Abstract:

One of the most important events that deeply affect history of humanity is epidemics that occur at different occasions. The Covid-19 pandemic is a significant epidemic that has historically had no precedent, causing schools to be locked down worldwide. This epidemic has had the first and greatest impact on education after the healthcare service. Speaking skill, a language skill based on social learning, is shaped and developed by children assessing events around them and making connections between them. The aim of this research is to analyze and present the effect of Covid- 19 pandemic on the speaking skills of the children in the distance learning and in their daily lives in the frame of the point of views of parents and close relatives. Sub problems of the research involves what the general condition of the children in the distance education period is and whether there are problems in Turkish lessons or not during this distance education and how the Covid-19 pandemic period influences their speaking skills. The study group of this qualitative study consists of parents or relatives of 83 children who carry on their primary and secondary education online and live in the same house with them. The data were gathered through a questionnaire designed by the researcher. Data analysis technique was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the children’ speaking skills in online lessons and in their daily lives were influenced in a negative way. The children who could not express themselves verbally during online education were seen to have problems when it comes to the number of subjects they talked about in their daily life, the number of people they talked to and the length of time they spent on speaking with others. The results unearthed that the students used limited number of vocabulary again and again and spoke with an accent.

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