The Investigation into Prospective Teachers' Turkish Metalinguistic Awareness

Language awareness is the totality of conscious efforts to know and practice the language. As to the metalinguistic awareness, it refers to the discovery of the social, cultural, historical and ideological aspects of language as a whole, as well as knowledge of the language and ability to use it. The current study aims to investigate native Turkish speakers' metalinguistic awareness who study at English Language Teaching, German Language Teaching, Turkish Language Teaching, and Turkish Literature departments according to their genders and departments. The study uses descriptive survey design, which is a quantitative approach. The population of the study consists of students who study at English Language Teaching, German Language Teaching, Turkish Language Teaching and Turkish Literature departments in Ataturk University Kazim Karabekir Faculty of Education. As to the sample, it consists of final year students chosen with purposive sampling technique (N=164). The data were collected via Turkish Metalinguistic Awareness Scale, developed by B. Varisoglu (2018). To analyze the data, descriptive analysis techniques were used. As a result, it was found out that prospective teachers have a higher level of linguistic awareness in Turkish, it was also seen that their lowest awareness is in morphological awareness sub-dimension and highest awareness is in the cultural awareness sub-dimension. It is also seen that there is significant difference in favor of female prospective teachers according to the gender variable, but the department variable does not have a significant effect on their Turkish metalinguistic awareness.