Abstract:

This study has been carried out to explore overall level of written examination questions used in some Turkish courses offered at the secondary school and seperate individual levels of those regarding reading comprehension grammar and written expression essay writing In the study questions on 96 pieces of written examination prepared by Turkish language teachers in 36 primary schools in the central town of Hatay in the years of 2004 2005 were examined in terms of content analysis and Bloom’s 1956 cognitive classification by means of Pearson and Johnson’s 1978 classification regarding textual questions Findings of this study revealed that most of Turkish lessons essay questions were low level questions When the reading passage questions were analyzed it was found that there were mostly low level questions that is knowledge 63 02 and comprehension level 25 2 questions compromised almost 80 of all questions More importantly the answers of these questions were easily found in the reading passage textually explicit 74 7 60 of Turkish grammar questions were on application level and another 21 7 were on analysis level On the other hand the composition questions were mostly either on comprehension level 46 6 or synthesis level 53 4 Keywords: Assessment written examination questioning reading comprehension grammar teaching essay writing Turkish instruction

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