The ınfluence of educational games on ımproving the mental lexicon of primary school 4th grade students

The most important factor for being able to transmit our feelings and thoughts to the other side is the language. To communicate effectively, the individuals should use the language in a correct manner. During an oral communication, not only uniform types of words should be utilized, but also descriptive words should be included. Individuals with strong vocabulary can express their emotions and thoughts with a fluent language, and additionally they understand what they have read in an easier way. It was aimed for the students to develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, visual reading and visual presentation in the Turkish teaching. It is important that students use their mental lexicon effectively for acquiring these skills. It is obvious that the traditional methods are not effective for improving the mental lexicons of the students. Checking the meanings of the words from the dictionary, and using them in sentences is not sufficient to learn the word for teaching vocabulary in the courses. For this reason, teachers should include practical studies in vocabulary teaching for providing the permanence of the learned vocabulary, to elevate the student's motivation for learning the words and making the lesson more fun in vocabulary teaching. The main purpose of this research, which is designed with a semi-experimental model, is to examine the effect of educational games on developing mental lexicon of the 4th grade primary school students. In line with this aim, the vocabulary knowledge of 36 4th grade students, who were studying at Budakdüzü Primary School located in the Central district of Bartın province, were measured by applying a pre-test, in the second semester of the academic year of 2016-2017. Among the two classes, whose vocabulary knowledge were identical, one group was randomly determined as the control group, while the other one was determined as the experimental group. In the experimental group, vocabulary teaching activities were carried out with educational games; while in the control group, activities of vocabulary teaching were carried out with the activities included in the student workbook in Turkish course within the scope of Turkish teaching program. After 10 weeks of implementation, post-tests were implemented to the groups and the achievement levels of the students were examined. As the data collection tool in this study, the Turkish "Vocabulary Knowledge Scale", which is developed by Wesche and Paribakht (1996) and adapted by İlter (2015), was used. The data obtained in the study were transferred to the SPSS 18 program pack; and necessary statistical procedures such as arithmetic average, frequency, percentage, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U, Wilcoxon Marked Rank Test were performed on the data, in the direction of the survey questions. As a result of the research, it was concluded that there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group students who had been taught vocabulary with educational games in favor of post-test scores. In the direction of this result, it can be said that the efforts of vocabulary teaching carried out with educational games is effective in the development of mental lexicons of the students. Key Words: Educational Games, Mental Dictionary, Words, Word Teaching.