International Journal of Eurasia Social Sciences

1-19

Authors: Yıldız TURGUT

For language learners, pragmatic competence is important to communicate appropriately with native speakers. Acquiring pragmatic competence takes longer time for language learners. In that sense, this present study compares Korean ESL learners’ apologies to native speakers of English. Data collected through Written Discourse Completion Tests applied to 22 Korean ESL learners and 54 American students. The data was coded based on the speech act sets for apologies. Then the data analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively focusing on age, gender, English language proficiency level and cultural variables. The findings indicate that for Korean language learners time spent in the US and English language learning are significant in terms of using apologies more in line with native behavior. Use of intensifiers changes according to gender-females tend to use more- and cultural background and language proficiency level-Americans tend to use more compared to Koreans. Implications for ELT have been discussed throughout the paper.

38-50

Authors: Tuğba YANPAR YELKEN, Figen KILIÇ, Lütfi ÜREDİ

The purpose of this study was to determine primary and secondary school principals' views on strategic planning. The sample is 41 primary and secondary school principals in Mersin. In this study, researchers developed the intewiev form was used. This form, the concept of strategic planning and goals, as related to the strategic planning process, strategic planning and solutions to problems in strategic planning SWOT analysis consists of the section contains. Research primary and secondary schools of the principals concepts of strategic planning and objective information about the qualifications that will be an application from a lack of education and economic insufficiency due to the problems of these problems in-service training and financial support direction can be solved with the feedback they have been observed. The school principals as the largest opportunity to see the internal and external stakeholders, but as a threat, they were perceived bureaucratic problems and migration. From this case movement of the service training and economic support given to the more commonly applied to give weight to the proposal may be assessed.

59-75

Authors: Ayşegül ŞEYİHOĞLU, Yılmaz GEÇİT

In this study, class teachers’ images about “Geography” which is constructed in the mind is determined. For this aim, , a semi-structured interview technique was used in the study. Group of the research consists of 67 elementary school teachers. In the study, content analysis from the methods of qualitative research (via NVivo 8 programme) have been used during data analyzing. According to findings of the study; teachers see geography only as physical geography, land forms come to their minds firstly and mostly when they hear the word of geography. In addition to this, they are not aware of the relationship between geographical environment and human. When geography is called a limited area are perceived. There is no adequate awareness about the principles of geography and geography knowledge is necessary for “identification”. The result of the study shows the wrongs (lacks) and missings in teachers’ geography image.

94-108

Authors: Sait AKBAŞLI, Tuğba YANPAR YELKEN, Önder SÜNBÜL

The purpose of this study is develop a scale to determine the democratic tendency of prospective teachers. To achieve this aim, various theoretical sources were analysed by consulting the experts in the field and the items of the scale were formed. The study group consists of 537 prospective teachers of 3rd and 4 th grade, attending the Faculty of Education, Mersin University. Upon the analysis, it was seen that the scale had a structure of one dimension with four components. The components are the democratic level of prospective teachers, the democratic approach to students, Class management and freedom of expression. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient is .74 for the scale and the reliability coefficients for the components are .83, .76, .61 and .62 respectively. These results indicate that the scale has sufficient validity and reliability