Innovation in Language Learning

Language providing communication among individuals, conglomeration of feeling and thought the establishment of being nation the transmission of cultural accumulation of the nation and humanity to following generations plays an amalgamative role not only in developing thought but constituting learning as well. In the level of primary education aiming at the appreciation of the individual himself, educating himself in adapting developments and changes, being socialized and cultural the Turkish course has a very significant status in creating communication in fulfilling mother tongue learning which is the basic necessity of being socialized and cultured.

Philosophical principles of constructivist instructional curriculum launched at 2005 has underlined different approaches that facilitates learning of students in real case. One of these educational approaches is authentic approach that gives attention to forming activities for students that are parallel to the real world practices. Research shows that authentic tasks and materials promote meaningful learning and also improve reading, listening, writing and speaking skills.

Today technology has taken its place as an indispensable element in our lives. Therefore, technology has become both an authentic environment and authentic material. In that context, the purpose of the study is to describe students and teachers’ opinions with regard to technology based authentic literacy environment in Turkish course. In this sense first of all, an activity program was designed for 4th grade elementary school students. In this program students engaged with different reading and writing materials practices designed in technology based literacy environment within authentic approach. In this study, qualitative research methodology was employed in collecting, analyzing and interpreting the data. For selecting of the participants criterion sampling method was used. Students attending at 4th grade of elementary school in Eskişehir province were selected as the participants. Qualitative data was collected by semi-structured interview form focusing on students’ and teachers’ opinions developed by researchers between the date of May and June 2015. Each interview was recorded to tape cassettes. In analyzing and interpreting the data, descriptive analyze was used. Analysis and interpretation of data were realized within the following stages: the interviews recorded in cassettes were transcribed and a number was given to each line of the transcribed document, coding key of interviews was prepared, the data were coded on ‘Coding Key of Interviews’ sheet, systemized and analyzed data were interpreted. For the calculation of reliability, ‘Percentage of Agreement’ suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994) was used and 0.90 was found as a percentage of reliability. The possible contributions of the technology based authentic literacy environment in Turkish course was discussed in light of the findings.