Examination of the Turkish comprehension/narration skills of foreign primary school studens

This study aims to determine whether there is a difference in comprehension and narration between Turkish and Turkish and Arabic and Turkish students who are Turkish-speaking foreign national primary school students in Turkey. The research was conducted with a survey model from quantitative research models. The research universe consists of students located in Sakarya province who continue their primary school education. The research sample was formed through the criterion sampling. The criteria of "having sufficient/class level Turkish language skills" were used in the selection of foreign students, and in the selection of Turkish students, the criteria of the same sex, the same number of students with the same class average as the foreign student selected from the class were used. The determination of students who meet the criteria is determined according to the opinions of the classroom teacher. The research sample comprised 46 foreign nationals and 49 Turkish nationals, and a total of 95 students. In the study, Turkish and Arabic Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) was used as data collection tool. The narrative, and repetition modes of MAIN was used. Data were collected from all students with the Turkish MAIN and from foreing students whose mother tongue is Arabic with Arabic MAIN. In the study, grade level and gender were used as variables. In the data analysis, Kruskal Wallis test, Mann Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests were applied; Cohen d and Pearson cholera coefficients were used to calculating the effect size. Study concluded that there was a statistically significant difference on behalf of Turkish when both the Turkish skills of Turkish and foreign students and the Turkish and Arabic skills of foreign students of Arab nationality were examined in the telling model of the story structure sub-domain, In the retelling model, there is difference between Turkish and foreign students disappeared. Still, this difference continued between the Turkish and Arabic skills of foreign Arab students. When the Turkish and foreign students' Turkish skills are examined according to the grade level, it is seen that there is a statistically significant difference in the sub-domain of retelling model comprehension among first-year students and on behalf of Turkish students. It was concluded that there was a statistically significant difference on behalf of Turkish students in the sub-domain of telling model comprehension. There was no statistical difference between 3rd and 4th-grade students in both telling and retelling models. It was concluded that there is a statistically significant difference on behalf of Turkish students between Turkish male and Turkish female students and foreign male and foreign female students in the telling model story structure sub-domain and retelling model comprehension sub-area of Turkish and Arab international students' Turkish skills according to gender has been reached. It is among the suggestions of the research to carry out studies to improve the Turkish skills of foreign students, to carry out similar studies with different variables, and to conduct longitudinal studies.