A Study on the Predictors of Written Expression Level of Turkish Learners as a Foreign Language

Abstract

In the context of teaching Turkish to foreigners, this study aimed to assess whether attitudes towards the target language, grammatical knowledge, speaking skills, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and prior writing knowledge could predict success in writing in the target language. To investigate this, a relational survey method and a quantitative research design were employed. The study sample comprised 147 B1 level-foreign learners studying Turkish as a foreign language at the Turkish Language Teaching Center (TÖMER) in Ankara during the 2022-2023 academic year. The study utilized a multiple-choice test to assess reading comprehension, an informative listening text titled “Ay’a Yolculuk (Journey to the Moon)” along with a 20-question short-answer test to evaluate listening comprehension, a rating scale for assessing speaking skills, and a cloze test for measuring Turkish grammar knowledge. Moreover, in this study, a short-answer test was employed to assess the participants’prior knowledge of writing. An attitude scale was used to measure students’attitudes towards learning Turkish, while a 6+1 analytical assessment scale was used to evaluate students’ writing skills. When the predictive impact of the chosen independent variables on writing skills was examined, these variables collectively accounted for 66% of the variation in writing achievement. The ranking of the influence levels of these variables on writing achievement (from most to least influential) was as follows: prior knowledge, grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension, attitude towards the target language, speaking achievement, and listening achievement.