The present descriptive study aimed to concentrate particularly on the coordinating conjunction preferences of Turkish first year university students in their writings. 125 university students from an E.L.T. Department at a major public university participated in the study. The participants were asked to write compositions on five various topics and were grouped into three groups according to their level of success considering their grades in the final examination of writing skills course. At the end of the grouping session, the group “High” consisted of 30 students, the group “Mid” had 75 students and the group “Low” consisted of 20 students. The compositions of the students were computerized. Then, the frequencies and percentages of participants’ preferences were calculated and analyzed.

The findings of the analysis revealed that among the seven coordinating conjunctions “and” was the most frequently used. “Or” ranked the second, “but” ranked the third and “so” was the fourth. The study revealed a surprising result that the coordinative conjunctions “for”, “nor” and “yet” were not used by the students in their compositions. There was not any significant difference found between the groups in preferences of the coordinating conjunctions except from the significant difference which was found between the groups “High” and the other groups in preference of “Or”. The reasons for preferences of the students might be overgeneralisation, coursebook effect, lack of feedback on students' drafts and L1 interference.