The effect of distance education in Turkish education on the language success of secondary school students and the students' opinions on distance education

Our world has been exposed to the threat of the Kovid-19 virus, which emerged in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. In this process, distance education method has been preferred all over the world. In the literature, there is insufficient data on the effect of distance education in the teaching of Turkish lessons. In our study, first of all, the attitudes of 8th grade students towards distance education in terms of Turkish lesson were determined. Afterwards, it was aimed to determine the effect of distance education on academic success in the light of these data. Experimental model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study. In the 2020-2021 academic year, a total of 158 students, 78 boys and 80 girls, studying at a state secondary school in the Bayrampaşa district of Istanbul were included. The first part of the study is based on the scale created by Kaynar H. et al.(2020). The prepared scale was delivered to the students via Google forms and data were collected. The data obtained in the research were analyzed through the content analysis approach. In the quantitative stage of the study, sentence types and expression disorders were discussed. The lessons were taught face-to-face with the students in the first group, and the lessons were taught through distance education with the students in the second group. A pre-test was applied to both groups, and then lessons were taught face-to-face with one group and the other through the Zoom distance education platform. The post-test was administered to both groups as face-to-face. The data obtained from the pre-test and post-test applied in the study were analyzed through the SPSS package program. Some of the findings that may reflect the general opinion of the students participating in the study about distance education are as follows: It was observed that the rate of students who stated that the lessons on EBA TV were very attractive was 13%. While the rate of those who did not agree with the statement "Distance education is more effective than face-to-face education" was 84.1%, the rate of those who supported the statement "Face-to-face education is more beneficial than distance education", which has the same meaning as this statement, was 86.9%. The negative effect of distance education on academic achievement is evident in the results obtained in the quantitative step of our study. According to the data obtained in our study, it was determined that the post-test scores of the classes that received face-to-face education were significantly higher than the group that received distance education. According to the results of the study, distance education cannot replace face-to-face education. However, this model may be more beneficial if the tools of the distance education system can be developed to resemble the face-to-face education environment.