YABANCI DİL OLARAK TÜRKÇE DERS KİTAPLARININ KÜLTÜREL İÇERİĞİNİN ÜÇ ÇEVRE MODELİNE GÖRE ÇÖZÜMLENMESİ

ANALYSING THE CULTURAL CONTENT OF TURKISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE COURSEBOOKS ACCORDING TO THE THREE CIRCLES MODEL

Özet

Kültürlerarası etkileşimin arttığı dünyada, başarılı bir iletişimci olabilmek için yalnızca hedef kültür değil öğrencinin kendi kültürü ile farklı ülkelerin kültürleri konusunda farkındalık geliştirmesi gereklidir. Kültürel içeriğin taşıyıcısı, yabancı dil olarak Türkçe ders kitaplarında, hangi kültürlerin ne oranda temsil edildiği ise merak konusudur. Türk kültürüne özgü öğelerin sunumuna odaklanan önceki kültürel çalışmalardan farklı olarak, burada Yeni Hitit 3 (2012) ders kitabındaki kültürel öğeler Kachru'nun (1985) "üç çevre" modeline göre sınıflandırılmış, veriler ÖSYM'nin yabancı uyruklu öğrenci sayılarıyla karşılaştırılmış ve sözcüksel-konusal çözümlemelerden şu sonuçlar elde edilmiştir: Türkçenin anadil olarak konuşulduğu iç çevre %43, anadilin yanında önemli bir dil olarak kurumsal işlev gördüğü dış çevre %1 ve yabancı dil olarak öğrenildiği genişleyen çevre %56 oranında kültürel varlığa sahipken, en çok evrensel konulara değinildiği (%53), bunu genişleyen (%29) ve iç çevreye ait (%9) konular ile diğer konuların (%7) izlediği ve en az dış çevrenin (%2) konu edildiği bulunmuştur. Dolayısıyla, Yeni Hitit 3'te (2012) erek dilin kültürü (Türk kültürü) yeterince temsil edilirken diğer Türk topluluklarının kültürleri neredeyse yok sayılmış ve en çok çeşitlilik ve yoğunluk gösteren kültürler ise Türkçeyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen farklı ülkelerin kültürleri olmuştur. Ancak genişleyen çevredeki bu ülkeler içinde ise komşu ülkelerin kültürlerinden çok Anglo-Amerikan kültürün egemenliği söz konusudur. Kültürel öğelerin dağılımı, dış ve genişleyen çevreden gelen yabancı öğrenci oranlarıyla birlikte değerlendirildiğinde, yabancı dil olarak Türkçe ders kitaplarının okuyucu kitlesinin geçmişlerini gözetmediği ve kültür-yüklü metinleri dizgesel olarak seçmediği ortaya çıkmıştır

Abstract

Although the target language culture (the Turkish culture) was adequately represented, the cultures of the other Turkic groups were almost ignored and the cultures of different countries learning Turkish as a foreign language were the most varied and densely-populated. However, among the countries of the expanding circle, the AngloAmerican culture, rather than the cultures of the neighbouring countries, was the dominant culture. When the distribution of the cultural elements was evaluated with the percentages of foreign students from the outer and expanding circles, it was revealed that the Turkish as a foreign language coursebooks did not take into consideration the cultural backgrounds of the audience and choose the culture-loaded texts systematically, either. Introduction In foreign language education, coursebooks are the primary vehicles for transferring cultural information in textual and visual forms. Defining the purpose of learning an international language as transferring your own culture to others, McKay (2003) objects to limiting the cultural content presented in the instructional material to the native speakers’ culture and argues that elements of the students’ local culture should also be included. This brings about the problem of representing which cultures and to what extent in foreign language teaching materials. However, when the cultural analyses of Turkish as a foreign language sets were studied, it was revealed that the researchers: (i) focused more on the achievement of transferring elements of the Turkish culture, (ii) categorized them according to similar theoretical frameworks, (iii) were merely contented with determining the deficiencies in the transfer of the target values, (iv) had no suggestions for the presentation of the other cultures (Demir and Açık, 2011; Tüm and Sarkmaz, 2012; Yılmaz, 2012; Okur and Keskin, 2013). In fact, with over 125 million speakers, Turkish and the other 20 Turkic languages dominate a vast geography including Turkey, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Northwestern Europe (Johanson, 2009). It is evident that such varied speakers will need to express their own culture and understand other cultures, while communicating in Turkish with the Turks and other nonnative users of Turkish like themselves. For this reason, the aim of this study is to categorize the cultural elements in Turkish as a foreign language coursebooks, according to Kachru’s three circles model (1985), and within the sample of Yeni Hitit 3 (2012) as well as documenting the representations of other countries in the teaching of cultural content and making recommendations for creating cross-cultural awareness. The Three Circles Model Creating its own varieties as “World Englishes”, English has spread into three concentric circles: (1) the inner circle: the traditional, historical, cultural, linguistic centers speaking English as a native language (the UK and USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand); (2) the outer circle: the ex-colonies using English as an additional, second or important language in internal affairs like government, education, law (India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore); (3) the expanding circle: the other countries without a colonial past, speaking English as a foreign language, or using it as an international communication vehicle (China, Europe, Japan, Korea, the Middle East) (Jenkins, 2003; Kachru and Smith, 2008; Schneider, 2010). Using Kachru’s three circles model (1985) in the Turkish as a foreign language context, the inner circle includes Turkey; the outer circle consists of the Turkic groups adopting Turkish as a second language besides the other Turkic languages, especially with its institutionalized use in the educational field, and the expanding circle concerns the ones except these, the majority of which are neighbouring countries. Methodology The corpus of this study is the third component of TOMER’s Yeni Hitit (2012) set, commonly used in Turkish as a foreign language courses. In the study, document analysis was chosen as the qualitative data collection method, and in the chapter-based analysis, the names and adjectives for nations and countries (Turkey, Turkish) as well as alternative words denoting different nations, such as the names of products, cities or geographical regions (İstanbul, hünkâr beğendi) were determined as the analytical unit (Yamanaka, 2006). For the analysis of 45 reading texts in the coursebook, theme was determined as the unit of analysis. The qualitative data were quantified through the calculations of frequencies and percentages, and also tabulated with examples. Findings and Discussion According to Table 1, the culture of the target language (43%) was presented sufficiently in Turkish as a foreign language coursebook, while the cultures of the Turkic groups in the outer circle (1%) were rare, and the cultures of the expanding circle (%56) had the greatest variety and density. Similarly, in Yamanaka’s (2006) study, where 19 different local (Japanese) coursebooks of English, were examined, the expanding circle indicated the highest level of lexical representation (56%, 60%), on both educational levels, whereas the inner circle comes in second (38%, 30%) and the outer circle again has the lowest level of representation (6%, 10%). The results of the thematic analyses in Table 2 showed that the themes of the inner circle like the Turkish language and architecture along with the geographical attractions in Turkey were presented in 9%, and the outer circle was only mentioned in the text, entitled “Beyaz Gemi” by Cengiz Aytmatov (2%), whereas popular figures of the AngloAmerican culture (29%) were shown predominantly (Kurt et al., 2012). In line with Tüm and Sarkmaz’s (2012) results, it was discovered that universal themes were the most frequent, followed by topics of the expanding circle, whereas the multicultural topics were the least mentioned. According to Figure 1, in the 2012-2013 academic year, 43% of the foreign st