Teaching Turkish Language and Literature: The Barriers to Improving Writing Skills in High Schools from a Teacher’s Perspective

Abstract

Writing is defined as one of the most important skills that people use in social life but also the most difficult one to express themselves. Writing in the Turkish language and literature programmes involves a number of courses, contents, and approaches. Since writing is a difficult skill to acquire, it is necessary to analyse in detail its steps included in the programme and practice. In this work, an assessment of the steps associated with the writing ability envisaged in the programme is done by the implementers. This makes it possible to determine the writing competence in the programme both in practical and theoretical fields. This study discusses the problems faced in composition classes of the 2005 programme and examines the solutions that the programme recommends. The study is designed as a qualitative research, and a semi-structured interview form is used for the collection of data. Content analysis is used for analysing the qualitative data collected. According to the research, it is determined that writing courses should be designed independently and there is a need to use different strategies, methods and approaches in these courses

Teaching Turkish Language and Literature: What Teachers Think?

“…It is stated that this situation weakens the expression and interpretation abilities of students and for this reason, the separate, obligatorily verbal and written expression courses are necessary. Bagents, [1], Erdem, [22]; offer similar data in their works.…”

“…This commission points out the importance of chasing following principles for education assessments:  Efficacy: Necessity of using assessment studies is to serve the information that is felt. While it is known that assessment studies that are carried out by individuals, who work in practicing programs, are more effective than the ones that are carried out by other various institutions (Fitzpatrick et al, [22]), it is pointed out that qualified approaches, questions directed to students, teachers and other shareholders are important in effective program assessment studies (Burke-Sinclair, [8]). In the meantime, it can be expected mostly from teachers to observe students' differences and cultural changes in program assessment studies carried out for education activities (Pritchard and Marshall, [61]).…”