The effect of Turkish language activities prepared in accordance with the technique of dialogic reading on pre-school children's verbal linguistic skills

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of Turkish language activities prepared in accordance with the technique of dialogic reading on 5-6 year-old children's verbal linguistic skills. 23 students at a socio-economically low-middle class primary school in the academic year of 2015-2016 in the town of Çınarcık in Yalova comprise the experimental group of the study. Pre-test post-test controlled group experimental design was used in this study. Besides that, the study was enriched with qualitative data and a complex research method was used. In line with the aim of study, TEDİL early language development test (A and B paralel forms), whose validity and reliability were done by Topbas and Guven (2011), was used as pre-test and post-test. Besides TEDİL test, research findings were supported by qualitative data using the checklists of verbal linguistic skills, receptive linguistic skills, and expressive linguistic skills. Students' answers to the questions used during reading sessions (language samples) and student products (the stories created by the students) were analyzed to realize the development of the children in the experimental group. Interviews were conducted with the teachers and prospective teachers who had joined in the study as observers. SPSS was used to analyze the results of the study. Also, the qualitative data were examined by descriptive analysis. In the preliminary preparation stage of the study, eight pictured children books were selected by scanning the related literature and getting help from the field experts. Then, a pre-school Turkish program consisting of twenty-one activities was prepared. These Turkish dialogic reading activity plans were practised with the experimental group for ten weeks. Significant developments were discovered in the verbal linguistic skills of the students in the group with whom the activities were practised. As a result, meaningful differences were realised between the control and experimental groups' scores of verbal, receptive, and expressive linguistic skills. As a result, it has been concluded that the Turkish activities prepared according to dialogic reading have improved the verbal linguistic skills of 5-6 year-old children. The study is considered to be important for pre-school Turkish activities to be practised more effectively and analyzing the yield of dialogic reading method. Also, the study was completed by proposing the analysis of dialogic reading's contribution to different variables other than verbal linguistic skills for furher studies. Keywords: dialogic reading, pre-school education, verbal linguistic skills