Textbooks are among the primary materials used by teachers as supplementary tools in the stages of education and training. Despite technological advancements, textbooks retain a universally important place in contemporary education. Consequently, textbooks emerge as a significant resource in the processing and teaching of information. This study aims to examine the stories in the 5th and 8th-grade middle school Turkish textbooks linguistically and visually. The study follows a survey model and encompasses the Turkish textbooks taught by the Ministry of National Education during the 2023-2024 academic year. Research data were collected using the document analysis technique and were interpreted through descriptive analysis. A total of 16 story texts were analyzed, with 8 stories from the 5th-grade Turkish textbook and 8 from the 8th-grade Turkish textbook. The analysis reveals that the stories in the 5th-grade textbook predominantly adhere to the principle of child-appropriateness in the linguistic context and the stories in the 8th-grade textbook tend to be overly emotional. Both grade levels include idiomatic expressions in their stories but lack proverbs. Punctuation errors are more frequent in the 5th-grade textbook stories compared to the 8th grade. Sentence lengths are appropriate for the 5th-grade student level, while some stories in the 8th-grade textbook contain long sentences. In the visual context, the visuals used in both textbooks are informative about the content; however, they do not foster critical and creative thinking in children, nor do they support artistic sensitivity and aesthetic perspectives. The study concludes that the stories in textbooks should be linguistically and visually structured in a way that evokes interest and curiosity in students. Various recommendations are provided based on the study results.
Middle School 5th and 8th Grade Turkish Textbooks, Stories, Visual Text, Linguistic Text