Cultural vocabulary in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

Yıl 2021, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 1, 338 - 358, 08.04.2021

Burak Tüfekçioğlu

https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.911449

Öz

This study aims at specifying cultural words in teaching Turkish as a foreign language according to their proficiency levels (A1/2, B1/2, and C1/2) and analyzing the difference between the proficiency levels of these cultural words in terms of their frequency. For this purpose, a cultural corpus of 112.350 tokens in total has been created based on written and oral cultural texts. In this cultural corpus, nouns and verbs in the first 2000 in terms of their frequency have been compared with nouns and verbs in the most common 2000 Turkish words, and nouns and verbs that are not in the most common 2000 Turkish words have been marked as cultural words. Then, the cultural words have been compared with the textbooks used in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. The proficiency levels of their English equivalents in Cambridge Learner's Dictionary and the context in which they are used in the corpus have been checked and listed according to their levels. Finally, the list has been edited according to the opinions of two experts teaching Turkish as a foreign language at university level. The differences in the frequency of cultural words according to their proficiency levels have been analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Findings show that there is a statistically significant difference between A1 and A2; A2 and B1; B1 and B2; C1 and C2 levels of the cultural words in terms of frequency, whereas there is no significant difference between cultural words at B2 and C1 levels in terms of frequency. In these findings, it has been seen that the most cultural words are at B1 level in terms of number and concept diversity, and it has been concluded that B1 level could be a threshold in the teaching of cultural words.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language, corpus linguistics, culture in foreign language teaching, vocabulary, vocabulary teaching

Kaynakça

• Ackermann, K. & Chen, Y-H. (2013). Developing the academic collocation list (ACL) – A corpus driven and expert-judged approach. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(4), 235–247.
• Aksan, D. (1971). Kavram alanı-kelime ailesi ilişkileri ve Türk yazı dilinin eskiliği üzerine. Türk Dili Araştırmaları Yıllığı Belleten, 338(1), 254-262.
• Aksan, Y., Aksan, M., Mersinli, Ü. & Demirhan, U. U. (2017). A Frequency dictionary of Turkish core vocabulary for learners. London: Routledge Pub.
• Alimjanova, G. M. (2016). Karşılaştırmalı kültürdilbilim, dil-kültür-insan. Ankara: Gazi Yayınevi.
• Aydemir, A. İ. (2010). Türkçede zaman ve görünüş sistemi. Ankara: Grafiker Yayınları
• Baydak, A. V., Scharioth, C. & Il'yashenko, A. (2015). Interaction of language and culture in the process of international education. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 215(1), 14–18.
• Brezina, V. & Gablasova, D., (2013). Is there a core general vocabulary? Introducing the new general service list. Applied Linguistics, (36)1, 1–23.
• Coxhead, A. (2000). A New academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
• Coxhead, A. (2011). The academic word list 10 years on: Research and teaching implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45(2), 355-362.
• Dang, T. N. Y. & Webb, S. (2014). The lexical profile of academic spoken English. English for Specific Purposes (33)1, 66–76.
• Fişekçioğlu, A. (2019). Yabancı dil olarak Türkçe öğretiminde diller için Avrupa ortak öneriler çerçevesi ölçütlerine göre Türk kültürü tanımlayıcılarının oluşturulması: B1 dil düzeyi model önerisi. (Doctoral dissertation, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü). Çanakkale.
• Gardner, D. & Davies, M., (2014). A New academic vocabulary list. Applied Linguistics, 35(3), 305–327.
• Göz, İ. (2003). Yazılı Türkçenin kelime sıklığı sözlüğü. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları.
• Haviland, A. W., Pirins, E. L. H., Wairath, D. & Mc Bride, B. (2006). Kültürel antropoloji. Trans.: Deniz Erguvan. İstanbul: Kaknüs Yayınları.
• Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014.
• House, J. (2020). Translation as a prime player in intercultural communication. Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 10–29.
• Hyland, K. & Tse, P. (2007). Is there an "Academic Vocabulary"?, TESOL Quarterly, 41(2), 235-253.
• Khani, R. & Tazik, K. (2013). Towards the development of an academic word list for applied linguistics research articles. RELC Journal, 44(2), 209–232.
• Klimova, B. F. (2014). Using corpus linguistics in the development of writing. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141(1) 124 – 128.
• Koizumi, R. & In’nami, Y. (2013). Vocabulary knowledge and speaking proficiency among second language learners from novice to intermediate levels. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 4(5), 900-913.
• Kramsch, C., (2006). Culture in language teaching. In K. Brown (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd Ed.) (pp. 322-329). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
• Kremmel, B. (2016). Word families and frequency bands in vocabulary tests: Challenging Conventions, TESOL Quarterly, 50(4), 976-987.
• Lei, L. & Liu, D. (2016). A new medical academic word list: A corpus-based study with enhanced methodology. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, (22), June, 42- 53.
• Lozano, C. & Mendikoetxea, A. (2013). Learner corpora and second language acquisition: The design and collection of CEDEL2. In A. Díaz-Negrillo, N. Ballier & P. Thompson (Eds.), Automatic treatment and analysis of learner corpus data (pp. 65-100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• McEnery, T. & Hardie, A. (2012). Corpus linguistics: method, theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mikhaleva, L. V. & Régnier, J. C. (2014). Parallel Study of Native and Target-language Cultures in Foreign Language Teaching. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 154 (1), 118 – 121.
• Schmitt, N. (2008). Instructed second language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research, 12(3), 329-363.
• Sergeyeva, T. G. (2014). Kültürdilbilimde temel birimlerin tanımlanması üzerine, In O. Kozan (Eds.). Kültürdilbilim temel kavramlar ve sorunlar, (pp: 51-56). Ankara: Gazi Kitabevi.
• Sinclair, J. (2005). Corpus and text—basic principles. In M. Wynne (Ed.), Developing linguistic corpora: A guide to good practice (pp. 1–16). Oxford: Oxbow Books. Retrieved from /http://ahds.ac.uk/linguistic-corpora on February 20, 2007.
• Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
• Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural linguistics and linguistic relativity. Language Sciences, 59 (January), 83–92.
• Smith, P. & Riley, A. (2016). Kültürel kurama giriş. Trans.: S. Güzelsarı & İ. Gündoğdu. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları.
• Staehr, L. S. (2008). Vocabulary size and the skills of listening, reading and writing. Language Learning Journal, 36(2), 139- 152.
• Stoykova, V. (2014). Teaching corpus linguistics. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 143(1), 437 – 441.
• Ölker, G. (2011). Yazılı Türkçenin kelime sıklığı sözlüğü. Konya: Kömen Yayınları.
• Oxford, R. (1996). Why is culture important for language learning strategies? In R. Oxford (Ed.), Language strategies around the World: Cross-cultural perspectives, pp: IX- XV. Hawai: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Özkan, B. (2012). Türkiye Türkçesinde belirteçlerle fiillerin birlikte kullanılması ve eş dizimlilikleri. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları.
• Özkan B. (2013). Derlem dilbilim çalişmalari ve dil öğretimi. In M. Durmuş & A. Okur (Eds.). Yabancılara Türkçe öğretimi el kitabı, (pp: 433-451). Ankara: Grafiker yay.
• Matthews, J. (2018). Vocabulary for listening: Emerging evidence for high and mid-frequency vocabulary knowledge. System, 72(1), 23-36.
• McLean, S., Stewart, J. & Batty, A. O. (2020). Predicting L2 reading proficiency with modalities of vocabulary knowledge: A bootstrapping approach. Language Testing, 37(3), 389–411.
• Michelson, K. (2018). Teaching culture as a relational process through a multiliteracies-based global simulation. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 31(1), 1-20.
• Masrai, A. & Milton, J. (2018). Measuring the contribution of academic and general vocabulary knowledge to learners' academic achievement. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 31(1), 44-57.
• Tahiroğlu, B. T., (2008). Derlem dil bilimi ve güncel gelişmeler. Uluslararası Türk Dili Kurultayı Bildirileri kitabı, Ankara: TDK yayınları.
• Türk Dil Kurumu, (2005). Türkçe Sözlük. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları.
• Uzum, B., Yazan, B., Zahrawi, S., Bouamer, S. & Malakaj, E. (2021). A comparative analysis of cultural representations in collegiate world language textbooks (Arabic, French, and German). Linguistics and Education, 61(February), 1-12.
• Valipouri, L. & Nassaji, H. (2013). A corpus-based study of academic vocabulary in chemistry research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12, 248–263.
• Vongpumivitch, V., Huang, J-Y & Chang, Y-C. (2009). Frequency analysis of the words in the Academic Word List (AWL) and non-AWL content words in applied linguistics research papers, English for Specific Purposes, 28(1), 33–41.
• Yang, M. N. (2015). A nursing academic word list, English for Specific Purposes, 37(January), 27–38.
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/church, Accessed on 02.05.2020
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/mosque?q=mosque+, Accessed on 02.05.2020.
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/king, Accessed on 02.05.2020.
• https://www.kulturportali.gov.tr, Accessed on 03.06.2020.
• https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2004/07/20040723.htm#1, Accessed on 10.05.2020.