The effects of constructivist approach on writing skills in teaching German as a foreign language

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of constructivist learning/teaching strategies on the development of students' writing skills in a higher education institution English Teaching Programme, compulsory German Education Level A1 scope based on a constructivist approach. With this aim, first of all, the place of writing skills in the existing programme, goals, content, learning/teaching strategies and evaluation were studied with a small scale evaluation study. The obtained findings were used as data in developing writing education learning/teaching strategies based on the constructivist approach. Later on, the effects of writing education learning/teaching strategies on the development of writing skills were studied.The trial and the control groups consisted of totally 26 third year students in the English Language Teaching Department of the Faculty of Education of a foundation university in Ankara. In respect to pre-learning and demographic structures, these students were similar. They took the course in two sections. One of the them was appointed as the trial group and the other one as the control group randomly. In the interviews, eight students were chosen randomly among 37 4th year students who took the same course.Qualitative findings indicated that the German II programme specifications were not congruent with its actual classroom implementations regarding theacquisition of the writing skills. Although the programme was mainly based on the constructivist approach proposed by the Common European Framework (Council of Europe, 2002), writing skills were taught through traditional classroom activities. It was found that writing skill scores of the students in the trial group were higher than those in the control group. It was possible to assert that experimental study was effective considering the analyses carried out for the trial and the control group together.