Cultural transfer in vocabulary elements of story books prepared for teaching Turkish as a foreign language

In teaching a foreign language, vocabulary and vocabulary elements play a central role in learners' effective acquisition of the target language. Vocabulary consists of words, idioms, proverbs, formulaic expressions, reduplications, terms and stereotyped expressions. Through these elements, a society's way of life, worldview and cultural structure are conveyed through language. Therefore, language and culture are two basic elements that cannot be separated from each other. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine the role and importance of the vocabulary of story books in cultural transfer by examining the vocabulary elements in the story books prepared for the purpose of teaching Turkish as a foreign language and to reveal which cultural themes these elements are related to. The research was carried out by document analysis method in accordance with the qualitative research design. Data source: "Turkish Stories for Foreign Students A1, A2, B1 and B2" sets, "Salih Story Series" and "Aslı Story Series" were created within the scope of the "Supporting Inclusive Education for Children Project". The vocabulary elements in the examined texts were classified based on the Turkish Language Association Dictionary; These elements were analyzed under themes such as daily life, interpersonal communication and relationships, geography and space, education, health, food and beverage, literature, art and music in the context of cultural transmission. The findings show that idioms are especially concentrated in daily life; formulaic expressions are concentrated in interpersonal communication; and terms are concentrated in literature, art and music. However, it was determined that proverbs and formulaic expressions were not included in the stories.