Comparison of speaking activities in 8th-grade coursebooks of Turkish lesson

Abstract

This study aims to compare the speaking activities in the 8th-grade Turkish coursebooks with respect to their reflection of the achievements and methods and techniques in the program, their association with the subject of the text, the number of activities according to text types, and the instructions explaining the activities. The study was conducted with document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. The coursebooks belonging to the MEB and Ferman Pub., which were decided to be taught in the 8th grade in the 2023-2024 academic year, were taken as a sample. Data were collected from post-text speaking activities and analyzed by descriptive and content analysis. The evaluations made for 64 activities in total were compared by two field experts, and the reliability was found to be 85.3%. As a result, it was observed that the speaking activities in the Ferman Pub. covered all the achievements in the Turkish Language Teaching Program in a balanced manner numerically with clear and explicit statements in the instructions, but in the MEB Pub., not all the achievements were included and the instructions were implicit and ambiguous to meet the achievements. In both coursebooks, the guided speaking strategy was used the most. In the Ferman Pub., speaking strategies, methods, and techniques to be used in speaking activities are explained in detail, and there is diversity in terms of methods and techniques (such as creative, critical, empathizing, persuasion, and discussion). In the MEB Pub., there is no explanation on how to apply strategies, and although the variety of methods and techniques is limited, the expressions about using strategies are implicit. In both coursebooks, there are examples of activities related to evaluating speaking, using voice, and dramatizing the text, but there are no achievements that meet these activities in the new Turkish Curriculum (2019).