THE PROBLEM OF TEACHING CASE SUFFIXES TO TURKIC AND NON-TURKIC STUDENTS IN TURKISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES

The disparity among students in Turkish as a Foreign Language classes can be overcome using several methods. The disparity, however, between Turkic and non-Turkic students is quite clear especially during the elementary levels, which mainly results from the incorrect use of the rich suffixes in Turkish. Case suffixes, in particular, is one of the problems. The problem that Turkic students have using these suffixes is that they tend to use them as in their own language, but the problem with non-Turkic students is that they do not use these suffixes or they use them incorrectly. It may take a long time for non-Turkic students to understand and use them correctly. Therefore, teaching case suffixes as they are taught to native speakers of Turkish is not the way it should be. Teaching Turkish deductively is contradictory with the very fact that it is an agglutinative language. The suffixes in Turkish should be taught inductively. In this study, the differences between Turkic and non-Turkic students in using the case suffixes will be given firstly, then some textbooks will be investigated to find out how they teach case suffixes, and lastly, through our experience at Uşak University Center for Teaching Turkish (TÖMER) suggestions will be given as to teaching case suffixes more effectively and efficiently.