Teacher Views on Teaching Punctuation Marks

Punctuation has an important part in the development of basic language skills. Some studies in literature show that students’ use of punctuation marks is low. At this point, Turkish teachers have great responsibilities. In this research, Turkish teachers’ opinions were taken about the teaching process of punctuation marks. It is thought that these views may be important in terms of methods, techniques, strategies and measures to be developed for teaching punctuation and can contribute to the development of basic language skills indirectly. In this context, the research aims to determine what kind of views and approaches Turkish teachers have regarding the process of teaching punctuation marks. The study group of this research involves thirty eight Turkish teachers. In the research, a semi-structure interview form which has six open-ended questions was used. To analyze the data obtained from the research, descriptive analysis method was used. In the research, it has been found that Turkish teachers are aware of the importance and function of punctuation marks to a large extent and that they prefer to use direct instruction and question-answer methods in their teaching of punctuation marks in basic language skills. Other results show that Turkish teachers find the activities of Turkish workbooks insufficient in both quality and quantity about punctuation and they use assessment and evaluation tools substantially to determine the usage level of punctuation marks such as written text analysis, gap filling, multiple choice test