Teaching vocabulary to students learning Turkish as a foreign language

This study aims to examine whether presenting vocabulary using semantically-related, thematically-related, and semantically-unrelated word sets has an effect on Turkish as a foreign language learners? receptive vocabulary learning. The paticipants of this quantitative study were 21 students studying Turkish at the Dokuz Eylul University Center of Language Education and Research as of 2012-2013 academic year. Post-tests and delayed post-tests designed in line with the research topic constituted the data gathering instruments. In the study, the participants were presented 8 words in each lesson during 9 lesson hours of intervention, piling up 72 words. At the end of each lesson, post-tests on the target vocabulary were administered to the participants, and after the intervention period, delayed post-tests were applied in equal time intervals. The data analysis process revealed that, among the three types of word sets, the highest mean scores according to the arithmetic means of the post-tests were observed in semantically-unrelated sets. However, there was no significant difference among these types of word sets in terms of their effect on receptive vocabulary gain. In other words, presenting Turkish words in semantically-related, thematically-related, or semantically-unrelated word sets does not have a significant effect on vocabulary learning right after the teaching. As for the arithmetic means of the delayed post-tests, the highest mean scores were observed in thematically-related word sets. Besides, in the delayed post-test, the type of word sets had a statistically significant effect on receptive vocabulary learning. The follow-up analysis to see which type of sets revealed this difference showed that although there was no obvious variation, there was a statistically significant difference between the scores in semantically-unrelated sets and thematically-related sets. In conclusion, it can be inferred that if a certain amount of time passes after the teaching, learners tend to remember the words which are thematically-related easier. Key Words: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, vocabulary teaching, word sets.