Comparative investigation of cultural components in Turkish and German language coursebooks

Abstract

It must be noted that students, as from the elementary school, get to know their own cultures and other cultures and they are taught to acquire necessary skills to be able to constructively communicate with people from different cultures, while bracing themselves for the real challenges of today's globalizing world. The main purpose of this study is to investigate cultural components of 4(th) grade Turkish and German language course books comparatively. Qualitative design, particularly document analysis technique, was used to identify cultural components embedded in the course books. The findings of the study revealed that in spite of the fact that some cultural components were handled and presented in a very similar way, some of them were very unique to German and Turkish culture.