A study of German newspaper news in the context of critical discourse analysis for use in German courses

In this study, which focuses on critical discourse analysis and critical reading, which is defined as a high-level skill that students should have in language and foreign language teaching, it has been investigated whether critical discourse analysis can be used as an effective method for developing critical reading in German lessons. In this direction, critical discourse analysis was applied within the framework of the discourse analysis model of Teun A. van Dijk, one of the founders and prominent names of critical discourse analysis, on Germany's best-selling newspapers Bild, Süddeutsche and Frankfurter Allgemeine. Since critical discourse analysis stands out as a socio-political and medial field of study, newspaper news has been chosen as the reading text. The news topic in the newspapers for analysis was determined as presidential election in Turkey, on June 24, 2018, that is a major turning point after the establishment of the Republic in Turkey and enables critical reading. Six news in total selected from newspapers were analyzed in three different aspects: text analysis, sociocognitive analysis and social context analysis in the context of van Dijk's discourse analysis approach. As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that all three newspapers were reporting biasedly and in line with the same ideology, moving away from objectivity. Statements of all three newspapers show that they not support Ak Party and President Erdoğan in Turkey. In terms of education and training, analyses have shown that critical discourse analysis has processes such as interpreting, evaluating, interpreting, making new meanings, comparing and making judgments as required by critical reading, and it provides a great deal of opportunity for critical reading. The analysis and comparisons made have shown that critical discourse analysis and critical reading, although they belong to different fields, have the same purpose and characteristics. Thus, with this study, an alternative method for critical reading, which does not have a definite method and has no consensus on how to gain it, is presented