The importance of children's literature for teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children and organizing a sample story in compliance with language levels

Turkish is one of the richest languages in the world, whose roots go back thousands of years. It is also a language of science, art and culture that has been spoken and written by different countries and nations in a very wide geography for centuries. The prevalence, validity and functionality of a language determines its position and value among other languages. With these features, Turkish has a prestigious and important place among the world languages. In addition, the political, economic and cultural changes in the world has brought speed and dynamism to the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language. The number of children as well as adults learning Turkish as a foreign language is undeniably high. Teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children is very common in Turkey and abroad. However, the practices in this field do not have a theoretical background. In addition to that the lack of systematic methods to be followed in teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children, the techniques to be applied and materials to be used pose a problem. Because the world of children is different from the world of adults. Therefore, in the teaching process, materials should be prepared by considering the physical, cognitive, social development and familial, social and cultural conditions of children as well as their ages. In this context, it is useful and necessary to adapt children's literature texts containing themes suitable for teaching by adapting them according to the determined language levels. In this study, the methods and techniques that can be applied in teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children, firstly by considering the 'children's characteristics' are explained. In addition, the place, use and importance of children's literature in teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children were mentioned; It has been emphasized how children's literature texts and reading-comprehension activities related to texts should be done to increase reading skills. In addition, text adaptation techniques in teaching Turkish as a foreign language are explained and in this context, the novel "The Little Prince", one of the most important works of World Children's Literature, has been adapted to B1 level as a sample text and added to the last part of the thesis. While adapting, the principles regarding the reading achievements and grammar structures of the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" were taken into account. As a result, both the deficiencies in the field of teaching Turkish as a foreign language to children have been pointed out and solutions have been presented, and it has been aimed to develop children's literary reading tastes while learning Turkish by including children's literature in the teaching process.