The place and the significance of tales in Turkish language teaching

The main purpose of this study is to identify the Teachers? perspectives on teaching tales, their choice, and the language, content, and their form and styles in Turkish language teaching. To perform the aim of the study a scale indicating to teachers? opinions on tales and their usage in Turkish language were administered to 365 primary school teachers of 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes in 48 schools located in Buca, zmir. The research was carried out during 2005-2006 academic year in fall term. In data analysis frequencies, percentages, arithmetic means, standard deviation, t-test, F test and LSD test were capitalized on. A hundred tales in Turkish course books were analyzed in terms of intelligibility and the proportion of clarity, frequency and percentages were employed for analyzing the data. Findings indicate that teachers have positive opinions about the usage of tales in Turkish language education. Variables such as age, graduated school, years of teaching experience, and socio-economic level of school and the class level showed significant differences in terms of usage of tales in Turkish language education. Teachers? opinions of story texts in the Turkish course books, choice of the stories and their usage in Turkish language courses vary in terms gender (p<0.05). Female teachers affirmed more favorable opinions than males. A significant difference between years of teaching experience and teachers? opinions in terms of their choice of story was reported. The teachers whose ages are between 31-38 and also have a years of teaching experience between 11-15 or 16-20, revealed much more positive opinions than the other groups (p<0.05). Teachers? opinions did not vary in terms of other variables mentioned below. The analyzed stories were found to be highly comprehensible. The words such as tongue twister, repetitious and onomatopoeic words and language errors were identified in the texts. Ethical, social, motor, affective, cognitive, characteristics and religious motifs were highly determined in the stories? contents, and generally the stories have positive attributions in terms of typography.