Cultural Transmission Through Teaching Turkish As a Foreign Language Course Books

Communication in foreign language teaching is gaining more importance in today’s world. Language students find that learning the vocabulary and grammatical structures of a particular language is not enough to gain proficiency in the language. The close relationship between language and culture reveals the fact that it is impossible to master a language without learning its culture. Therefore, the course books used for teaching a foreign language must improve students’ communication skills by raising their cultural awareness. In this study, culture transfer through course books is analyzed and evaluated within the context of teaching Turkish to foreigners. The Yeni Hitit Yabancılar için Türkçe series, the course books used in the Turkish Studies Department at Jagiellonian University, are evaluated according to the following cultural transfer criteria: a) subject area, (b) type of text and (c) visuality. The evaluation of the Yeni Hitit Yabancılar için Türkçe course book series from the perspective of cultural transmission has revealed that they contain elements that present Turkish culture to students with its different aspects and succeed in transmitting the Turkish culture to students for whom they are intended. Course books that promote communicative and intercultural competence should be chosen to teach Turkish as a foreign language at Polish universities. Günümüzde yabancı dil öğretiminde iletişimin önemi gittikçe artmaktadır. Dil öğrenenler için sadece o dilin kelime ve dilbilgisi yapılarını öğrenmek dil yeterliliği açısından yeterli değildir. Dil ve kültür arasındaki yakın ilişki, bir dile o dilin kültürünü öğrenmeden hâkim olunamayacağı gerçeğini ortaya koymaktadır. Bundan dolayı, yabancı dil öğretimi için kullanılan ders kitapları da kültürel farkındalığı artırarak iletişim becerilerini geliştirmesi beklenmektedir