An Investigation on the questions used in the 8th grade Turkish course book texts in primary education

ABSTRACTMasters ThesisAn Investigation on the Questions Used in the 8th Grade Turkish Course BookTexts in Primary EducationMurat ŞENGÜLFırat UniversityInstitute of Social SiencesDivision of Turkish Education2005; Page: XVI+221In the life field which is gradually becoming more complex, it has been essentialto bring up the students as a member of information society. Besides making thestudents gain the skill to use the language actively, Turkish course books are the basicsources to make the students earn higher order cognitive skills which are formulated aslearning abilities such as understanding and interpreting the basic consepts, scientific,creative and critical thinking, problem solving, doing research and which will be earnedduring teaching-learning process. Turkish course books should have a form to realizethese qualities. As warm-up and end-text questions formed according to the texts in theTurkish course books lead the students to examining and thinking over certain subjects,these questions could be accepted as the key point for teaching techniques based onexamining while making the texts meaningful. These questions provide the studentswith different viewpoints and cognitive process with realizing on a higher level due tothe relationship between the language and thought.This study has been done to determine on which level the warm-up and end-textquestions that are formed depending on the texts in Turkish course books in primaryschools according to the aims set by Turkish Education Program realize the cognetiveskills which are the signs of the students to understand what they read and use Turkisheffectively in terms of language and cognitive development.In this study, initially, regarding the aim of the study, a theoretical frame relatedto skill of asking question was established and then 5479 questions, fully included in486 texts in 13 course books which were suggested by the Ministry of NationalEducation to be taught in the 8th grade classes of primary education during 2003-2004academic year were formed in total. 971 of these questions were warm-up questions and4508 of them were end-text questions. These questions classified in terms of cognitivedomain, asking aims, answer sources and preparation styles.Result, obtained in the direction of the investigation suggest that although warm-up and end-text questions, which depend on the texts in Turkish course books used inprimary education in the 8th grade, should be prepared in relation to making thestudents earn and develop multi-sided viewpoints like learning, remembering, ordering,classification, unification, interpretation, guessing the results, adaptation of theknowledge that have just been learned to the new circumstances, doing research,discussion, comparasion, making assumptions, examinig the assumptions, seperatingthe assumptions and event, producing alternative ideas, knowing, discovering basicthoughts and logical relationship, establishing a part-whole relationship, forming acause-effect relationship, making generalizations and at the end making evaluations,these questions could not contribute enough to realize the behaviours considered earnedby students due to the aims determined in Basic Education Schools Turkish EducationProgram.Key Words: Teaching, Turkish teaching, Cognitive skills, Turkish coursebooks, Warm-up questions for text, End-text questions.