Poetry in teaching Turkish

The aim of the present study is to constribute the highest level reception when reading the poems in the textbook used in the eighth grade.The starting points of this study have been the facts that our students? reading abilities are found to be at the second level according to the PISA 2006 results and that literary and educational experts have negative observations about the literary qualities and methods used in evaluating the poems contained in Turkish textbook. In this study, poem?s language has been expalined by using semiotic methods to set an example fot the structural analyses of the poems, and in explaining the reader-focused approach a kind of synthesis has been used by adopting the views of the Reception Aesthetic Theoreticians.The positive and the negative findings obtained at the end of this study have been enumerated and it has been suggested that in evaluating works of art having poetic quality the technique of brain-storming ought to be used.