The effectiveness of clustering method in developing written expression skills

Individuals have to communicate with others and share their feelings, thoughtsand wishes inorder to understand what they are saying. Language is the basic way ofcommunication. Language includes for basic skills such as listening, speaking, readingand writing.The basic purpose of Turkish course is to read, listen, write and understandeffectively as well as be able to express feelings, thoughts and ideas in a clear way.Turkish course as an instrument is one of the main and leading course in Turkish PublicEducation System. It is fair to say that without learning mother language, it will beimpossible to continue live effectively in daily life. Turkish course and Turkishinstruction play an important and significant role in individuals? life and success.Listening and speaking as basic language skills partly, can be learned out ofschool. But, reading and writing skills can be gained only with instruction activities atschools. Writing activitiy require cognitive and physcomotor behaviour activitiy.Writing activity develops slower than other language skills, requires more time andeffort. All of these cause writing to be seen as a difficult skill.Written expression has a very important place in a persons life for enabling toexpress what he know, hear and learn. Developing written expression skills startingfrom primary education is been seen as a requirement of increasing the effectivenes oflearning. For this reason, it has been needed student centered methods for developingwritten expression skills. One of these methods is the clustering method.The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the clustering method indeveloping student?s written expression skills in the fifth grade students. Pre test- posttest control group models was used the in 2003-2004 academic year, on the 5/A and 5/Bstudents at Kurtuluş Primary School in the city of Eskişehir. 22 students from each classhave been chosen by some certain featwes.?Written Expression Evaluation Scale? was developed to measure student?swritten expression skills. In order to observe the writing skills developments of studentadditional course materials were developed. A personel information test to chose thestudents, observer forms to be used in teaching of clustering method and to be used inpracticing of this method by the observers and also a course plan and course metarialshave been developed in order to perform the Turkish course writing skills on the base ofthe clustering method.SPSS statistical programme has been used in analizing the data, t test has beenused comparing the groups, significanf level has been accepted .05. after analizing thedata, it has beeen reaced this conclusion:The result of the study indicate that there was a significant difference in writtenexpression skills of the examination group on which the clustering method has beenused in Turkish course when it was compared to traditional or conventional Turkishinstruction method in Turkish public schools.