Abstract
WRITING ANXIETIES OF PEOPLE WHO LEARN TURKISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
The Latin proverb “verba volant scripta manent” meaning “spoken words fly away, written words remain” best shows the importance of writing skill which is one of the basic language skills. When it comes to writing skills of foreign students, making plans in target language in regards to this skill and develop a habit of writing are more difficult and exhausting compared to those for native speakers of a language. The aim of the study is to investigate writing anxieties of foreign students in Turkish universities according to such variables; “their gender, nationality, academic department, other foreign language they speak, their aim of learning Turkish, their level of Turkish and their reading habits and to explore whether there are any significant differences between the students’ writing anxieties with respect to these variables. For the study, 172 foreign students who study in different departments of Giresun University in 2014-2015 education year participated. The study is a survey type research study. The data was gathered through “Writing Anxiety Scale” which was created by the researchers in order to determine writing anxieties of foreign students. It was found that foreign students usually felt anxiety about writing in Turkish and their level of anxiety differentiated according to such variables; nationality, alphabet of their native language and their reading habits.
Keywords
Foreign students, Teaching Turkish, writing skill, writing anxiety