Reflections of Incoming Erasmus+ Exchange Students at a Turkish University Context

Abstract

This study aims to shed light on the preferences and problems of Erasmus+ exchange programmestudents before and during the mobility process. The research was organized in qualitative researchmethod phenomenological design. The participants of the study were 21 incoming Erasmus+ studentshaving studied at a state university in Turkey at 2015-2016 academic year. The required data werecollected with a survey in open-ended questionnaire format. The collected data were analyzed withdescriptive content analysis technique. Students’ answers were described, organized and explained tointerpret the context. Participants’ preferences gave information about the reasons for choosing thecountry and the university while their impressions were covering the first impressions after arriving inTurkey, information about Turkey, Turkish culture, Turkish university, and expectations abouteducation. The findings also gave information about the problems or difficulties and previous experiencesof the participants. Lastly, some implications and suggestions were derived from the statements ofErasmus+ programme students.© 2019 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).