An Examination of TTK Level 3, 4, and 5 Textbooks Used in Turkish Education of Turkish Heritage Language Speakers Living Abroad from the Perspective of Pragmatic Competence

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the 3rd, 4th, and 5th level textbooks of the Turkish and Turkish culture course, prepared by the Ministry of National Education for Turks living in Europe and published in 2019, in terms of pragmatic competence and speech acts. The pragmatic information in the textbooks was collected directly through the document review method. The descriptive analysis method was adopted in the analysis of the data. A framework based on Vu's (2017) pragmatic tasks was created using Vellenga's (2004) classification to evaluate the pragmatic information in the textbooks. On this basis, it was determined that all three textbooks were informal and insufficient in terms of pragmatic competence and speech acts. No informative content for heritage language speakers in terms of pragmatic competence was encountered. Speech acts were conveyed to the heritage language speaker through implicit learning. In addition, it was observed that meta-pragmatic information related to speech acts, for example; when, where, and to whom it will be used, was not presented appropriately. Another finding is the lack of pragmatic activities, and it was determined that cultural activities, although few, were included in the textbook. In light of these findings, the need for a needs analysis for TTK textbooks has been expressed.