An analysis of main idea questions included in Turkish course exams

Abstract

This study aims to examine the main idea questions included in Turkish course exams. The study was carried out with a non-intervention research model. The research analyses were carried out on 178 questions which were determined to be the main idea questions among 1,432 questions in 238 exam papers from 138 schools. It was observed that there were no main idea questions in approximately half of the exam papers examined in the study. The main idea questions in the exam papers were asked with 10 different question stems. More than half of the main idea questions examined were open-ended. An expository text type was used in the majority of the main idea questions. Examination of the main idea questions revealed that in most of them, the main idea was explicitly included in the text. Moreover, it was seen that in the texts used for main idea questions, the main idea was mostly included at the end of the text. This situation casts doubt on the extent to which the exams applied in schools are adequate in terms of preparing students for international exams. For this reason, curriculum development studies should be included that will serve to make teachers more competent in increasing the quality and quantity of main idea questions in Turkish exams and to improve students’ ability to find the main idea, scaffolding models should be designed and made familiar to teachers and students.