The Impact of Authentic Material Use on Development of the Reading Comprehension, Writing Skills and Motivation in Language Course

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to determine the impact of authentic task based authentic material on reading comprehension, writing skills and writing motivation in the Turkish language course. The study was conducted with mixed design methodology. Quantitative data were collected with the quasi-experimental with pre-test post-test with control group design in the study. Qualitative data were collected with a semi-structured interview form. The study was conducted in a primary school located in Eskisehir urban center during the 2014-2015 academic year spring semester. The experiment group included 22 students and the control group included 24 students. The data were collected with Reading Comprehension Test (Bulut, 2013), Writing Motivation Scale (Oztiirk, 2013), Writing Skills Scale (Uysal, 2009), and a semi-structured interview form. Analysis of the quantitative data was conducted with independent samples t-test and qualitative data were analyzed with descriptive analysis. Study findings demonstrated that use of authentic task-based authentic material in the Turkish language course improved the reading comprehension, writing skills and writing motivation of 4th grade primary school students. Furthermore, it was found that students who participated in the study had positive views on the Turkish language course instructed with authentic task based authentic material.