Place of Cultural Factors in Turkish Serials

In foreign language teaching, teaching the structures of the words and grammar is not sufficient in learning language in all aspects. Language is a living being and is transferred to the future with the words generated by the people using that language. Language both constitutes and transfers all moral and material factors, in other words culture, a society generates. Using audiovisual elements in foreign language teaching is a factor affecting the success of teaching. Audiovisual elements are increased as technology has developed. Television is one of these elements used in language teaching. Televised serials have been an important step in advertising Turkey. People have started to go to Turkish courses to watch serials. Turkish serials have been a starting point for learning Turkish. Objective of this study is determining cultural factors in Turkish serials which are increasing their audience every passing year. 14 students of class B1 studying at Sakarya University Turkish Language Teaching, Application and Research Center in the education year of 2017- 2018 have attended the study. Qualitative research method is used in this study. A questionnaire is conducted for determining the serials the students were watching. The episodes of two serials with the highest frequency televised in the week of the questionnaire are reviewed and evaluated in terms of the cultural factors taking place in the serials. As a result of the evaluation, it is concluded that cultural factors are included in Turkish serials. By this study involving preliminary findings of the postgraduate thesis study we are performing, using Turkish serials as class materials is stipulated