Pragmatic awareness in teaching Turkish to foreigners

The aim of this study is to determine the place of speech acts in teaching Turkish as a foreign/second language in the context of textbooks used in the field and teachers' views. In this context, case study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in accordance with the purpose of the study. Semi-structured interview form as a data collection tool to determine the views of the teachers in the research; The speech act coding form was used to determine the speech acts in the textbooks. In the analysis of the data, content and descriptive analyzes were made and the analyzed data were interpreted by making a percentage (%). In the research, textbooks (Yeni Hitit A1, A2, Yedi Klima A1, A2, Turkish for Foreigners A1, A2 and Istanbul Turkish for Foreigners A1, A2) were examined in terms of the level of their approaches and practices in teaching speech acts. In terms of the speech acts determined in the related books, no system or systematic approach has been determined for their explicit and implicit teaching and realization areas. As a result of the study, according to the information obtained from the examined textbooks, the textbooks do not include the explicit name of the speech acts. However, while the most weight was given to the public sphere in terms of the realization areas of speech acts in the textbooks, there were significant differences between the distribution densities in terms of the realization areas in the books. When the data obtained from the trainers are evaluated, it shows that although the trainers are not familiar with the term, they did not take a special course for the pragmatic component. In addition, while it was understood that the instructors gave importance to the pragmatic component in the course, it was determined that they were hesitant about how to follow the course in terms of course content and materials. Based on all these findings and information, it was concluded that the textbooks used in the field of teaching Turkish as a foreign / second language are insufficient in this context, and the instructors are aware of the importance of pragmatics in Turkish teaching, but they are inexperienced and undecided about how to design the teaching process. The reason for this situation can be shown as the lack of a course on the pragmatics concept or not at all in the course contents given both at the undergraduate and graduate levels and in the certificate program.