The effect of pen friends method on primary school 4th grade student's writing anxiety and creative writing skills

In this study, it was aimed to examine the effect of pen friends method on writing anxiety and creative writing skills of 4th grade primary school students. In the research, a quasi-experimental model with pretest-posttest control group, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The application part of the research was carried out with 110 students studying in the 4th grade of two primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts of Gaziantep province in the 2021-2022 academic year. The experimental group of the research consists of 54 students and the control group consists of 56 students. Four branches were determined randomly for the study, one from each school and one from each control group. Experimental studies in the application part of the research were carried out in two course hours per week for a total of 11 weeks. While the lessons related to the Turkish curriculum were continued to be taught in the control group, the pen pal method was applied with the students in the experimental group. The data of this research; It was collected using the "Writing Anxiety Scale", "Open-Ended Question/Composition Topic for Creative Writing" and "Assessment Criteria for Creative Writing Form (YİDOF)". SPSS 22.0 package program was used to analyze the research data and dependent-independent groups t-test was performed on the data obtained. When the results of the study on writing anxiety were examined, it was seen that the writing anxiety of the students in the experimental group, who applied the pen friend method, decreased significantly. When the results related to creative writing skills were examined, it was determined that the creative writing skills of the experimental group students who were applied pen friend method increased significantly. According to these results, it can be said that the pen friend method applied in the research process reduces the writing anxiety of the fourth grade students and has a positive effect on their creative writing skills.