Preservice Turkish Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Anatolian Dialects

Abstract

The term dialect refers to a variation of a language that is peculiar to a specific place, city or region, and therefore, can be regarded as the richness of that language. This study aimed to investigate preservice teachers’ attitudes towards Anatolian dialects. A screening model was used. Study sample consisted of 143 first-, second-, third and fourth-grade students of the Department of Turkish Language Teaching of the Faculty of Education of Muş Alparslan University in the fall semester of 2018-2019 academic year. Data were collected using the “Attitude Scale towards Anatolian Dialects” (ASTAD) developed by Pehlivan (2012). It is a Likert-type scale consisting of 22 items and 4 subscales. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows 22.0 at a significance level of 0.05. Results showed that participants had a moderate level of attitude towards Anatolian dialects. Participants’ attitudes towards Anatolian dialects significantly differed by bilingualism and grade while gender, mother’s and fathers’ educational levels, and socioeconomic status had no significant effect. Based on the results, it is recommended that activities, seminars and conferences be held to inform teachers and preservice teachers about what to do when they encounter students speaking local dialects. Parents and students should also be taught that local dialects are the richness of languages but that they should not use them in school environment.