Frequency of spoken language in teaching Turkish for foreign, and dictionary of A1-A2 level

It is known that there is a need for scientific researches collecting their data from field studies in determining words, which are indispensable elements of teaching Turkish to foreigners and distributing them to the processes by associating them with levels such as A1, A2. This study aims to determine the most frequently used 1,000 words in the spoken language, and to prepare an A1-A2 level dictionary on this basis that will help learners of Turkish as a foreign language. For this, the answer to the question of "What are the most frequently used words in spoken language?" was sought. In this context, the frequency list obtained by examining the frequency, prevalence, and distribution of the most frequently used words over a range of the first 10, first 100, and first 1000, and some frequency studies in the field of teaching Turkish to foreigners were examined with a comparative method. The words of spoken Turkish constituted the universe of the study in which the participatory observation method was used. The texts are compiled from 74 locations that people are crowded in such as places include libraries, canteens, cafes, tea shops, shopping centers, restaurants, hospitals, pharmacies, markets, trams, minibusses in Sakarya, Istanbul, Kocaeli and Ankara provinces. The data were compiled by direct writing by the researcher, and after the text obtained was marked as morphologically, various examinations were made in terms of frequency, prevalence, distribution, ratio, and collocation. The findings of the study revealed that it is important to know the 1,000 most frequently used words in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. Besides, although various frequency studies differ depending on the population and sample, comparative studies have shown that several words varying between 500-600 are common in these lists. According to the findings of our research, many sentences can be established with the 10 most frequently used words. However, the genre distribution of these words is important. Vocabulary teaching should be organized in packages of ten words with approximately 70% noun noble words, 22% verbs, 5% preposition noble words, 3% pattern words. Due to the activities that require many different sentences to be formed with these words, both the learned things are transferred to permanent memory and the courage of the learners to use the language as a communication element develops. Collocation analysis of the first 10 words also shows that some words are often used together. Some of the words used together preserve their initial meanings, and some of them gain different meanings than when used alone. This suggests that collocation knowledge should be considered in vocabulary teaching. Of the 100 most frequently used words in our study, 97 are very common and 3 are common words. There are no less common or rare words in the first 100 words. 98 words in the top 100 have a balanced distribution among themes, while 2 words have a wavy distribution. There is no word stacked into just a theme. In light of this information, it can be said that the first 100 words should be considered among the words that should be taught when the frequency, prevalence, and distribution coefficients are examined. The first 1,000 words consist of 244 very common, 371 commons, and 349 less common words. 36 words are rare words that appeared in a theme. When examined in terms of genre, it is seen that noun noble words, verbs, preposition noble words, and formulaic expressions are distributed in a balanced manner to every hundred slices. The most frequently used 1,000 words consist of 219 verbs, 695 noun noble words, 56 prepositions, and 30 formulaic expressions. The genres are distributed approximately to these values in other studies that were compared to our study. The first meaning of some words in TDK Contemporary Turkish Dictionary has never been recorded in texts compiled from spoken Turkish. This situation suggests that spoken language data also should be considered while determining which meanings of words should teach. Comparative analysis results also indicate that each frequency study has similar and different aspects with others. This situation, which appeared in the research method, was also reflected in words and the lists. In a pairwise comparison of our study with other frequency lists, the common word rate in the same frequency range is approximately 52%. In triple comparisons, this rate decreases to 40%. The first 1,000 words in the frequency list of our study took place at a rate of 88% in the A1 + A2 level word list of Gazi, Yeni Hitit and Yeni İstanbul textbooks prepared to teach Turkish to foreigners. In our study, 20 out of 120 words that are among the first 1000 words but not included in the textbooks can be excluded from the evaluation because the distribution coefficient is close to 0. 54 words with a distribution coefficient approaching 1 should be evaluated primarily by the textbook authors and teachers. Keywords: Turkish education, Teaching Turkish to foreigners, Word frequency of spoken language, Vocabulary teaching, Frequency dictionary, Prevalence, Distribution