In the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language, teaching practices are carried out by following a series of approaches and principles offered by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in line with the modern understanding. In this context, although past approaches to foreign language teaching generally focused on limited skills, the Communicative Approach and action-oriented perspective form the fundamental framework today. When viewed from this perspective, communication is the ultimate goal of language teaching. In line with this goal, besides working on the four basic skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in the productive and receptive domains, there is also a focus on grammar teaching, which enables these skills to function effectively. These skills are inevitably necessary for communication. The aspect, as systematized by Lars Johanson in Turkish, will be addressed here in terms of comprehensive teaching, specifically focusing on the present continuous tense suffix -(X)yor. The examples presented and the functions conveyed by the two Turkish as a foreign language coursebook sets examined have been analyzed through the perspectives of aspect including perfectivity, imperfectivity and cursus of verbs. In the research, document and data analysis methods, which are among the qualitative research designs, were used. The findings obtained from the study revealed that the teaching sets did not present examples of the suffix solely marking the present tense as targeted. It is believed that these aspects and functions are important for learners to communicate successfully. It is suggested that aspect perspectives be presented separately to ensure a meaningful learning process for the learner and to avoid confusion. It was concluded that the presentation of examples and exercises grouped accordingly would be beneficial.
Ankara University, grammar teaching, present tense, teaching Turkish as a foreign language, Yunus Emre Institute