Writing activities analysis of Turkish and English native language coursebook for 11-14-year students

Language is the main way for a person to contact to the world. For a person, using the native language is absolutely one of the main topics of the education. Starting at the family, native language education continues with the school. At school, native language education is done with a well-planned curriculum systematically. Teaching writing is one of the skills that is gained at the school. In teaching writing, using course book has an important role as a material. The aim of this study is to analyze Turkish and English native language course books for 11-14-year students. This study is important as it compares and evaluates the writing activities of these two countries. In this study, to compare the course books used in Turkey and England, research data has been collected by document review which is one of qualitative research technique. The 7th grade Turkish course books, used in Turkey in 2014-2015 Education Year, and the 8th grade English course books, used in England, have been analyzed physically and contextually. The writing activities of the books have been studied in terms of their writing methodologies, and their similarities and differences has been put forward. Writing samples at least one of which exists in each book have been presented and commented on. According to the results of the study, it has been determined that English books are better in print, paper and visual points. In English books it has been seen that visuals are placed in larger scales. When the books are analyzed contextually, it can be said that unit topics in English books are more interesting than Turkish books. In English books, at the beginning of the units there are short presentation parts on the topics that give preliminary information. In the study, when writing methods are analyzed, it is seen that in Turkish books there are quantitatively more writing activities than English books. In Turkish books, writing activities are generally for writing sentences and there are few activities which are for writing three or more paragraphs. By contrast with this, it has been seen that the activities in English books need more general study and focus more on writing paragraph and essay than writing sentence. Pre-writing and post-writing activities have been encountered few in Turkish books, but in English books writing activities are either mostly related to the previous activity or writing activities are designed to be followed in a writing process with pre-writing activities. This shows that activities are mostly based on a process-based approach. In Turkish books, group working method has not been encountered, and in English books there are not any activities for inductive writing, deductive writing and research-based scientific writing methods. While controlled writing is primarily used in Turkish books, creative writing is seen frequently in English books. It has been seen that note taking method is used few in both Turkish and English books. It has been identified there are many summarizing activities in all books in common. Key Words: Native Language, Mother Tongue, Teaching Writing, England, Book Analysis, Writing Methods