İLKÖĞRETİM TÜRKÇE 8. SINIF ÖĞRENCİ ÇALIŞMA KİTABI’NIN ‘DUYGULAR’ TEMASINDA YER ALAN ETKİNLİKLERE METİNDİLBİLİMSEL BİR YAKLAŞIM

This study tries to review the activities prepared to analyse the texts titled ‘Nerede İnsan Varsa Orada Umut Vardır’, ‘Kedi Ağaca Çıktı’ and ‘Hazır Olun Fırtına Geliyor’, under the theme of ‘emotions’, in Students’ Workbook of the 8th Grades Turkish Course Book in terms of the textlinguistic criteria . Any text should comply with the criteria such as cohesion, coherence, acceptability, situationality, informativity, intertextuality, as listed by Beaugrande ve Dressler (1981). Among these, ‘cohesion’ and ‘coherence’ are the most noteworthy criteria, constituting the main structure in text linguistic analyses. ‘Cohesion’ is the linguistic or grammatical consistency and interconnectedness. In other words, cohesion refers to all of the linguistic features establishing the intra-textual relations and allowing any writing to be called ‘text’. Some of the criteria required for the sentences sequencing each other to make up text are directly related to the surface structure of the text, or lexical and syntactical level of structure, allowing the text to be self-cohesive. Determining the syntactical elements such as repetition of the constitutional elements allowing the sentences sequencing each other to make up text, anaphoric or cataphoric references, ellipsis, tense of the verbs, connectedness of the sentences are all concerned with cohesion and these criteria directly make up the microstructure of the text. Coherence, as another main criterion of the text linguistics, is the logico-semantic consistency or integrity of the text. The linguistic and structural consistency in the text gives the addressee clues for the presentation of the logico-semantic integrity (Keçik ve Uzun 2003: 11). Coherence can be defined as the logical texture-design between the propositions. Whereas cohesion can be seen on the surface of the text via the linguistic elements, coherence is the logical relation among the meanings occurring on the sub-surface of the text and does not have certain linguistic elements as of the cohesion. Another way to achieve the meaning integrity is the collocation which establishes connectedness in the text, by using words from the same conceptual lexicon in the same context. Words in collocation, in other words, are the signs of the schemas which are edited by the individuals for events, situations, places, persons and objects (Uzun-Subaşı, 2006: 700). Texts cannot be explained only by micro structural analyses. In order to catch the overall meaning of a text, it is necessary to assess and analyze it at a macrostructural level. Macrostructures in texts are semantic elements and they organize the text produced or perceived. It is possible to line up the macro structural analysis criteria as functionality, topic, subject, key words, theme, the schema of contents, the topic shifting identifiers, style, the summary statement and the conclusion sentence, each of which makes up the semantic superstructure of the text. This study was carried out by qualitative research approach. Qualitative research can be defined as a research approach for which a qualitative process was followed so as to reveal the perceptions and cases objectively and comprehensively in their natural atmosphere, by using qualitative data collection techniques such as observation, interview and document analysis (Yıldırım ve Şimşek, 2003). In this study, a case study pattern was preferred. A case study is a research method which studies a current fact in its original living environment, in which the borders between fact and its environment are not evident and in which there are evidences and data sources more than one are used (Yıldırım ve Şimşek, 2003: 190). When looked over thoroughly, the activities prepared to analyse the texts titled ‘Nerede İnsan Varsa Orada Umut Vardır’, ‘Kedi Ağaca Çıktı’ and ‘Hazır Olun Fırtına Geliyor’, under the theme of ‘emotions’, in Students’ Workbook of the 8th Grades Turkish Course Book were seen to be in the microstructural level of the texts. Since the correlations among the linguistic elements in microstructure while building up the macrostructure of the texts are not adequately analyzed, the activities are not satisfactory enough to reveal their macrostructures. It was found out that while the progress of the texts in the units are organized as to their cohesive coordination, the activities do not operate the linguistic coding elements which make the texts cohesive. Therefore, the activities concerning with the structural cohesion mechanisms which make up the texture of the text are not sufficiently featured. The grammatical structures in the activities are not presented as the factors allowing the cohesion and coherence to occur in the texts, but as distinct subjects dependent from the texts. Consequently, when the acquisitions specified in Turkish Teaching Program (in the 6th-8th Grades) were assessed, it was found out that these acquisitions were of text linguistic characteristics, but the activities prepared to achieve these goals were insufficient to make students internalize the concept of ‘text’ and acquire the communication skills. Each linguistic element making up the microstructure of the text is a building stone constituting the macrostructure of this text and allows the text to take on meaning by achieving the text pattern with the other elements in the text. Thus, each linguistic unit in the text pattern should be evaluated with the other units in terms of their cohesion and coherence functionality. It is essential not to forget that the coherence of a text occurs when subsequent information is relevant and relative to the preceding and contributes to the preceding information. Not only should the lexical cohesive structures of the words such as synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy and collocation but also the structural cohesive structures such as references, ellipsis, substitution, subordination elements, parallelism, synchronism and functional clauses be paid attention, and the activities dealing with all these features in the unity of the text should be given a preference. Likewise, the activities to reveal the semantic characteristics such as implications, inferences, the style of the author, the abstract, the subject and the theme of the text, the topic shifting identifiers and the content schema should also be featured.