A study on the punctuation knowledge levels of freshmen students

Abstract

The present study was conducted to determine the use of punctuation marks by freshmen college Turkish language course students whose native language was Turkish. The study is a quantitative study where descriptive techniques were used. The study group included 204 students (157 female and 57 male students). An anonymous short story text that did not include any punctuation marks was used as the data collection instrument. The original text included 8 punctuation marks used in different parts of the text. The data were obtained by asking students to rewrite the text based on composition rules and including the missing punctuation marks. T-test, One-Way ANOVA, Tukey HSD tests available on IBM SPSS Statistics 22 software were used in data analysis. The study findings demonstrated that students made several mistakes in all punctuation marks. The period was the only punctuation mark used correctly by the majority of students. The students made the most mistakes when using the dash (98.34%). Analysis of the findings based on student department, there was a difference in the use of exclamation marks only between PDR I. instruction 1/B and PDR II instruction 1/B classes. A significant difference was determined favoring the female students only between the use of quotation marks based on gender.

Keywords

• punctuation marks; freshmen students; the punctuation Knowledge levels; writing skills; Turkish language instruction

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