated, and she was frustrated," recalled Sam Dickey, a specialist in English as a second language who worked with Aylin that first year. "She would cry every day. And she worked so hard, and she was such an inspiration."
But, with ELI and the school environment -- "It helps a lot to live with people who speak English" -- Aylin passed the test within a year. "I got very good score, thank God," she said.
Since then, she has started to pursue a degree in industrial engineering. "Her smiling face attests to her success academically as well as linguistically," Greene said.
"The problem is not grammar or writing but understanding the teacher. In physics, I really had a hard time. It is so fast," Aylin said. "I didn't give up. I got really good grade, thank God."
Looking ahead
Aylin said Youngstown is not so different from her home in Turkey, except Americans work longer hours with shorter lunches. Still, while Aylin's sister Nihal will graduate this summer, has a green card (permanent residence visa) and plans to stay, Aylin thinks about her home on the Mediterranean Sea, at Iskederun.
"I miss it, but I adjust myself to it and be happy," she said. "It is hard, but I must have future for myself. I invest in it."
The reward for learning English, graduating from YSU, and putting up with homesickness a little while will be her American degree. When she returns home, "if I say I graduated from U.S., they will say, 'Ohhh!'" Aylin said.
In Thursday's column, read about Shingo Tanaka, who came to YSU knowing how to speak English, but not quite how to speak "American."
murphy@vindy.com