Derivational morphemes in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

Words formed with derivational morphemes constitute a significant part of the vocabulary in Turkish, an agglutinative language. Inflectional morphemes are a highly debated issue in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. However, derivational morphemes need more emphasis in teaching Turkish as the mother tongue and as a foreign language since Turkish is quite rich regarding derivational morphemes and derived words. This study presents a framework program for derivational morphemes and the level required for their instruction while teaching Turkish as a foreign language. This descriptive study employed qualitative research methods. Data were collected through document analysis of three books to teach Turkish, including the dictionary titled "A Frequency Dictionary of Turkish", "Yabancılar İçin Türkçe", and A1, A2, B1, and B2 level Turkish textbooks from "Yedi İklim Publishing House". The derived words in those books were identified, and the count of their derivational morphemes was measured. The results were organized on separate charts based on the books and type of the derivational morphemes (from noun to noun, from noun to verb, from verb to noun, and from verb to verb). Finally, a chart that shows the count of derivational morphemes based on the total data from all resources without separating them based on the type was created. Six experts, who have been teaching Turkish as a foreign language for five to ten years, were asked to share their opinions on the order on this chart. A framework program regarding the types of derivational morphemes and the level for those to be taught was proposed based on expert opinions, instructional themes in Turkish teaching books, and grammatical functions.