Examination of the texts in Turkish textbooks in terms of readability

Reading; one of the four basic language skills, is the most commonly used skill in both education and daily life for individuals. Reading is the foundation of acquiring knowledge and it is a lifelong process. The reading skill enhances their individuals' academic success, contributes to success in their professional lives, and improves overall quality of life. Therefore, the reading skill should be fostered and developed from childhood. And also students who do not enjoy reading in their early years or fail to master it during their elementary school may face difficulties in later stages of their education. For this reason, the importance of Turkish language lessons is immense. The most essential material used in Turkish lessons is textbooks. Despite the advancing technology, textbooks remain one of the most widely used teaching materials today. Consequently, Turkish language textbooks must possess certain characteristics. Undoubtedly, readability is one of these essential qualities. Therefore, the texts selected for textbooks must have specific readability features. This study examines the Turkish language textbooks for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-grade students used during the 2023-2024 academic year. The readability scores and levels of these textbooks were analyzed. Poems and listening texts were excluded, and only informative and narrative texts were considered. To calculate the readability scores and levels, the readability formulas of Ateşman (1997), Çetinkaya-Uzun (2010), and Bezirci-Yılmaz (2010) were used. Document analysis, a qualitative research method, was employed to examine the readability scores of the texts. The results obtained were transferred to tables and interpreted. Based on the findings, it was determined that the reading level of informative texts was more difficult compared to narrative texts, that the difficulty levels of some texts in the textbooks were higher than expected, and that the average sentence lengths in some texts were above the normal range. Keywords: Readability, Text, Read, Turkish Textbooks