Analyzing the question types in academic Turkish textbooks used in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

This research encompasses the investigation about the question items used in the textbooks of "Academic Turkish" courses, which is provided to the students with academic purposes to enable them to sustain their higher education in Turkey after they have reached C2 proficiency in Turkish. In accordance with the purpose of the study, the research question was determined as "What is the frequency and distribution of the question item types in academic Turkish textbooks used to teach Turkish as a foreign language?". The following Turkish textbooks, which constituted the study group, were examined within the scope of the research question: "Erciyes Academic Turkish in Social Sciences", "Erciyes Academic Turkish in Health Sciences", "Erciyes Academic Turkish in Science", "Gazi Academic Turkish for International Students I", "Istanbul Academic Turkish in Social Sciences I", "Istanbul Academic Turkish in Social Sciences II", "Istanbul Academic Turkish in Science III", "Pegem Academic Turkish". The document analysis method, which is a type of qualitative research, was used in this study and the findings were attained by the content analysis of the textbooks constituting the study group. The question items, which were detected in the activities prepared based on the listening and reading texts in the textbooks, were presented as tables showing their numbers. The findings of the research indicates that traditional assessment and evaluation instruments were used predominantly when the question items in academic Turkish books were prepared. Despite the presence of the question item types consisting of alternative/complementary assessment and evaluation techniques in the investigated textbooks, traditional ones were detected more in terms of frequency. Additionally, the number of listening question items were found less than those of reading as a consequence of the listening activities' redundance in the analyzed textbooks. The results also suggests that the question items provided on the basis of reading texts support the development of the international students' writing skills. It can be concluded that in academic Turkish textbooks, activities developing listening, reading and writing skills were emphasized and speaking skills were mostly neglected.