The effect of the use of course diary in teaching Turkish to foreigners on learners' writing skills

In the literature review conducted in the field of Turkish to foreigners, it is seen that the number of studies conducted on developing writing skills is limited. It is very important to develop the Turkish writing skills of foreign learners who come to Turkey for different reasons and study at Turkish Teaching Centers within universities. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of the use of course diary in teaching Turkish to foreigners on the writing skills of learners. The study group consists of 20 foreign learners in B2 level YTB classes who are learning Turkish at Burdur Mehmet Akif University Turkish Teaching Center in the spring semester of 2022-2023 academic year. In the research, a single-group pre-test post-test semi-experimental design was used, which is one of the quantitative research methods. In the study, the "Written Expression Rating Key" and "Personal Information Form" developed by Büyükikiz (2011) were used as data collection tools. In addition, in this study, Cronbach's alpha reliability analysis was performed in order to examine the reliability of the written expression rating key and it was seen that the measurements belonging to the rubric were above 0.70. The findings obtained from the "Written Expression Rating Key" and "Personal Information Form" used in the study were analyzed with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 22. In the study, Shapiro-Wilk was used to decide on the normality of the data distribution, and the other assumptions of normal distribution, kurtosis and skewness values, were used. In the comparison of two independent groups, Man Whitney-U test was used, and in the comparison of dependent groups, Wilcoxon test was used. According to the results obtained in the study, it was determined that there was a positive increase in favor of the post-test among the pre-test and post-test scores of the students learning Turkish as a foreign language, and that there was an increase in favor of the post-test among the pre-test and post-test scores of the content features, formal features and spelling and punctuation dimensions of the learners. In addition, it was concluded that the pre-test and post-test scores of the learners' writing skills did not differ according to gender.