STUDENTS’ VIEWS ON THE EFFECT OF THE WORDS OF ARABIC ORIGIN ON LEARNING TURKISH

Aim of this study was to evaluate views of the Syrian students who are learning Turkish as a foreign language on use of words of Arabic origin in teaching Turkish. The study group was consisted of 34 Syrian students who were learning Turkish and aged between 13-15. For determining the study group, purposive sampling, one of the convenience sampling methods, was used. While answering the structured questions the students were not guided and were provied to answer the questions in their own language. The data of this qualitative research design study were collected through a structured interview form consisting of 2 questions. In the form, the students were asked questions “How does the fact that Arabic words in Turkish similar in meaning to the words in your language affect your learning motivation? and “How does the fact that Arabic words in Turkish differ in meaning from the words in your language affect your learning motivation? ”. In addition, Arabic origin words in Turkish which had similar and different meaning with Arabic language and which were sampled in the first and second questions by the students were examined and list was prepared. Content analysis was employed for data analysis. As a result of the study, it was revealed that 50% of the students responded the questions only in Arabic, 26,5% of them responded only in Turkish, and 23,5% of them responded in Turkish and in Arabic. It was concluded that the fact that words of Arabic origin have similar meanings with Turkish affected most of the students positively. Moreover, it was found that the meaning-based differences of words of Arabic origin in Turkish did not affect just the students who responded the questions “only in Arabic”. However, it caused difficulty for the students who responded “only in Turkish” and “in Turkish-Arabic”. While the most frequently used words of similar meanings were kalem (f=12), kitap (f=12), defter (f=8) and saat (f=7), the most frequently used words of different meanings were dolap (f=6) and yalancı (f=6).

Keywords

teaching Turkish to foreigners, teaching vocabulary, words of Arabic origin, students’ views.