The relationship between vocabulary breadth and depth and receptive and productive collocational knowledge in Turkish as a foreign language

The current study aimed to determine the relationships between vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth and receptive and productive collocational knowledge of learners of Turkish as a foreign language. The study employed the relational survey model. The study group consisted of 172 international students from 52 countries and 36 different native languages, who had completed or were studying at the C1 level at the Turkish Teaching Practice and Research Centre of Ondokuz Mayıs University. The data were collected by using measurement tools assessing vocabulary breadth and depth as well as receptive and productive collocational knowledge and descriptive and correlational analysis techniques were employed. The findings revealed that the participants' vocabulary breadth mean scores for the high-frequency words are significantly higher than their vocabulary breadth mean scores for the low-frequency words and that vocabulary depth plays a determining role in language learning and usage processes. In addition, receptive collocational knowledge was found to be a fundamental element in grasping grammatical relations and closely related to proficiency level. The participants' productive collocational knowledge remained at a moderate level and it was determined that improving receptive knowledge could enhance productive collocational knowledge. In conclusion, it was emphasized that language teaching curricula should not focus solely on increasing the number of words learned but should aim to teach the meanings of words, the contexts in which they are used and their collocational patterns in depth. It is believed that the findings of the research will make significant contributions to approaching vocabulary development from a holistic and multifaceted perspective and to strengthening the language proficiency of learners of Turkish as a foreign language.