Evaluation of love-themed folk stories in terms of intercultural interaction in teaching Turkish to foreigners (Text analysis)

Due to the integrated nature of language and culture, the language teaching process also includes cultural teaching. In language teaching, understanding culture is possible with the cultural elements contained in the language. In teaching Turkish to foreigners, cultural elements that allow the introduction and comprehension of ancient Turkish culture are important in terms of intercultural interaction processes. The aim of the research is to reveal which cultural elements love-themed folk stories, which are among the Turkish cultural products, contain that can enable intercultural interaction and the usability of love-themed folk stories in terms of intercultural interaction. The research is a qualitative research and a descriptive study with a scanning pattern. The cultural elements examined in the study were determined by creating a rubric table based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and other classifications related to cultural elements in the literature. Accordingly, cultural elements were examined under six main categories: "Daily Life", "İnterpersonal Relations", "Values, Beliefs and Education", "Social Life, Traditions and Rituals", "Literature, Art and Music", "Geography and Space". Subcultural elements belonging to each main category were examined under separate headings. The research was limited to folk tales about love, and accordingly, manuscripts of a total of five folk tales about love were selected as the objects of study. The manuscripts of the stories Kerem and Aslı, Ferhat and Şirin, Tahir and Zühre, Elif and Mahmut, and Âşık Garip, which constitute the objects of study, were scanned using document analysis. Coding was used to identify and classify the identified cultural elements, and content analysis was used to analyze the data. The codes determined in the analysis of the data were placed in categories and were numerically transformed through descriptive statistics (frequency-percentage), which is one of the qualitative research methods. In the light of all the data obtained as a result of the research, the usability of folk stories about love in teaching Turkish to foreigners in terms of intercultural interaction was evaluated. As a result, it has been determined that folk stories about love contain various cultural elements in terms of intercultural interaction and therefore make intercultural interaction possible. Keywords: Teaching Turkish to foreigners, love-themed folk stories, intercultural interaction.