Determining of the collocations in teaching Turkish to foreign children

Teaching words and enriching vocabulary for second language acquisition by children have an important role in establishment of the communication context. Collocations, which are used together within the context of communication and have different meanings, are a part of the vocabulary. The aim of the study is to identify collocations used for communication by 4-6-year-old children who are native speakers for Turkish and to prepare data for the contents of the materials to be used for Turkish language teaching for foreign children at the same age. In this study, one of the qualitative collection techniques, the observation method was used. Since the use of natural language in the context of the classroom was examined in the study, the non-participant observation type of the observation method was used. The sample group of the study consists of the 4-6-year-old children, native speakers for Turkish, who study at the Practice Nursery of Izmir/ Karşıyaka Suzan Divrik Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School. 45 students in total participated in the study: 10 students are from the age group of 4, 16 students from the age group of 5 and 19 students from the age group of 6. The data of the study was obtained by collecting 120 minutes of audio record from students of all ages in the classroom and totally 360 minutes of audio record, and by completing observation forms we had prepared. The audio records were transcribed and then transferred to Excel program. The findings obtained were analyzed in accordance with grammatical association of collocations, and their usage with light verbs and free verbs. As a result of the study, 666 collocations in total were obtained: 272 collocations were constructed with free verbs, 199 collocations with grammatical association and 195 collocations with light verbs. When grammatical associations of collocations were analyzed, phrases were constructed mostly with noun + noun and adjective + noun. Free collocations were constructed mostly with ye- [to eat], koy- [to put/ to fill (for liquid)/ to put in position], oyna- [to play], aç-[to open/ to bloom/ to become sunny] and çık-[to go out/ to fire to break out/ become dangerous]. Collocations with light verbs were constructed mostly with ol- [to be/ to become], yap-[to make/do] and et- [to help/ to pay attention/ to pull away/ to examine/ to dance/ to annoy/ to reduplicate/ to abandon]. Keywords: Teaching Turkish to foreign children, collocation, vocabulary in children