Examination of reading activities in secondary school Turkish textbooks in the context of reading culture

The most fundamental resource used to achieve the objectives intended for students in Turkish lessons is Turkish textbooks. They play a vital role in development and improvement of reading culture. Through the text and activities in these books, students develop their reading skills and transform them into a reading culture. This also enables students to embark on a lifelong reading journey and contributes to the social widespread dissemination of reading culture within society. The primary aim of this study is to examine the reading activities present in Turkish textbooks for secondary school students, within the context of promoting a reading culture. This research draws on four Turkish textbooks designed for grades 5, 6, 7 and 8, data related to reading activities in Turkish textbooks were collected through document analysis method and the obtained data were analyzed by descriptive analysis. The findings of the research reveal that the steps towards improving a reading culture are incorporated within the reading activities across all grade levels. However, this distribution is observed to be somewhat imbalanced, with a heavier emphasis on basic literacy skills. When the quality of reading activities was examined, it can be observed that the activities do not reflect higher- level thinking skills, rather, they predominantly remain at lower- level thinking skills. Additionally, the study highlights that reading activities are uniform and lack variety. Considering these results, it is suggested that the reading activities in Turkish textbooks should be prepared in a way that will contribute to the process of acquiring a reading culture and support the high-level thinking skills of the students. Keywords: Reading Culture, Turkish Textbooks, Reading Activities.