Adaptation of Orhan Veli Kanık's "Hoşgör Köftecisi" to the A1-A2-B1-B2 level in teaching Turkish language to foreigners

It is not possible to distinguish between the four basic skills in foreign language education or to talk about the superiority of one over the other. Each skill stands out in line with its own characteristics and needs of language learners. There is not an agreement about whether the reading texts presented to those who are learning languages for reading skills should be original text or artificial (constructive) texts, or whether the original texts should be presented in their original forms or after some modification processes. As a result of these discussions, it is seen that the unaltered versions of the texts presented to the students, especially at the beginning and intermediate levels, cause a slowdown in language education and a loss of motivation. In the light of this thought, the need has arisen for students to adapt the original texts of Turkish to their level. In this study, prepared to be an additional material for the development and reinforcement of reading skills in teaching Turkish as a foreign language, "Baharın Ettikleri", "Denize Doğru", "Hoşgör Köftecisi", "İşsizlik", "Kan" ve "Öğleden Sonra" stories in Orhan Veli Kanık's story book "Hoşgör Köftecisi" were simplified at A1, A2, B1, and B2 levels by using text substitution techniques. In addition, word frequency lists were presented for readability calculations and for the determination of vocabulary in order to make comparisons by revealing the quantitative features of both original and simplified texts. The study was supported by the expert opinion question in order to measure the vocabulary, grammatical structures, lexicon, true-false questions and in-class applicability of the texts that emerged as a result of the modification process. While simplifying the stories, the Turkish textbooks for foreigners "New Hitit 1", "New Hitit 2" and "Hitit 3" were used to determine the grammatical structures of the levels. During the modification process, the Turkish Language Association Contemporary Turkish Dictionary was used to determine the vocabulary and to create the "Dictionary" part. In order to increase the usability of the texts in classroom, true-false questions consisting of five questions were added to the end of the adapted texts. The results revealed that the modification processes were generally successful.