COPING STRATEGIES USED BY PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS TO OVERCOME WRITING CHALLENGES

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the challenges encountered by pre-service teachers in the writing process and the coping strategies they used to cope with these challenges. For this purpose, being one of the qualitative research methods, the case study was used. Based on existing writing models in the literature, the study group of the research included 69 third-year pre‑service teachers who studied in the Turkish Language Teaching program of a state university during the 2018-2019 academic‑year. Prior to the data collection, the participants were asked to write a 1500-2000-word essay in the triangle of “reader-writer-context”. Next, they were asked to answer two open-ended questions were asked and they were asked to answer these questions and descriptive analysis technique was used to analyze the data. When the writing difficulties experienced by the pre-service teachers in the writing process were examined, it was determined that they had the most writing challenges at the process level, followed by the writing difficulties at the control level, and the least at the resource level. Coping strategies used by pre-service teachers in response to their writing challenges in the writing process, it was determined that coping strategies aimed at providing cognitive support were used the most, which was followed by coping strategies towards providing instrumental support, and strategies towards creating affective support. In conclusion, problems encountered in the professional training process and the ability to come up with solutions for these problems will be the predictor of the potential resolutions created by pre-service teachers for the problems they might face while performing their own professions.

Keywords: Writing skills, writing challenges, coping strategies, pre-service teachers.

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