The levels of pre-service turkish teachers' ability of using punctuation and spelling rules in writing expression

In this survey, the ability of preservice teachers of Turkish using punctuation and spelling rules in writing expression have been examined. İn the study of fields qualitive and quantitive methods was used. In 2009-2010 academic year, Abant İzzet Baysal University Turkish Education Department of students ( exactly 131 students ) have been as sample from their different socioeconomical background. The technic of ?document analysis?? and ?content analysis? have been used to obtain data from the written examples that have been taken from those students.The data taken from the written narration texts and students surveys has been analysised according to SPSS 15,0 (Statistic Package For Social Science) program; percent (%), frequency (f), minimum(min), maximum (max), arithmetic average ( ), standard deviation (S) and for independent samples ?t? test, and for variance analysis ANOVA statistics technics.To determine the level of students? ability of using punctuation in their written narration texts, we have wanted from them to write a free essay and a creative writing work at different times. To evaluate these texts, ?A Punctuation Scale? and ? A Spelling Rules Scale?? have been used.After examining these students? written narration texts, the following headings have been analysised;?The level of using punctuation,?The level of using spelling rules,?The order of written text papers, legibility, the level of using suitable their title,?The average level of words number in their text?Punctuation marks? duty?Slip in spelling,?The letters used incorrectly,?The reasons under the mistakes.In this survey, we come up with these results;?The level of using written text rules is ?good?, the level of using punctuation is ?medium?.?The order of papers, legibility, the level of their title using is ?low?.?The average level of using words is about ?196? words.?The most used puntuation marks are ?full-stop? and ?hyphen?.?The least used written rules are ?strengthened adjectives? and ?neither?nor? .?The most used written text rules are ?capital letters? and ?idioms?.?The letter `?ş?? is the most wrongly used letter.?According to the teachers, students do not give enough importance to the mother tongue lessons. This makes the students uninterested towards the rules of the language in every step. In this case, it is observed that theachers mostly used the technics of ?presentation? and ?analysis?. The using of the same language in mother tongue classes may be the reason of the disinterest to the language itself and to the punctuation rules.