Turkish Children in Germany Learning Grammatical Categories in Turkish as a Mother Tongue

Abstract

The paper presents and discusses findings from a recent empirical study involving 40 Turkish children aged between 4 and 6 years attending two kindergartens in Berlin in the districts of Wedding and Neukölln. They were tested for their knowledge and comprehension of different grammatical categories in Turkish. Children from Wedding were found to be much better in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. The differences are statistically significant F (1, 32) = 6. 6258, p = 0. 01488 (p< 0.05). The children from the kindergarten in Neukölln demonstrated lower results in Turkish grammar comprehension and thus their achieved literacy in L1.

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