Error Analysis: Approaches to Written Texts of Turks Living in the Sydney

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to describe the errors made by Turks living in Sydney, Australia in Turkish written texts. The mistakes identified in the texts were handled with the error analysis approach and evaluated according to their linguistic, cognitive processing, communicative, spelling and punctuation characteristics. Content analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. The study group consisted of forty-one people, aged between 10-25 years, living in Sydney, Australia in 2017. Participants were asked to create a text of at least 250 words by selecting any of the seven elective subjects in the written expression form. The texts were then examined one by one and the errors were analyzed under four headings: linguistic, cognitive processing, communicative, spelling and punctuation. As a result of the analyzed data in written expression texts, 951 linguistic and cognitive processing, 343 communicative, 230 spelling and 178 punctuation errors were detected. By analyzing the written texts under these headings, it is thought that the mistakes will be identified more easily and be beneficial for the language teaching process and everyone involved in this process, that the mistakes can be avoided more easily by focusing on more efficient and goal-oriented works and that they will save time.