Abstract:

Considering 21st-century skills, initially sought in technology, economics, and natural sciences, in social sciences is likely to contribute to the multi-faceted development of students. Thus, these skills are deemed essential in language teaching, a prominent area of educational sciences. In general, language teaching is built on the development of four basic language skills with the help of texts and activities in coursebooks dedicated to language teaching. Then, the target group’s adoption of 21st-century skills is thought to contribute to their acquisition of four basic skills of Turkish. While a few university-affiliated Turkish Teaching Centers (TOMER) used to undertake teaching Turkish as a foreign language before, many public and private organizations (e.g., TOMERs of state and foundation universities, Yunus Emre Institute, and some other public and private institutions affiliated with the Ministry of National Education) share this task today. In this qualitative study, we explored 21st-century skills in the texts of a coursebook utilized in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. As the materials, we selected texts within “Yeni Hitit 3 Yabancılar İçin Türkçe Ders Kitabı” (Yeni Hitit 3 Turkish Coursebook for Foreigners) taught in Ankara University TOMER for the B2-C1 level learners and used document analysis to analyze the data. Overall, although we could not detect any statement in any part of the texts that the target texts have been prepared considering 21st-century skills, we may deduce that the subjects, meanings, and intended messages of the texts cover 21st-century skills. The descriptively-interpreted findings showed that the texts in the mentioned book sufficiently cover 21st-century skills. However, we concluded no systematic, planned, and proportional distribution of the skills in the texts.

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