The use of cultural elements in Turkish as a foreign language coursebooks: Yunus Emre Institute 7 İklim Teaching Turkish Sets (C1 - C2 level)

In the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language, many topics such as teaching environment, materials used, four basic language skills and the way of giving grammar and cultural transmission play an important role. Considering that the language teaching processes carried out within the target culture and away from the target culture are different, it can be said that the materials used in this process play an active role. The most widely accepted course material in foreign language teaching is textbooks. Textbooks are preferred over other materials both economically and practically. The aim of the course is to provide students with four basic language skills and grammar teaching through the texts in the textbooks and activities organized based on these texts. At this point, the question of how much cultural elements should be included in the textbooks comes to mind. Based on this question, the subject of our thesis was determined as cultural transmission in the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language and the "Seven Climate Turkish Instruction Set(C1-C2 level)" prepared by Yunus Emre Institute was chosen as the sample. The aim of the thesis; determine how much cultural transmission is included in an advanced textbooks frequently used in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. To contribute to the field of Turkish teaching as a foreign language through this determination, and to create data for the course materials to be prepared are among the determined objectives. The study is designed as a qualitative research in the screening model. The data in the textbooks used in C1 and C2 levels were collected by using document analysis technique which is one of the data collection methods used in qualitative research. The cultural elements used in the study were classified based on the "Cultural elements and sub-elements reflected in the texts" scale used by "Okur and Keskin"(2013). As a result of the differences arising from the textbooks used in research,in the study process, the need to make arrangements on the scale was born. As a result of this need, the scale was examined by four faculty members who are working as an expert in the department of Turkish education and the scale was finalized. As a result of the study, it was seen that the rate of cultural elements in the C1 and C2 levels of Seven Climate Turkish Instruction Set was similar. In both levels of textbooks, item predominantly belonging to different cultures were found. The most common category after the items belonging to different cultures was "Values and Education" in the C1 level textbooks while "Literature,Art and Music" was the second most common category at C2 level. In this study, it has been tried to present data for new materials prepared for use in Turkish education as a foreign language. Keywords: Teaching Turkish to foreigners, culture, cultural transmission, textbooks.