مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - THE RELATION BETWEEN REFLECTIVE DIARY USE AND WRITING SELF-EFFICACY: THE CASE OF FOREIGNERS WHO LEARN TURKISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract :

The aim of teaching Turkish as a second language is to have learners become competent in the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Of these four skills, writing concretizes development in the target language in many ways, including thinking, vocabulary and grammar, and gives teachers the opportunity to evaluate language learners. Thus, it is important that learners feel safe and comfortable during writing activities. Otherwise, the learners will develop a negative attitude towards writing tasks, which can become an anxiety. Anxiety reduces self-efficacy perception about writing, and eventually, anxiety- ridden students either avoid writing or do not write at all. For this reason, it is necessary to be informed about the writing self-efficacy perceptions of those who learn Turkish as a second language to get to know about their writing processes. Learners self-efficacy perceptions are shaped by their level of information about their own writing processes. This is a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design. Its objective was to determine the effect of reflective diary use on the writing self-efficacy perceptions of students of Turkish as a second language. The study data were collected from Bosnian students learning Turkish in their own country. The study was conducted for ten weeks, including the pretest and posttest phases. It was concluded that students reflective diary uses had a significant effect on their writing self-efficacy perceptions.