TEACHERS’ VIEWS ON DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN SOCIAL STUDIES COURSE

Abstract

Reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills of students’ affect their success in Social Studies course. Therefore, it is important to develop students’ language skills in Social Studies. The purpose of the study is to determine teachers’ perspectives on developing language skills in Social Studies course. The participants of the study were 20 primary school teachers. Semi-structured interview out of qualitative research method was used in the study. In data analysis procedure, descriptive analysis technique was applied. According to results of the study teachers thought that Social Studies course which is mainly based on reading, speaking and writing has a strong relationship with language skills. It can be said that teachers see Social Studies Curriculum adequate in terms of developing literacy skills. Teachers indicated that they apply various activities aiming at developing literacy skills, and they encountered some problems in this process.