Writing skills of Turkish students in Germany: The example of the Rhine-Main area

The aim of this study to evaluate and identify the spelling and punctuation skills of bilingual Turkish children studying in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grades (13-16 years old) in Germany. The population of the research consists of children of Turkish origin living in the Rhein-Main Area of Germany. Since data could not be collected from all children who are part of the study universe, a sample was taken. The group of subjects consist of 52 students in secondary education in the academic year of 2021-2022 in Hanau, Kriftel and Frankfurt. The data used in this qualitative research was obtained through case study. During the data collection phase, open-ended interpretation questions created by Şen (2011) were used. The texts produced by the students were used as the main data source. The analysis of the data was done by descriptive content analysis. The findings of the study show that students of Turkish origin living in Hanau, Kriftel and Frankfurt do the following mistakes in text production: errors in the written expressions due to the different alphabets in Turkish and German, errors arising from the use of capital and small letters, errors due to wrong separate and adjacent spellings, errors due to the wrong spelling of the conjunction da/de, mistakes due to the wrong or non-usage of noun inflectional suffixes, and punctuation errors. In the line with the obtined findings suggesttions fort he imrpovement of writing skills were made.