Comparison of Writing Skills of Students of Different Socioeconomic Status

Abstract

This study compares the writing skills of students with different socioeconomic statuses, using the quantitative research method designs of “survey study” and “causal-comparative study”. The study group included 67 Turkish teachers and a total of 120 eighth-grade students from four different middle schools in the province of Gaziantep, Turkey, and the study was conducted during the 2016–2017 academic year. The socioeconomic status determination survey was applied to the students in order to ascertain their socioeconomic status. The students’ written texts and the teachers’ responses to the questionnaire were used as the study data. The written expression texts were evaluated by two experts according to the written expression evaluation form. NCSS (Number Cruncher Statistical System) 2007 (Kaysville, Utah, USA) software was used to analyze the data. In the analysis of the data, in addition to descriptive statistical methods (mean, standard deviation, median, frequency, ratio, minimum, and maximum values), Mann-Whitney U test was used for the paired comparison of data which did not display a normal distribution. The results revealed there to be a significant difference between the students with high and low socioeconomic status, in favor of the group with high socioeconomic status in terms of the form, content formation, content organization, word choice, and grammar dimensions of the written expressions. The results failed to show a significant difference between the two groups in terms of the students’ skills in “conducting research on the writing subject” and “building a draft of the text to be written” but did show a significant difference in “evaluating their writing”, in favor of the students with high socioeconomic status.