THE READABILITY AND UNDERSTANDABILITY OF THE TEXTS IN THE COURSE BOOKS OF TURKISH LANGUAGE COURSES
TÜRKÇE DERS KİTAPLARINDAKİ METİNLERİN OKUNABİLİRLİK VE ANLAŞILABİRLİRLİĞ

Author : Halit KARATAY -- Kevser Kübra BOLAT - Haluk GÜNGÖR
Number of pages : 603-623

Abstract

In this study, the readability and understandability of the texts in the course books of Turkish Language Courses have been examined according to expert opinion and cloze test. To this purpose, the readability and understandability levels of the texts in the Turkish course books at the 6th, 7th and 8th grades have been classified as difficult, of medium difficulty and easy, taking the opinions of 12 Turkish language teachers. A difficult text, a text of medium difficulty and an easy text have been decided on through random assignment for each of the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. Students were given at different times a class hour for each text to supply for the words that had been left out. The data obtained have been evaluated in terms of its consistency with the expert (teacher) opinion. The cloze test scores of the texts defined by the teachers to be easy, of medium difficulty and difficult have been seen to be consistent for the 6th and 8th grades. However, it has been found that the students had difficulty in comprehending the texts identified by the teachers to be of medium difficulty and easy for the 7th grade. It can be said that the texts in the Turkish Language course books are generally difficult according to the readability formula. The fact that the obtained data are not consistent with the teachers’ opinions for all grades shows that there exist problems with the selection of the texts in the course books in terms of readability and understandability and that experts’ opinions may not yield the right and accurate results all the time. The texts to be used in course books should not be determined only with recourse to experts’ opinions. Different methods that will increase the reliability should also be applied in the selection of texts for course books.

Keywords

Turkish Language course books, readability, understandability, reading, selection of texts

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