PREFERENCES WRITING TOPICS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to determine secondary school students' preference of writing topics. The survey model was used in the study. The participants of the study consisted of 100 secondary school students (56 girls, 44 boys) studying in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade levels. Student Information Form and Student Preferences Evaluation Tool were used as data collection tools in the study. During the preparation of the evaluation instrument, a systematic process was followed in order to prepare written instructions (topics) to be offered to the students. For this purpose, literature was searched, general writing topics were determined, instructions were prepared, and expert opinions were taken. A total of 15 instructions/topics (five of them were related to persuasive writing, memoir text and informative text) were created. The instructions are prepared by taking into account the characteristics of the text types. The data were collected by the researchers after necessary legal and ethical permits were taken. The data was analyzed using SPSS software. The obtained data were analyzed by using arithmetic mean (average scores) and total scores. Thus, the most and the least preferred instructions of students were determined regarding the types of memoir, persuasive texts and informative texts. Also, in order to determine whether there is a significant difference between preference scores and grade levels and gender, the one-way ANOVA and Independent Samples t-Test were used. According to findings, similarities were found in terms of students’ the most and the least preferred instructions considering the grade variable. There were differences in of students’ the most and the least preferred instructions according to gender. However, as a result of the statistical analysis, no significant difference was found in terms of gender and grade levels. Article visualizations: