Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations at the German Departments of Turkish Universities From a Historical Perspective

Abstract

The study examined the bibliographies of the master's theses and doctoral dissertations which were completed at German Studies Departments (German Language Teaching, German Language and Literature, German Translation Studies) of Turkish universities during the following periods: 1935-1998, 1998-2008 and 2008-2018. The topics of the theses cover literature, educational sciences or foreign language teaching, linguistics, culture, translation sciences and communication. Using the document scan model, a numerical frequency analysis of topic distribution was performed and the findings were recorded in an excel file. Our research questions are as follows: What is the numerical distribution of thesis /dissertation topics regarding German language studies at Turkish universities? Has there been a change in the distribution of research topics examined in the bibliography over the year? In response to the research questions, the following results were obtained at the end of the analyses: Over the past decade -2008-2018- theses / dissertation topics regarding the fields of educational sciences and foreign language teaching and literature have increased significantly. In a more detailed topic analysis, it is observed that foreign language acquisition processes and the use of teaching materials and techniques are at the focus of foreign language education research. In the field of literature, German authors and their works as well as Turkish authors and their works in German speaking countries are among the most popular topics in university theses. One of the main goals of bibliographies is to prevent a repetition of topics. The current study intended to address this issue and to effectively provide reliable information on the masters and doctoral theses conducted at Turkish universities by periodically updating the bibliography on the website of the Marmara University.