Research of textbooks used in teaching Turkish as a foreign language in terms of speaking activities (Intermediate and advanced example)

Textbooks are one of the main factors that are frequently used in in classroom practises in teaching Turkish as a foreign language and that most affects the language teaching process. The most important component of the textbooks is the activities used in the development language skills. Examining these activities in terms of developing social and communicative skills, which is one of the most basic needs of foreign language learners, is important for increasing the quality of textbooks. In this context, it is aimed to examine the speaking skills activities in the textbooks. For this purpose, intermediate and advanced course books are examined in this study. The research is limited to the Gazi University Turkish for Foreigners, Yedi İklim Turkish and Istanbul Turkish for Foreigners textbooks, which are the most widely used in the related field. In this study the document analysis method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, is used. Each speaking activity in the textbooks constituting the sample of the study; The data of the study are examined and collected in terms of distribution within the unit, accuracy and fluency, question type, interaction, group activity, association with other skills, visual and textual support, the moment of realization, the availability of additional exercises before, during and after speaking, its position in the unit and language learning strategies. The checklist developed by Bueno-Alastuey and Agulló (2015) for the purpose of evaluating the textbooks in the context of verbal communication skills is used to collect the data. The obtained data are analyzed through frequency analysis, which is one of the content analysis techniques. As a result of the study, the textbooks are prominent in general; structured and semi-structured question type, fluency, textual support, student-teacher interaction, associating with reading skill, realization during practice, being in the middle of the unit and using cognitive strategy. However, it is concluded that free question type, group interaction, real-life orientation, presenting textual and visual support together, dealing with accuracy-fluency elements and linguistic skills in a holistic way, considering the preparation process, including additional activity during practice, in terms of addressing all learning strategies in a balanced and compatible way with the proficiency criteria of language levels are insufficient. Keywords: Speaking, speaking skill, textbook, activity.