The Awareness of Turkish as a Foreign Language Teachers on Pedagogical Grammar

Abstract

This study investigates teachers’ awareness of pedagogical grammar within the context of Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language (TTFL). The research focuses on evaluating the current depth of pedagogical grammar knowledge among instructors and measuring the sufficiency of their grammatical explanations in facilitating student mastery of target linguistic rules. Furthermore, the study analyzes the degree to which these practitioner explanations align with established experts’ opinions and seeks to identify the specific professional development needs of teachers regarding pedagogical grammar. By integrating theoretical expertise and classroom practice, this research aims to provide insights into how instructional quality can be enhanced through more robust grammatical awareness. Designed as a qualitative inquiry, the research evaluates the depth of instructors' grammatical knowledge and the efficacy of their classroom explanations. The investigation was conducted in two distinct stages: first, field experts rated and justified key instructional items; second, interviews were held with practicing teachers to analyze their methods for teaching two specific grammatical structures. The findings, synthesized from both expert benchmarks and practitioner interviews, reveal a significant discrepancy between theoretical necessity and classroom reality. While experts identified morphophonological features as a critical component of instruction, analysis indicates that teachers consistently omitted these details during their explanations. These results suggest that while practitioners facilitate general learning, their pedagogical grammar awareness often lacks the technical depth recommended by experts. The study concludes by identifying specific professional needs required to bridge the gap between expert standards and current instructional practices in the TTFL field.