EXAMINATION OF VOCABULARY ELEMENTS IN TEXTBOOKS FOR TEACHING TURKISH TO FOREIGNERS

Cultural transfer has a significant place in teaching Turkish to foreigners. One of the most important factors in cultural transfer is textbooks. Thus, texts in the books for teaching Turkish to foreigners need to demonstrate the reflective properties of our culture in terms of vocabulary. The aim of the present study is to reveal the vocabulary of reading texts in the textbooks designed to teach Turkish to foreigners based on idioms, proverbs, reduplications, interjections, words denoting relations, and proper names. The study population is constituted by textbooks designed to teach Turkish to foreigners and the sample consists of a set of textbooks named YeniHititYabancılarİçinTürkçeSeti (New Hittite-Turkish for Foreigners) which is the most preferred textbook in Turkish teaching centres both at home and abroad. The study used “document investigation method”. The reading texts in the textbooks of YeniHititYabancılarİçinTürkçe (1,2,3) were examined by document investigation method and the vocabulary elements in these texts were examined by classification method. In the study, “Cibakaya Index Program 2.2” was used to determine the frequency of words. As a result of the study, differences were found between the three books in terms of the number of words and vocabulary elements. The textbook YeniHititYabancılarİçinTürkçe 2 is the richest of the three books in terms of the frequency of words and the vocabulary. The books examined in the study were found not to be rich in vocabulary elements except of proverbs.