The readability and understandability of the texts in secondary school Turkish course books

In this research, word length of the texts in 5th-8th grade Turkish course books and readibility degree of the words according to their frequency is studied. For this, expert opinion was consulted on readibility of texts in Turkish course books. Readibility levels were tried to identified in terms of text genre, word and sentence length, grade and gender variables by applying close tests on these texts. Descriptive research method and scanning technique were used in the study. In the result of the study, it was observed that 5th-8th grade students read narrative texts more easily than informative texts. It was observed that the texts in the 6th grade course books were read easily than the other course books when they are evaluated according to the grade levels. A significant diffirence between word frequency and readibility degree was determined, and it was observed that the texts which consist of common words were understood more easily. According to another finding, as the lengths of the sentences in the texts increase over 13, there is significant decrease in readibility scores and it was determined that the variable which affects the text readibility most is the average sentence length. The texts that will be taken into course books should not be determined by mere expert opinions, different methods that increase reliability should be used in text choice for course books. Key Words: Turkish course books, readibility, comprehensibility, reading, text choice, word length, sentence length.