The Importance of Turkish Language Education In Protecting and Raising Awareness on Intangible Cultural Heritage

Abstract

In contemporary global era it is highly important to approach the popular culture and national culture delicately and take essential precautions about the local and native cultures. In this respect, Turkish language course books and Turkish language curriculums have important duties. This paper questions the proficiency of the books and curriculums. The current study reports on a descriptive analysis of elementary Turkish language curriculums and the Turkish language textbooks (for grades 1-5; 6-8) distributed to the schools by the National Ministry of Education in 2007. Within the context of this paper, the genre and the quality of the texts have been investigated. And then, the features of the intangible cultural heritage are determined from the texts. A total of 200 (144+56) texts have been studied individually with respect to text type and their distribution. Findings have been reported in frequency tables in addition to samples from the texts. At the end the results are discussed and interpreted.