The relati̇onshi̇ps between seventh graders' grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension levels and writing skills

This study aims at analysing the relationships between grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension level and writing skill. The study was conducted with 410 sev-enth graders. Writing topics prepared by the researcher, personal information form, an achievement test containing 20 grammar and 20 vocabulary questions and a reading comprehension test developed by Ağın Haykır (2012) were used as the tool of data col-lection. The compositions written by the students were evaluated by four different raters according to the rubric developed by the researcher. descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way variance analysis (ANOVA), and correlation and regression analyses and path anal-ysis- which were hypothesis tests- were employed in the analysis of the data collected. The analyses were performed by using SPSS 21.0 and LISREL 8.54 package pro-grammes. Consequently, it was found that seventh graders' writing scores were at the level that they should be, that they had the most difficulty in the conclusion part of their compositions, that they had problems in descriptions, paragraphing, introduction, spelling, punctuation and headings respectively, and that they were better at page organ-isation, word and text organisation. Besides, it was also found that writing skill differed significantly according to such variables as gender, receiving pre-school education, hav-ing internet connection at home, fathers' educational status, mothers' educational status and frequency of reading books; but that there were no significant differences according to writing a diary. It was concluded that there were medium level correlations between students' achievement in writing and their academic achievement in Turkish courses. Path analysis demonstrating the relations between students' grammar and vocab-ulary knowledge, their reading comprehension levels and writing skills suggested that the model explained 39% of the variance of vocabulary, 36% of the variance of reading comprehension and 47% of the variance of writing. The results of path analysis revelead that grammar did not affect writing skill directly but that it contributed to prediction of it through vocabulary and reading comprehension. Another finding obtained in the study was that vocabulary and reading comprehension made significant contributions to explaining writing skill. In consequence of path analysis, it was also found that the vari-ables of grammar and vocabulary made significant contributions to predicting reading comprehension. Anahtar Sözcükler: dil bilgisi, kelime bilgisi, okuduğunu anlama, yazma, yapısal eşitlik modeli