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Abstract

The aim of written expression studies is to have students explain their knowledge, feelings, ideas and imaginations in a correct and effective manner. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of story map on story writing skills of first grade teacher candidates who study at the Department of Elementary Education. The research process is designed with mixed method. The study was conducted during the proceedings of Written Expression class in Fall Semester of 2012-2013 academic year. The work group in the study consisted of 45 (30 females and 15 males) pre-service teachers. The stories written by classroom teacher candidates as a result of the applied story map activities within class have been examined. It has been observed that all of the classroom teacher candidates have included the topic, subject, main character, introduction and body sections in the stories as a result of the applied story map activities within class. It has been seen that, as a result of the applied story map activities within class, the classroom teacher candidates have described the main character, secondary character, environment and time at a higher level in their stories. When the success level of the classroom teacher candidates in writing stories have been examined, meaningful difference between pre-assessment and final assessment has been found to be in favor of final assessment.Key words: Classroom teacher, writing, story map, story. INTRODUCTIONAccording to Carter et al., (2002), writing consists of the coordination of processes such as gathering, acquiring and expressing information. According to Graham and Haris (2002), writing is one of the most powerful communication tools of human being and the improvement of writing skills is the key to success within and outside school. Apart from these, writing provides communication with people who are far away in terms of time and distance, presents incredible opportunities for acquiring, presenting and transfering information. It is a powerful tool for increasing and eliminating information of individuals about a topic, and it provides individuals with self expression, psychologic relief and a flexible environment in artistic and politic fields.Writing and thinking are closely related to each other (Bearne, 2002). Students also need to be assisted in order to become independent individuals and to find the chances in which they will be able to interact through written language (Honskinson and Tompkins, 1987;Anilan, 2005). Time has to be allocated for students' writing studies everyday (Combs, 1996).According to Gunes (2007b), writing is the review and selection of information in mind; the array of words according to the purpose and perspective of the writer. At this stage, some processes like review of information in mind and ordering them by various processes, selection of these information and transfering these selected information into words are conducted. This activity occurs by successive processes.The improvement of students' writing skills may vary accor...