Challenges in academic writing skills in teaching Turkish as a foreign language (Afghanistan example)

This study is aimed to determine whether Turkish as a language shows a significant difference in terms of the difficulties encountered by Afghan students in academic writing. The study was focused on foreign students from Afghanistan who received B2 and C1 language certificates at Sakarya University Turkish and Foreign Language Research and Application Center (TÖMER) and Sakarya University of Applied Sciences Language Education Application and Research Centres (SADEM) at the undergraduate, graduate and doctorate levels. During the preparation of academic papers such as thesis, article, and communique, SPSS 25 package program was used to evaluate the data obtained from the survey study applied to determine the problems encountered by Afghan students continuing their education in Turkey. Kaiser-Meyer Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett tests were used to determine the suitability of the answers for the factor analysis of the data. And Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was used to determine the reliability of the factors. Normality analysis was performed with Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests to determine which tests (Parametric or non-Parametric) are appropriate to use in the analysis, but it was determined that the data did not show a normal distribution. For this reason, skewness and kurtosis values were checked. It was determined that the values were between +2, -2 and showed a normal distribution. The data obtained as a result of the study were evaluated by qualitative content analysis method. As a result of the evaluation, demographic information of the participants (age, gender and educational status, scope of education), the scope of their education in Sakarya, the order of learning and acquiring basic language skills, using dictionaries and internet in academic studies, and difficulties arising from the alphabet, difficulties encountered by Afghan students in terms of general structure, scientific research, questions, morphology and punctuation are included. As a result of this study, it is seen that the Afghan students studying at the education units in Sakarya have the most difficulty in identifying and writing the findings of an academic text, scanning the field, using gerunds, using punctuation marks in accordance with the rules and using non-Turkish words in the professional field. For the solution of such problems identified in the study, solutions and suggestions for minimizing the difficulties encountered during academic writing are also presented.