Abstract:

Teaching the vocabulary of a language means teaching the culture of the society that speaks the language at the same time. The patterns people use as products of a particular culture have their parts among the elements which constitute the fundamental vocabulary of a language. Patterns, just like proverbs and idioms, shed light on a society’s culture; reflect its beliefs, the details in social relationships and traditions. The aim of the present study is to determine the patterns as elements of vocabulary that are avail-able in Turkish course books (1-5; 6-8) and student workbooks at elemen-tary education. The data of this study, which is based on screening model, have been collected through document review, which is a descriptive re-search method. The collected data have been analyzed using qualitative content analysis. At the end of the study, it has been found that 108 patterns were used in the course books and workbooks in total. Among this total number, mostly (94) the samples of patterns that reflect social-cultural relationships have been detected. Benedictions and maledictions followed these patterns with the numbers of 11 and 3 respectively.

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