The educational function of puzzles as a folk narrative

The main objective of this research is to determine the comprehension of primary school 4th class students depending on the structural characteristics of riddles by analysing riddles in various aspects. The study group of the research was composed of 438 (219 Female, 219 Male) 4th class students at primary schools in the Buca district of the city of Izmir during 2014-2015 education period. In this descriptive research in survey method, the existing case about the students' comprehension of riddles was determined. The data were acquired using "Riddle Comprehension Scale" developed by the researcher. The data were analysed using SPSS 15.0 program. During data analysis, such variance analysis types as Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskall-Wallis test were used. Also, chi-square (x²) statistics was conducted to reveal the answering pattern for each question. As a result of the analyses, riddle interpretation levels of primary school 4th class students turned out to be low. Also, significant differences were determined at riddle interpretation levels in terms of gender, parent education, income level and structural characteristics of riddles. Key Words: Riddle, Education, Language and Intellectual Development, Vocabulary