A COMPARISON OF READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS IN KOREAN AND TURKISH TEXTBOOKS: A DISCUSSION ON PISA 2009 RESULTS

The objective of this study is to classify the comprehension questions in the Turkish and Korean textbooks according to the cognitive levels and to compare the results of the PISA reading section between South Korea and Turkey and to research whether comprehension studies in the textbooks are among of the factors which stimulate the PISA results. The teaching tools of Korea, the top country in PISA results, will provide significant findings for Turkey which is under the average of OECD. For that reason, the aim of the study is to compare the questions at the end of the text in the Turkish and Korean textbooks with the PISA results. The research was conducted with document analysis technique, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The questions at the end of the text on randomly selected themes were categorized according to the objectives in the reading literacy framework for PISA in the analysis. The findings were compared with the results of the distribution of the reading questions of PISA 2009 and PISA 2009 reading subscales. As a result of the comparison, it found that the rate of questions, representing the level of access-retrieve was 36% in the Korean textbook sample while it was 50% in Turkish textbook sample; and the rate of questions, representing the level of integrate-interpret was 47% in the Korean textbook sample while it was 27% in Turkish one; the rate of questions, representing the level of reflect-evaluate was 17% in Korean textbooks while it was 23% in the Turkish textbooks. When we analyzed the weights of the questions in the reading literacy framework for PISA, these rates were mainly in parallel with the rates of the questions in the Korean textbook sample. We encounter with the basic questions with access-retrieve more in the Turkish textbooks. Accordingly, it was concluded that Turkish students may get low scores in the reading activities that they were not accustomed to the predominantly high level thinking ability questions in the assesment framework of reading literacy for PISA.