Abstract

 The understanding brought in by structuralists that language is a wholistic interwoven system is vital within the phonological, morphological and syntactic perspectives of it.  Sounds, that constitute the first step of teaching languages, have been profoundly examined by structuralists.  Linguists who are interested in functional phonology which examines sounds in a language have tried to determine the minimal unit with capability of distinguishing the meaning between at least two words. The conception of phoneme that is the basic unit of the phonological level of language constitute axis of their thoughts. The using of the functional phonology’ detections, while the language is taught, make it easier for comprehension of sound system of target language. Even though conception of sound and sound system are universal phoneme is abstract and every language has its own phonemes.  In other words every language has its own sound system and equivalent of a sound couldn’t be find in another language or same sound can be indicated with different symbols. In this study, textbooks prepared for foreigners to teach Turkish will be examined. It will be tried to determine how the phonology is taught, what kind of activities are given, whether the used of functional phonetics in this textbooks. 

 In this study document analysis and the model of document compilation in the qualitative research technique have been used. Previous studies on the subject and textbooks prepared in order to teach Turkish to foreigners have been examined and evaluated and their common points have been determined. The datas have analysed by using descriptive analysis and content analysis technique. 

Keywords

 Teaching language, functional phonology, phonem, teaching Turkish