AI-Assisted Teaching of Idioms and Proverbs in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67895/ewq9rrhgkg3nKeywords:
Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, idiom teaching, proverb teaching, AI-assisted material design, ChatGPT, cultural transmissionAbstract
Language teaching is not limited to the transmission of grammatical structures and vocabulary. It also involves the cultural codes, patterns of thought, and communicative practices of the target language. In this respect, idioms and proverbs occupy a significant place in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. These formulaic expressions reflect not only lexical meaning but also cultural memory, metaphor, context, and implicit meaning relations. However, many idioms and proverbs cannot be interpreted directly through the meanings of their individual components, since their meanings are largely conventionalized.
For this reason, they pose considerable semantic and pragmatic challenges for learners of Turkish as a foreign language. This study aims to examine AI-assisted activity design for the teaching of idioms and proverbs in Turkish as a foreign language. Within the scope of the study, 50 idioms and proverbs will be selected from the texts and end-of-unit vocabulary lists in the B1 and B2 levels of the İstanbul Turkish for Foreigners Coursebook. Structured prompts will then be given to ChatGPT in order to generate cartoon or visual design descriptions, short contextual texts, and meaning-prediction activities based on visual cues. The AI-generated outputs will be evaluated in terms of their suitability for the target proficiency level, clarity of meaning, accuracy of cultural context, coherence between visual and textual elements, instructional functionality, and capacity to guide learners toward inferential meaning-making.
The study is expected to offer an applicable model for AI-assisted material development in the teaching of idioms and proverbs in Turkish as a foreign language. It may also support teachers in preparing effective classroom materials in a shorter time and help present abstract formulaic expressions in a more concrete, contextualized, and visually supported way. At the same time, the study emphasizes that AI-generated materials should not be used directly or without critical review. Such outputs need to be checked by teachers in terms of linguistic accuracy, cultural appropriateness, and pedagogical relevance.
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