THE PLACE OF TALE GENRE IN EDUCATION AND ITS USABILITY IN TURKISH TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The genres of epic, tale, legend, fairy tale and folk tale are like a precious treasure among the narration-based genres and they are a kind of a carrier of Turkish cultural traditions. In the oral tradition, tales have a different significance. Usually created by people, dream-based, living in oral tradition, explaining the extraordinary events which happen to mostly people, witches and animals, demons, giants, and fairies; defined as the story that is developed by extraordinary people and events, the tales have a great impact in the development of the students? imaginations. In the first part of the study, the nature and the meaning of the tale genre, and its importance in Turkish Literature and Culture is explained; in the second part, the question, purpose, method and limitations of the research have been discussed; the third section focuses on the usability of the tales in order to meet the needs of the source text in Turkish Education and emphasizes its importance by studying the determination of its functions in education. The aim of the study is to determine the usability of the tales which are also the passer of oral cultural tradition as a source text in Turkish teaching. The research is a descriptive study which is a document analysis. A literature review has been conducted and the findings section is made by the obtained information and it is come to a conclusion that the tales should be used in Turkish education. Also at what rate this literary genre is used in the secondary school textbooks by Turkish Ministry of Education has been identified, and it has been concluded that there are some shortcomings in this subject.