Evaluation of Turkish Teacher Candidates' Usage of Complex Sentences Containing “ki” Conjunction in Turkish

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Turkish teacher candidates’ usage of Turkish complex sentences with “ki” conjunction, which are one of the most commonly used sentence patterns in Turkish.

The Turkish language has been interacting with different languages for centuries. There are two types of “ki” conjunctions in Turkish. One of them originated from Turkish and the other one was transferred from Persian to Turkish. There is a difference between the "ki" conjunction taken from Persian language and the one which originated from Turkish language. With this research, it is aimed to determine whether students use these two different “ki” conjuctions in their sentences correctly or not. While the “ki” conjunction which was transferred from Persian to Turkish is used for making description sentences, the “ki” conjunction belonging to Turkish is used to make cause-effect sentences.

In this study, a number of Turkish teacher candidates were asked to write compositions containing sentences with “ki” conjunction. The study group consisted of 11 female and 9 male Turkish Teacher Candidates. Data were collected through qualitative research methods and analyzed by document analysis and descriptive analysis.

According to the research results the “ki” conjunction used in sentences by Turkish teacher candidates do not conform to the sentence structure of Persian, but do conform to the sentence structure of Turkish. As a result, it can be said that Turkish teacher candidates should use sentences with “ki” conjunction by taking this difference into consideration.