Abstract:

The use of original texts in teaching Turkish as a foreign language is an important issue that has recently been emphasized for instructors teaching Turkish as a foreign language both in Turkey and abroad. However, some problems arise in the use of original text. Benefiting from the diversity of original texts requires a certain level of knowledge in the learned language. Therefore, working with original texts is not easy for beginners and intermediate students. In this context, original texts in both textbooks and supplementary reading books are simplified within the framework of certain criteria and offered for use in foreign language teaching in order to be presented to beginner and intermediate level students. Epics, fairy tales and folk tales, which we will list as original texts, are at the forefront of this genre. These texts help educators in terms of cultural transfer as well as language teaching. In this context, folk literature products are of great importance in teaching Turkish as a foreign language.In this study, one of the Anatolian folk tales, “weeping pomegranate and laughing quince”, was adapted to B1 level for individuals learning Turkish as a foreign language. In line with this adaptation, the aforementioned tale has been reduced to B1 level with simplification, expansion and facilitation methods from text adaptation techniques. In the simplification process, both the heuristic and the structural approach were applied together. The content simplification process has been made on the basis of an intuitive approach to the introduction and conclusion of the tale. In the expansion process, instead of removing some upper-level words and phrases from the text, contexts describing these words and phrases were added. The words and word groups that have been expanded are given in red. In the facilitation process, a dictionary has created with the explanations of the upper-level words in the text. It is predicted that this study will lead to new text adaptations by using text adaptation techniques of folk literature products such as epic, legend, fairy tale and folk tale.

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