Dictionaries, one of the oldest tools of language education, have continued to be a part of education although information technologies and concept of education has changed over time. Until today, with the help of the developments in technology both types of dictionaries have increased, and usage areas have expanded. Therefore, it is possible to find a dictionary of different types that are applicable to each situation, rather than a single dictionary for every situation. Determining this diversity and the preferences of users is very important in terms of the quality of the education to be given and the new dictionaries to be written.In this study, dictionary preferences of students learning English as a foreign language in Turkey, factors affecting these preferences, past dictionary experiences and trainings were discussed. For this purpose, a survey with 25 questions was collected from 83 students who were learning English in the preparatory classes of Gaziosmanpasa University.The data obtained from the surveys was transferred to the SPSS program and frequency analyses were made. Numerical breakdowns and descriptive analysis of students’ dictionary preferences and factors affecting these preferences were realized. The results revealed that the majority of the students learning English as a foreign language in Turkey did not receive any training on using dictionaries although they bought and used their first dictionaries at primary school. It was also found that language level had an important effect on dictionary usage and as students’ level of language increased they considered dictionaries as easy tools. Besides, students with lower language skills found dictionaries as more informative sources than other students.

No abstract

No abstract

Teaching a foreign language aims at not only teaching the language and language skills, but transferring the culture of the target language. The main reason for that is people learn the target language as a standby in addition to learning the language. It is important that the more individuals learn the cultural features of the country the more they understand the language better. It is an undeniable fact that language and culture are inseparable parts, so culture should be learned simultaneously while learning that language. Because of that relationship between language and culture, language teaching also means teaching culture. Foreign language textbooks reflect the characteristics of the language-speaking community and make it a cultural product of that language.This study is to identify the place and importance of the textbooks used in teaching Turkish to foreigners in the target language teaching and to research which cultural items these books convey. Thus, A1-A2 level textbooks of the Turkish teaching set for Gazi Foreigners were selected as a sample and done document analysis to identify what these sources include in terms of "daily life, interpersonal relations, values and education, literature-arts and music, traditions and folklore, social life, geography and space, foreign (universal) cultural elements". It was observed that the elements of Turkish culture concentrated on the relation between daily life and interpersonal relations, and there was no balanced distribution among other cultural elements. Therefore, these books need to be reviewed so that they can raise cultural awareness of the students.

Grammar is a type of information tool that helps people comprehend others and express themselves correctly. In fact, while reading, writing, listening and speaking abilities of those who acquire communicative abilities at home environment or other social platforms are developed and improved at school; grammatical rules of the language is knowingly or unknowingly taken into consideration. As the levels of students increase, their language skills improve and they realize different grammatical information types. Moreover, teaching/training activities at schools facilitate or even compel students to make a research on grammatical information, which of course leads students to consult to grammar books or dictionaries. This paper focuses on the dictionary-grammar relation and explains why students should consults to dictionaries to learn about grammatical information especially on the basis of Turkish pronouns. To this end, the number of pronouns in Turkish Dictionary and grammar books was compared and found that dictionaries are far more superior to grammar books in terms of providing detailed grammatical content. It was concluded that students without any exception should make use of dictionaries not only to look up a word but also to learn and understand grammatical rules of the language they are trying to learn. .•