Özet:

Writing is a skill that starts from early childhood and develops with various scratching and line work. Preschool writing activities are composed of children’ exploration of written language with the support of their parents or peers and they include several stages. The purpose of this research is to explore the writing perceptions of preschool students in terms of age, gender and socioeconomic status. This research was carried by case study design within the qualitative inquiry research methodology. The participants include 96 children (46 girls and 50 boys) ranging 3 to 5 years old (36-66 months). The data were collected through Personal Information Form and Writing Perceptions for Preschool Form. Children were directed to write with the instruction of “Would you write something for me?” After writing, they were asked to talk about and reflect on their writing with questions “What did you write? Would you explain what you wrote?” Written documents derived from children were categorized based on the stages in the development of writing perception. As a result, most of the 3-year old children were observed to be at the scratching stage. 4-year old children were usually seen to experience linear repetition stage while 5-year old ones appeared to be random letter creation stage and a few of these 5-year olds were observed to be at a relatively higher level in which they were able to relate their writing with sounds. Additionally, the results also illustrated that the socio-economic level of the children had an impact on positioning their writings, but gender did not seem to influence this positioning. It is also found that, in some age periods girls were at an advanced stage compared to boys, both boys and girls paid attention to following the line, and their writing samples were seen to be closer to basic perpendicular letters. In the light of these results, recommendations were made for strengthening the writing perception in preschool level.

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