Abstract:

Coursebooks are used as the main source in school-type learning. Coursebooks in Turkish courses are main tools students encounter with literary and instructive texts.  Turkish courses’ success depends on acquiring four basic language skills and a creative environment with artistic products in addition to acquiring knowledge. Quality of texts plays a determinant role in students’ acquiring reading culture. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether texts in Secondary education (5th-8th grades) Turkish coursebooks prepared by Ministry of National Education (MEB) are appropriate in terms of “child-appropriateness”. Qualitative research method was used in the study carried out with an action research design within 12 week-course. Population consists of education faculties in Turkey and secondary education Turkish coursebooks; study group consists of 24 teacher candidates in an elective course in which secondary education Turkish coursebooks were examined in a state university selected with criterion sampling and 24 literary texts selected randomly from MEB Publications Secondary Education Turkish Coursebooks. The study was conducted with Turkish-language teacher candidates for 12 weeks in a course in spring semester of 2018-2019 academic year. Data were collected with document analysis and semi-structured interview forms (first and last weeks) from teacher candidates and from text analyses of teacher candidates. Data collection tools were edited by two experts and data were analyzed with content analysis. Effective teaching of Turkish courses is directly correlated with quality of texts in coursebooks. This study is important since texts were analyzed by teacher candidates and experts in the field. While positive improvement was found in teacher candidates in terms of making comments and having a perspective about texts in Turkish coursebooks, it was found that messages and illustrations in texts analyzed did not have the principle of child-appropriateness. Suggestions were made in terms of texts in coursebooks and teacher candidates.

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