Improving Speaking Skills in Teaching Turkish as a Second Language by Task-Based Teaching Method

One of the most important conditions for individuals to be able to communicate in a second language is to have well-earned speaking skills. Thus, they can maintain their daily life by realizing interpersonal communication. The aim of research is to improve speaking skills of learners who learn Turkish as a second language by making use of task-based teaching method (TBTM) based on real-life tasks. The research was carried out with the action research design, which is one of qualitative research method designs. Action research process was completed with 8 tasks developed by the researchers and 16 international learners took part in the study group as participants. The data were collected through observations, interviews and documents. The data were analyzed with content analysis. It was seen that the tasks performed with TBTM improved the speaking skills of the learners and made them more productive. It was determined that learners were able to speak more fluently, the accuracy rate in the sentences they formed increased, and they could successfully perform the pronunciations of these words by learning different words. Various suggestions have been presented such as the need to benefit from TBTM on real-life tasks to improve the speaking skills of learners.