Simplification of narrative texts with literary semiotics method in teaching Turkish as a foreign language: The example of Madonna With Fur Coat

Although the history of teaching Turkish as a foreign language is very old, the demand for learning Turkish has increased rapidly in recent years. This increase has created the need for in-class and extra-curricular materials to be used to support teaching. It is expected that the materials prepared to develop reading-comprehension skills, one of the four basic language skills targeted in language teaching, are also skill-enhancing materials. These materials can be original texts or texts prepared by the instructor for the purpose. The use of original texts as in-class material supports education, but original texts may not be suitable for every level and for every learner. For this reason, it is necessary to adapt the original texts in accordance with the level. Original texts can be informative texts or narrative texts. Short stories or novels can be used as a reading activity. Since the novels are quite long for an reading activity, it would be more useful to summarize and use a novel. Whether or not the literary semiotics analysis method can be used to summarize narrative texts is the problem of this research. The aim of the research is to try the literary semiotics analysis method to summarize the narrative text and to make it ready to adapt it according to the levels. In this context, a narrative text (Madonna in a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali) was selected and all its structures were analyzed by the method of literary semiotics. The analyzed text was rewritten and summarized using the information from the analysis stages. While creating the summary text, the stages of the literary semiotics analysis method were used. As a result, a summary narrative text has emerged, ready to be adapted for any desired language level. The stages of the literary semiotics analysis method were used to create the summary text, and a new text was created that includes all parts of the original text and reflects the essence of the text. Keywords: Literary Semiotics, Summarizing, Language Teaching, Turkish as a Foreign Language.