Abstract:

The objective of free writing is to enable students to express their thoughts, feelings and observations in line with written expression techniques independent from their teachers. The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes and opinions of candidate Turkish teachers towards free writing. This study adopted the mixed research model using qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in combination. The study group consisted of 222 volunteers who were candidate teachers studying at the Department of Turkish Language Teaching at Kafkas University. As a quantitative data collection tool, Bağcı Ayrancı and Temizyürek's (2017) Free-Writing Attitude Scale for Students of Faculty of Education was used. A structured interview form, which was developed by the researcher, was used to collect qualitative data. Quantitative data of the study was analyzed by the SPSS 16 statistical package program. Qualitative data was analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. According to the study results, while there was no significant difference in attitudes of Turkish teachers towards free writing by sex, a significant difference was found by grade and the number of books read. In addition, candidate teachers noted that they consider writing exercises beneficial and that they preferred free-writing. Candidate teachers also pointed out that they did not receive any training to improve their writing skills and usually shared what they wrote.

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