A crash course to improve punctuation skills of undergraduate students

Punctuation has always been a consideration in writing. In spite of its importance, it does not hold upa secure place in courses. Courses neither on grammar nor vocabulary allocate a place for the teaching ofpunctuation, and learning of it is expected to occur implicitly. This study aims to increase students andinstructors’ awareness towards the importance of punctuation and teaching of it explicitly. In line with that,twenty students studying at the department of written translation, where punctuation is of great importance, werechosen, and the most problematic three punctuation marks were detected. Having detected them, the researcherapplied a 3-weeks crash course programme in order to eliminate punctuation errors in students’ writing. Theresults showed that there is a statistically significant difference between pre-tests and post-tests in terms oflowering erroneous use of punctuation. Accordingly, this study suggests that explicit teaching of punctuationincreases students’ awareness regarding the correct use of punctuation and the importance of it in writing.Therefore, instructors at translation departments should allocate a place in their course schedules. At the veryend, this study submitted its own 5-days long crash course programme on the most problematic punctuationmarks that had been found from the data through analyses.