The impact of personalization on the lexical competence acquisition

People learn a language to understand the others and to be understood by other people. As a result of this, communicative competence of the learners must be developed. In communicative competence, there are other kinds of competences such as grammatical, lexical, strategic, sociocultural competence, etc. The most important of them is lexical competence, which is the ability to use words and phrases correctly in the suitable context.Without words, meaning cannot be conveyed. As both teachers and learners are aware of this fact, they put an emphasis on the lexical items. Teachers use various techniques for the presentation of them. However, this is not adequate for the learners. Practice is highly necessary because it shows whether they have comprehended the target lexical items or not. Moreover, learners can learn to use the lexical items in the correct context while practicing.Personalization is a kind of lexical practice technique which requires to make a connection with your life and the meaning of the lexical item. In the present study, the aim is to find out the impact of personalization on the lexical competence acquisition. The study was designed as quasi-experimental. The participants were 60 senior students from the English Language Teaching Department at Dokuz Eylul University. Before the treatment, they did the lexical achievement test to see whether they had known 30 target lexical items or not. The intervention and control groups were chosen randomly. For 4 weeks, the same techniques were used for the presentation, but the practice part was different. While the intervention group practiced the target items through personalization, the control group practiced by answering the general questions. Two weeks later, the post-test was conducted on them to find out their achievement levels. According to the comparison of pre- and post-test results, it is seen that each group developed their lexical competence. However, the comparison of post-test results showed that there was not a significant difference between the groups. The effect of personalization was also investigated in terms of gender, the cumulative GPA and the high school type. Nevertheless, no significant effect was found. Three weeks after the post-test, the delayed post-test was conducted on the participants to investigate the long term effects of personalization. There was a decrease in the retention of the lexical items in the control group. However, the groups did not outperform the other according to the delayed post-test results. Keywords: personalization, lexical acquisition competence, communicative language teaching Keywords: personalization, lexical acquisition competence, communicative language teaching