5th grade Turkish textbook: Semantic and textual functions of conjunctions

Reading is an interactive process involving many perceptual, affective and cognitive processes of the text receiver. Making sense of a text depends on the text receiver's ability to make the text coherent by analyzing the semantic and grammatical connections between text parts. Conjunctions are one of the linguistic structures that support the perception of the text as a semantic whole by the text receiver by making the semantic relations between the text parts clear on the text surface. In addition to joining phrases, conjunctions assume various semantic features because they make the relations between propositions clear, and pragmatic features according to the intended use of the text producer. With these features, conjunctions can gain various textual functions as clues that support processes such as organizing the flow of information in the reading process, determining the topic structure, determining the text structure, analyzing the intention of the text producer, etc. This study aims to describe the conjunctions in the 5th grade Turkish textbook in terms of the reading process by focusing on the semantic, pragmatic and textual features of conjunctions. For this purpose, the texts in the 5th grade Turkish textbook were analyzed with the data collection tool "Classification of Semantic and Pragmatic Functions of Conjunctions" prepared within the scope of the research. The appearance of the textual functions undertaken by conjunctions in reading comprehension activities was obtained with the other data collection tool of the study, "Rubric for the Properties of Conjunctions in Reading Comprehension Activities". The results of the study revealed that in the 5th grade Turkish textbook texts, conjunctions are presented in more than one semantic and usage level, thus presenting a multifunctional appearance, but the textual functions of these structures are reflected in reading comprehension activities in a very limited way (𝑿̅ = 1.06) and such features of conjunctions are not taken into consideration in the process designed for reading comprehension in the textbooks.