An Evaluation of the Mistakes Made by Native Arabic Speakers in Their Writing Assignments of Academic Turkish Course

In teaching Turkish language as a foreign language, the purpose is to enable the target audience, who have diverse purposes for learning the language, coming from a variety of cultures and languages, to reach such a level that they could understand whatever they listen and read and they could express their feelings, thoughts and dreams verbally as well as in writing. However, students graduating from the Turkish Language Teaching, Application and Research Centers face difficulties in using the academic language during their undergraduate and graduate studies. For this, 100-hour Academic Turkish Program is developed by Gazi University and Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities. Research data is composed of 230 papers containing written expressions made in the beginning and the final evaluations of 115 Arabic speaking students. For the purpose of the initial evaluation at the beginning of the program, the students are asked to write down their feelings and thoughts on the given subject. The papers are evaluated on the basis of the written expression assessment scale prepared by the experts of the subject areas. The research data are analysed with SPSS. Content analysis was made with frequency and percentage statistics. With this study, the problems in academic writing experienced by students whose native language is Arabic and who want to obtain undergraduate and graduate education in Turkey, are identified and suggestions are presented for the solution of the problems faced by these students.