Research about 4th grade pri̇mary school students competences to use punctuati̇on marks

This research aims at displaying students competences by applying punctuation marks of Turkish Education Programs (classes 1-5) according to their functionality with the help of various activities. In accordance with this aim, ten activities have been conducted with the students during ten weeks applying qualitative research designs within the context of situation studies. Each week, activities and study forms to be carried out with the students were prepared and shared with them, while the activities conducted in two courses were collected in material folders. The work group of this research consists of a total of twenty pupils, including ten girls and ten boys each of a 4th grade primary school class. The research has shown that 4th grade students reached 73,67% of correct usage of commas as a punctuation mark between words or word groups with a similar meaning within criteria activities. This punctuation mark was followed by long dashes used at the beginning of a new line for the indication of reported speech reaching 71,94%, commas used after abbreviations accounting for 69,58%, question marks following questions with 67,33%, dots used after numbers indicating rows with 64,55%, exclamation marks used for calling out, addressing, or warning someone with 57,50%, short dashes used for the continuation of a word in the next line with 56,11%, exclamation marks used after sentences and phrases expressing emotions with 56%, dots used at the end of sentences with 55,41%, colon marks used for commenting on the previous sentence with 52,5%, slash marks used in between apartment and flat numbers as well as between cities and districts with 50,63%, short dashes used between words and numbers connected to each other with 49,29%, apostrophes used to divide additions made to abbreviations with 42%, apostrophes used for the division of insets to numbers with 40%, parenthesis used for additional information outside of the sentence with 30,83%, apostrophes used for pronouns with 28,93%, commas used for subjects separate from predicates with 26,67%, commas used after addressing words with 23,75%, quotation marks used for the reported speech of another person with 20,83%. In non-criteria activities, on the other hand, dots used after the end of a sentence were used correctly in 333 cases while commas used for the separation of nouns from predicates, short dashes used for words and numbers connected to each other, parenthesis used for additional information outside the main sentence, apostrophes used for insets to numbers and apostrophes used after abbreviations were not used at all by the students. It has been found that students used more punctuation marks in their correct function during criteria activities compared to non-criteria activities. Other results obtained from the study were, respectively, compared to the correct ratio, as follows :The students did correct in the rate of 88.57% at criteria activities, in "Balloon Mapping" activity in which the functions and punctuations are needed to be matched; 79.28% in the short story called "Kahvaltı(Breakfast)" in which punctuation marks to be written into the blanks; 73% in the word hunting activity in which functions and an example for each; 61.6% in "Guess what it xxi means." activity in which the reason is asked placing the punctuations in beackets given; 52.36% in "Correcting the mistake in jokes" in which correct punctuation placement required where wrong punctuation marks in written text given in the study; 45.26% in "Puppets" activity in which they dictated punctuations according to the emphasis and tone of the reading done by the practitioner; 33% in "Cartoon talking" in which they were required to write an appropriate sentence to any function of the given punctuation mark; 27.73% in "Elif's dream" in which there were required to find the punctuation marks in the story no punctuation mark was given. In addition, in unmeasured activities, they used 291 correct and appropriate punctuation marks in "I am reading, I am improving." composition activity, and 231 correct and appropriate punctuation marks in the activity called "Let's write a letter". Hence, it was observed that the students did more correct in the activities in which the built-in functions and sample sentences, the student who were not given many clues did less correct in which they needed to write freely.