Middle School Students' Views on Distance Education: Turkish Language Teaching under the Shadow of COVID-19 Pandemic

In this study, it was aimed to determine the strengths, deficiencies, and weaknesses of distance education process of learning-teaching activities in Turkish lesson by asking the opinions of students who are the subject of the learning process. In the study, the basic qualitative research design was preferred considering the nature of the research subject. The study group of the research consists of twenty-eight 7th grade students who continue their education activities in Eskisehir in the 2020-2021 academic year. The online interviews were conducted with the teachers through a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers. The data were analyzed by content analysis using the MAXQDA program. The students stated that distance education is more functional than face-to-face education in vocabulary activities of listening and comprehension skills. In speaking and writing skills, students mostly preferred distance education. The students explained the strengths and weaknesses of the two educational environments compared to each other in terms of all skills, with their justifications. In the study, students were also asked to write the five most useful features of both educational environments. Thus, the strengths of both learning environments in terms of Turkish lessons were revealed. Based on the data obtained, it has been determined that distance education cannot create an alternative to face-to-face education in terms of social interaction, teacher-student interaction, group studies at the desired level, but distance education is clearly preferred by students as it offers many opportunities that face-to-face education does not offer. For this reason, based on the prominent skills and activities of distance education, it can be said that it will be more beneficial to continue Turkish lessons by adopting a mixed (hybrid) model in the future.