The effects of using narrative and informative texts in turkish lessons on writing skills and attitude to tree and environment

Abstract

In this research it is aimed to determine the effects of using narrative and informative texts in Turkish lessons on students’ writing skills and attitude to tree and environment. The universe of the study consists of 4th grade students attending to primary schools in the city of Kütahya in 2014-2015 school year. The sample of the study is formed a total of 84 primary school fourth grade students who have been selected randomly among the schools that show similar characteristics in terms of socio-economic level. Semi-experimental design was used in this study. Two of the groups have been identified as the experimental and one of them is identified as the control group. The process of experiment is organized according to the Turkish language teaching program for Health and Environment theme. Four texts were used in both experimental group and control group. The texts used in the experimental groups were selected in terms of suitability of the level and the themes in accordance with expert opinion. In experiment-1 group only narrative texts and in experiment-2 group only informative texts were used. Activities of experimental groups were organized similar to the activities of control group in accordance with expert opinion. In the lessons of the control group, texts located in the Turkish textbooks are used. In the research as a data collection tool an Attitude Scale towards Tree and Environment developed by Kunt (2013); and a Scoring Scale Key for Writing Assessment developed by Uygun (2012) were used. As in the scope of research all groups wrote a composition about the environmental pollution and an Attitude Scale Towards Tree and Environment was applied as a pre-test and post-test. As the data don’t show a normal distribution, in the analysis of data it is benefited from Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests. Besides Experiment-1 group in which only the narrative texts were used in the lessons scored statistically high in the Scoring Scale Key for Writing Assessment than the other groups. There wasn’t a significant difference between the scores of experiment-2 group in which only the informative texts were used during the lessons and the control group in the Scoring Scale Key for Writing Assessment. According to the findings of the research it is suggested to include much more narrative texts in 4th grade Turkish lessons. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.